The Emperor’s Club
Emperor’s Club tackles question of virtue from an unusual angle as it does not go for a traditional elevated approach and give the audience the right to judge characters and their actions themselves. 
William Hundert is a strict, stern, and even stuffy teacher who predictably cannot be content with his initial purpose and tries to bring his students up in the spirit of high moral ideals. At first glance the fact that he concealed Sedgewick Bell’s cheating at the prestigious contest contradicts to this image completely. However, there is more to Hundert than it first seems. Bell, a rebellious student, who loves pranks and knows that his father’s authority is enough for conductng them with impunity, has a high potential, which Hundert sets his goal to expose. Drawing the conclusion that Bell’s father takes little notice of the life of his son, he believes that the boy needs molding from the other side and gives him the chance to win in defiance of the professional ethics, honesty and candor, supposing that this small lie will pay off.
In the second competition the situation recurs precisely, but the underlying reasons are completely different. Having got the opportunity to indulge into the familiar and dear atmosphere, Hundert bitterly recognizes that his lesson have done little good to the Sedgewick’s character. He confesses to him that he was aware of his cheating later, realizing it was no use exposing him then – it was too late. 
The students of Mr. Hundert, Sedgewick Bell and Martin Blythe, are completely opposite characters. While the latter represents diligence, honesty and loyalty, dignity and respect for family values and traditions, the former embodies all the negative features of a rebellious teenager which are likely to deteriorate if given chance to grip. Martin suffers unjustly but his suffering is typical for a virtuous person he is. Sedgewick disregards any fair rules and perceives Hundert’s connivance as a confirmation that he is always going to get away with cheating and deceit. His philosophy is to do anything to go ahead, no matter how legal and loyal his methods are. Martin is too amenable to claim for justice but he is eventually rewarded in the person of his son, when Hundert realizes he has chosen the wrong person to stake.
In the end of the film we see an experienced teacher learning his own lessons from his grownup students. He admits to one of his former students with bitter poignancy that he ‘failed’ himself as a teacher. However, this is not to be taken too literally. He says that “the end depends upon the beginning”, which means that the end is not so bad if the beginning was at least well-intentioned. Even the actions of Bell served their purpose – Hundert feels devastated but admits that this painful experience may teach him something. And he is not going to let his chance to put things right slip this time – he teaches the son of Blythe the right things and accidentally, yet purposefully, reveals to the son of Bell the truth about his father.
Personally, I have never encountered any of these lessons in my life, partly because stakes never were so high in the school environment. Nevertheless, I believe that these lessons are not a question of ‘life training’ but rather a question of maturity and you cannot learn much from them being merely an objective observer. The movie is aimed at teachers anyway, for those who are familiar with the art of impacting a human soul through the exposition of educational material. The thing that fascinated me is that the movie reveals life as it is, implying that it is unfair and in many cases good intentions are not enough to succeed. While I tolerate Bell’s behavior, I consider the fact that Mr. Hundert lowers the score of Blythe to be unpardonable and gross violation of professional ethics, no matter what its purpose is. William Hundert is now too old to correct his mistakes and to make use of these lessons. One of the ideas of the movie is that a man does his best to succeed, but it is up to a viewer to choose the means of achieving this. The movie depicts the wicked side winning and virtue defeated. Nevertheless, the audience is to make their own judgments.
Bibliography
1. The Emperor’s Club. Political Film Society Film Review. From http://www.geocities.com/~polfilms/emperorsclub.html