More Movie Quotes? Yup! I've Got a Bad Case of FQF

It seems I can't get enough of my favorite film quotes of which there are many. So sue me. I first provided a list of my 20 favorite film quotes from men back in November. That was followed the next day by 20 favorites from women. Less than a fortnight ago I offered 20 more from men and again came back with 20 from females a day later. Evidently I've got film quote fever (familiarly known as FQF). There is no known cure. This may be due to the fact that no one suffering FQF has any desire to have it go away.

This time I've got...I don't know I lost count...quotes and it's co-ed -- men and women mixed. Please enjoy.

You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays. - Orson Welles as Harry Lime The Third Man (1949).

Well, there's the trap door, the humidor, and the cuspidor. How many doors would you like? - Ginger Rogers as Jean Maitland in Stage Door (1937).


I don't gripe to you, Reiben. I'm a captain. There's a chain of command. Gripes go up, not down. Always up. You gripe to me, I gripe to my superior officer, so on, so on, and so on. I don't gripe to you. I don't gripe in front of you. You should know that as a Ranger. - Tom Hanks as Capt. Miller  in Saving Private Ryan (1998).


Now, get this, you double-crossing chimpanzee: There ain't going to be any interview and there ain't going to be any story. And that certified check of yours is leaving with me in twenty minutes. I wouldn't cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up. If I ever lay my two eyes on you again, I'm gonna walk right up to you and hammer on that monkeyed skull of yours 'til it rings like a Chinese gong! - Rosalind Russell as Hildy in His Girl Friday (1942).


Maybe there ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue, they's just what people does. Some things folks do is nice and some ain't so nice, and that's all any man's got a right to say. - John Carradine as Casy in Grapes of Wrath (1940).


The saddest thing in life is wasted talent. - Robert De Niro as Lorenzo in A Bronx Tale (1993).


You know if someone came in here, they wouldn't believe what they'd see? You and me with long faces plunged into despair because we find out a man didn't kill his wife. We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known. - Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont in Rear Window (1954).


I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella, too. - James Stewart as Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939).


You belong to that unfortunate category that I would call the "Park Avenue brat". A spoiled child who's grown up in ease and luxury... who's always had her own way... and who's misdirected energies are so childish that they hardly deserve the comment, even of a butler on his off Thursday. - William Powell as Godfrey in My Man Godfrey (1936).


Goddamn, that's great. So old Elaine Robinson got started in a Ford. - Dustin Hoffman as Ben Braddock in The Graduate (1967).


We didn't need dialogue. We had faces! - Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd. (1950).


After living with you for the last six months, I'm turning into one of your scripts. Well, this is not a script, Diana. There's some real, actual life going on here. - WIlliam Holden as Max Schumacher in Network (1976).


To a new world of gods and monsters! - Ernest Thesiger as Doctor Pretorius in Bride of Franeknstein (1935).


Lose it? I didn't lose it. It's not like, "Whoops! Where'd my job go?" I QUIT. Someone pass me the asparagus. -Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham in American Beauty (1999).


Sherry, the next time you do NOT want to see anybody, just let me know, and I'll usher them right in. - Bette Davis as Maggie Cutlerin The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942).


Why don't you go home to your wife? I'll tell you what, I'll go home to your wife, and outside of the improvement she'll never know the difference. - Groucho Marx as Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff in Horsefeathers (1932).


And Nietzsche, with his theory of eternal recurrence. He said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. - Woody Allen as Mickey in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).


We didn't exactly believe your story, Miss O'Shaughnessy. We believed your 200 dollars. I mean, you paid us more than if you had been telling us the truth, and enough more to make it all right. - Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941).


A homosexual with power... that's scary. - Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in Milk (2008).


Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. - Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden in Fight Club (1999).


Only one is a wanderer; two together are always going somewhere. - Kim Novak as Judy Barton in Vertigo (1958).


What is the law? It's a gun pointed at somebody's head. All depends upon which end of the gun you stand, whether the law is just or not. - Cary Grant as Leopold Dilg in Talk of the Town (1942).


The trouble with kids is they always figure they're smarter than their parents - never stop to think if their old man could get by for 50 years and feed 'em and clothe 'em - he maybe had something up here to get by with - things that seem like brain twisters to you might be very simple for him. - William Demarest as Constable Kockenlocker in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944).

Outside, countess. As long as they've got sidewalks YOU'VE got a job. - Joan Blondell as Joan Prescott in Footlight Parade (1933).

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today. - Bill Murray as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day (1993).

