Cool Hand Luke Stuart Rosenberg

Christian imagery

Pierson included in his draft explicit religious symbolism.[6] The film contains several elements based on Christian themes, including the concept of Luke as a saint who wins over the crowds and is ultimately sacrificed.[26] Luke is portrayed as a "Jesus-like redeemer figure".[27] After winning the egg-eating bet, he lies exhausted on the table in the position of Jesus as depicted in his crucifixion, hands outstretched, feet folded over each other. After learning of his mother's death, Luke sings "Plastic Jesus". Greg Garrett also compares Luke to Jesus, in that like Jesus, he was not physically threatening to society because of his actions, and like Jesus' crucifixion, his punishment was "out of all proportion".[28]

Luke challenges God during the rainstorm on the road, telling him to do anything to him. Later, while he is digging and filling trenches and confronted by the guards, Tramp (Harry Dean Stanton) performs the spiritual "No Grave Gonna Keep my Body Down".[28] Toward the end of the film, Luke speaks to God, evoking the conversation between God and Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, depicted in the Gospel of Luke.[28] After Luke's talk, Dragline functions as a Judas, who delivers Luke to the authorities, trying to convince him to surrender.[29] In the final scene, Dragline eulogizes Luke. He explains that despite Luke's death, his actions succeeded in defeating the system.[26] The closing shot shows inmates working on crossroads from far above, such that the intersection is in the shape of the cross. Superimposed on this is the repaired photo Luke sent during his second escape, the creases of which also form a cross.[30]

Use of traffic signs and signals

Different traffic signs are used throughout the film, complementing the characters' actions. At the beginning, while Luke cuts the heads off the parking meters, the word "Violation" appears. Stop signs are also seen. Instances include the road-paving scene and the last scene, where the road meets at a cross section. Traffic lights turn from green to red in the background at the time Luke is arrested, while at the end, when he is fatally wounded, a green light in the background turns red.[31]

"Failure to communicate"

What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don't like it any more than you men.[32]

After writing the line, Pierson worried that the phrase was too complex for the warden. To explain its origin, he created a backstory that was included in the stage directions. Pierson explained that in order to advance in the Florida prison system, officers had to take criminology and penology courses at the state university, showing how the warden might know such words.[33] Strother Martin later clarified that he felt the line was the kind that his character would very likely have heard or read from some "pointy-headed intellectuals" who had begun to infiltrate his character's world under the general rubric of a new, enlightened approach to incarceration.[34] Some authors believe that the quotation was a metaphor for the ongoing Vietnam War, which was taking place during the filming;[35] others have applied it to corporations and even teenagers.[36] The quotation was listed at number 11 on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 most memorable movie lines.[37]

A sample of the line is included in the Guns N' Roses songs "Civil War" and "Madagascar".[38] Zero Mostel paraphrases the line in The Great Bank Robbery (1969). When Strother Martin hosted Saturday Night Live on April 19, 1980, he played the strict owner of a language camp for children, parodying his Cool Hand Luke role. He paraphrased his line from the movie as, "What we have here is failure to communicate BILINGUALLY!"

In Terry Pratchett's fantasy humor novel The Truth, hired thug Mr Pin says to Charlie, a kidnapped (and not very bright) shopkeeper he is somewhat unsuccessfully training to impersonate Lord Vetinari, the chief ruler of the city-state of Ankh-Morpork, "I think what we have here is a failure to communicate."