What would I say to a hamburger? Boy. I'd take Mr. Hamburger by the hand and say, "Pal, I haven't seen you for a long, long time." - Paul Muni as James Allen in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1933).

Well, here I am, anonymous all right. With guys nobody really cares about. They come from the end of the line, most of 'em. Small towns you never heard of: Pulaski, Tennessee; Brandon, Mississippi; Pork Van, Utah; Wampum, Pennsylvania. Two years' high school's about it, maybe if they're lucky a job waiting for them back at a factory, but most of 'em got nothing. They're poor, they're the unwanted, yet they're fighting for our society and our freedom. It's weird, isn't it? They're the bottom of the barrel and they know it. Maybe that's why they call themselves grunts, cause a grunt can take it, can take anything. They're the best I've ever seen, Grandma. The heart & soul. - Charlie Sheen as Chris Taylor in Platoon (1986).

My brother beat me. My sister beat my brother. My father beat my sister and my brother and me. My mother beat my father and my sister and me and my brother. The neighbors beat our family. The people down the block beat the neighbors and our family. - Woody Allen as Leonard Zelig in Zelig (1983).

I changed my life today, what did you do? - Paul Newman as Frank Galvin in The Verdict (1982).

It's becoming ridiculous the way you grab attention. Whenever I start to tell a story, you finish it. If I go on a diet, you lose the weight. If I have a cold, you cough. And if we should ever have a baby, I'm not so sure I'd be the mother. - Carole Lombard as Maria Tura in To Be or Not to Be (1942).

God gives us heartache and the devil gives us whiskey. - Edward G. Robinson as Joseph Randall in Five Star Final (1931).

The Uncertainty Principle. It proves we can't ever really know... what's going on. So it shouldn't bother you. Not being able to figure anything out. Although you will be responsible for this on the mid-term. - Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man (2009).

Don't You Just Hate it When You Commit the Perfect Crime Only to then Get Stuck in an Elevator?

The film opens with Jeanne Moreau's gorgeous 30 year old face filling the screen. She is saying, "I love you," repeatedly. Whatever happens for the rest of the movie, Ms. Moreau had me at "I...."

Elevator to the Gallows (1958) is French New Wave Film Noir. The noir aspect of it means that the crime at the heart of the story will not go unpunished. We live with this when we watch 40s and 50s noir. We will be sucked into sympathizing with characters that cannot, by the rules of cinema at the time, succeed.

If we allow ourselves to, we can wonder at how they will be undone. Better still we can enjoy the story for what it is. Like mystery and detective stories, characters must be well drawn and strong and the plot imaginative. Director Louis Malle's Elevator to the Gallows does not disappoint on either score.

Moreau's character, Florence, is married to a wealthy arms trader. He is an older man and we shouldn't be surprised that she has fallen for his younger, more handsome right hand man Julien (Maurice Ronet), a decorated army veteran. We shouldn't be surprised that anyone would fall for Florence or for that matter anyone else who looks like Ms. Moreau. Julien is so smitten that he'll kill the boss for her.

The first part of the crime comes off without a hitch. The cuckold is dead and for all the world it looks like a suicide and its impossible to see how Julien can be implicated. Ahh but there's always a matter of human error that will pop up along the way. When Julien realizes he has forgotten a rather conspicuous piece of evidence that would surely implicate him, he tries to return to the scene of the crime. But the elevator he rides gets stuck between floors and a whole unexpected chain of events have been set off.

This will include an amazingly stupid young couple who steal Julien's car and ride off into the night where they commit their own crimes. Meanwhile Julien has missed his rendezvous with Florence. She doesn't know what to think and proceeds to try to think it anyway. While walking the streets of Paris, sometimes in the rain, stopping at a bar or two in the process. This makes for some famous shots of Ms. Moreau that helped propel her to stardom. There was the raw beauty of her face, sans make up, that expressed so much of the inner turmoil that would surely be bubbling within this character. Malle's career was off and running from that point on as well.

Oddly, the two stars don't actually get the lion's share of screen time. The two misfit young crooks probably get an equal amount, but Moreau and Ronet are the ones we will remember. The teenaged thieves get into one deuce of pickle and subsequently manage to botch a double suicide. But while they're galavanting around it is the stoicism of the two older lovers that is the glue of picture. While Florence walks and wonders, Julien is left quite stuck in a confined space and alternately determined to extricate himself and resigned to his sad fate. Ronet, like Moreau, had to make do with very little dialogue and he was playing a man who was by nature self contained, methodical, unemotional. Not the easiest of parts and he handled it with aplomb.

The story twists and turns in surprising ways, that while seemingly not plausible are more than possible. We buy everything that happens within ETTG because we like its style so much.   The lovely soundtrack from Miles Davis, who recorded it in one night while chilling with Malle and Moreau and sipping champagne, is as indispensable to the story's allure as Moreau's face.

A key question about any film noir is whether, after having had its secrets revealed, you would want to watch it again. With regard to ETTG I am not alone in answering with an emphatic, yes. There is so much to enjoy that goes beyond plot points. Like any film that one considers "great" it is a joy to look at. Savor is the proper word for it. Any time a director decides to bookend his movie with the face of Jeanne Moreau, you know he's one smart cookie.

Not Your Typical Road Trip Film (Thank God) Y Tu Mama Tambien

Insatiable. Such are many men in their early twenties. Supping voraciously at life. Consuming copious amounts of alcohol, drugs and indulging in hungry, desperate sex whenever and wherever possible. Great passionate sexual affairs are mixed with deep, seemingly forever friendships that are likely to end suddenly and permanently.

Life is lived to the fullest and great ribaldry seems free of consequence. Hangovers, guilt and recriminations are fleeting. Another party awaits, another jaunt to night clubs, another road trip, another evening of debauchery. Friends and lovers are plentiful. Let the good times roll....

Which they do until inevitably the responsibilities and cares of being an adult necessitate a bit of settling down. Those jobs or studies that had once been in the background -- often as occasional intellectual exercises or means to fund bacchus -- now take center stage. At last one lover becomes permanent, perhaps even as a spouse. Other friends are distanced either geographically or by emotional distance.

If we're smart and not an addict, we leave behind, or at least greatly temper, our reckless appetites, seeing at last the virtues of moderation. If not, the good times roll right over us. Desperate attempts to rekindle fires now dead retard our development often causing collateral damage to those close to us.

Many, many films, particularly of recent vintage, try to exploit the days of young male bawdiness. The resulting movies all too often present mere caricatures. These films are played for laughs (and not particularly sophisticated ones at that) using young women as props, far more cynically than we ever did. Only occasionally do these stories allow for character development or for any nuance. Characters are archetypes, events are set ups for gags. The road trip movies are the worst offenders of this genre.

Nine years ago the exception that makes it a rule came out of Mexico with director Alfonso Cuaron's Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001).

Two young men, Julio and Tenoch (played by the now familiar Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna) are freed of their girlfriends for the summer and end up conniving an older woman into joining them on a road trip to the perfect beach. Never mind that the beach is a total concoction of their combined imagination. Never mind that she is married to Tenoch's cousin. Never mind that neither has a car available. They are young, determined and have the financial means.

The journey begun, we as an audience have no idea where the trip will take them, or by extension us. Their passenger is Luisa (Maribel Verdu) whose ulterior motives for going are partially motivated by her husband's drunken confession of an affair.

Sex is much on everyone's mind. No film has dealt with the sex more openly and frankly, yet managed to maintain a level of eroticism in the bargain.

Drugs and booze are plentiful as are conversations about drugs, booze and sex. Indeed part of the fun is that when you're not "doing it", you're talking about it.

There is no overt attempt to ruminate or be philosophical, this is a frank look at hedonism and its immediate consequences.  Acts of indulgence abound but ones committed by people with a conscience. It is YTMT's honesty, its lack of pretense, that allows viewers to explore its deeper implications and issues.  In fact there is the frequent appearance of police and army troops and references to politics and Mexico's class system throughout the film. We in the audience can make what we will from these backdrops and goings on. The narrator does not direct us toward adopting a particular point of view. Cuaron trusts us to make our own interpretation.

Y Tu Mama Tambein is a film that does not resort to contrivances in either plot or character. We are invited to laugh, flinch, speculate and ruminate. Like many exceptional movies it allows us to take away from it what we will. There is much on the life and death of close camaraderie, the sort that is at once so strong and so fragile both because of and despite homoerotic tension.

Relationships are a never ending source of exploration for films and YTMT doesn't disappoint. It also -- unlike too many American movies -- is respectful of its female character. In America less is known of the Spanish actress Verdu than her two co stars. But she brings a wonderful balance to the randy duo with her own strong sexuality mixed with equally powerful intelligence and self awareness.

YTMT is a strong concoction in which sex and drugs are mere spices. The main course includes the joys of youthful discovery by those who dare live to the fullest. Its other fare includes pain, regret and another kind of discovery. The ageless exploration of self and the never ending lessons we can learn just be paying attention.

I wish they made more films like this.

What People Are Saying About the Film They Just Saw

"I can't wait for the sequel!"

"I can't wait for part three."

"They should do a prequel!"

"What the hell's a prequel?"

"It sucked."

"It was nothing like the book."

"That movie would be so cool to watch totally stoned."

"I'm so wasted I probly won't remember the movie tomorrow."

"You should totally see it."

"It was so much better than the original."

"The original is so much better."

"I didn't get it."

"The special effects were awesome."

"What was your favorite part?"

"Screw the critics, that was hilarious!"

"That's two hours I'll never get back."

"I can't believe I spent ten bucks on that piece of crap."

"I am totally going to buy the DVD of this movie when it comes out."

"It's got Oscar written all over it."

"What have I seen the guy who played the assistant in before?"

"What was with that scene in the fountain?  It made no sense."

"Seriously, you liked it?"

"Seriously, you didn't like it?"

"I feel asleep for awhile in the middle; was the secretary supposed to be one of the bad guys?"

"When I get home I'm going to read all the reviews online."

"What dya think?"

Streams of Unconsciousness Celebrates its Second Anniversary! Photo Highlights of the Celebration

Some of the guys on the staff pose for this picture prior to the banquet.

As you can see the lads cleanup real nice.

Staff, family and guests settle in for a sumptuous repast.

"The boys" enjoy a post dinner cigar as I look on.

Senior staff pose for a photograph that will soon grace our main lobby.

The main entertainment was a big hit.

"Let's get this party started!" Someone shouted. And we did.

Some of the fellas hamming it up.

The ladies get into the act too.

A few of us finally head home.

You're History! Great Cinematic Portrayals of Famous People

One of the great challenges for any actor is to portray a character well known to audiences through real life deeds. The actor must create his or her own interpretation of someone who audience have either seen on film, read about or perhaps even met.

The actor risks doing an impersonation, which may recall the figure they're playing but adds nothing to the film and fails to cast the character in a new light. A convincing performance has us thinking that actor looks and sounds like Mr. or Ms. Famous. But a great performance obliterates such relative trivialities and we become lost in the story.

Here are ten such performances. I could easily have doubled, tripled even quadrupled the total. But I sought a representative sampling from both recent years and the past, men and women. And yes, I may compose a second part in the future.

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen (2006). This role was an amazing challenge for an Englishwoman and it required someone of Ms. Mirren's stature and talent to pull it of. Any portrayal of a reigning monarch could easily, despite intentions to the contrary, slip into parody. But Ms. Mirren was up to the task. It was probably not meant to be a sympathetic portrayal (just an accurate one) and yet it reminded audiences that QEII may be royalty, but she is also human.

Bruno Ganz as Adolph Hitler in Downfall (2004). This performance was controversial to some who felt it humanized Der Fuhrer. To me that was the beauty of it. Hitler was after all, a human being. As awful a one to walk the face of the earth, but still it is important to remember that he is akin to the rest of us humanoids.Asfar as monsters do exist, they are humans. As someone who has read a lot about the Third Reich and its leader, I became totally lost in Ganz's portrayal, as it seemed to be at once a true depiction of Hitler in his last days and a tour de force performance.

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in Milk (2008). Watch Milk and you quickly become enraptured in a wonderful film with a superb cast led by Sean Penn in the title role. See the late great Mr. Milk in the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) and you marvel at how Penn magically embodied the man. If I ever dared something so stupid as ranking acting performances, this would have to be at or near the very top of my list.

Diana Ross as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972). It can probably be said that this was the part Ms. Ross was born to play because her acting career shows nothing of note preceding or following this film. I never thought she did very much to be Billie Holiday, but she did one helluva lot to create a remarkable character that enhances our understanding and apprecitation of Lady Day.

Jamie Foxx as Drew "Bundini" Brown in Ali (2001). While Will Smith in the title role deserved kudos, as do many of the other cast members portraying familiar figures of recent history, for me it was Foxx who practically stole every scene he was in. Bundini, along with trainer Angelo Dundee, was the man Muhammad Ali's career for most of The Greatest's career and so is familiar to Ali devotees such as yours truly. Foxx presaged what is already an excellent acting career with this powerful performance.

Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams in Amistad (1997). All right, so none of has ever seen any film footage of America's sixth president and few of us know very much about him. But for crying out loud somehow Hopkins was Adams (then an ex prez serving in Congress). This one is impossible to explain but I swear to Allah that Hopkins had me thinking that he had brought Adams to life. Certain things just can't be explained. But they can be marveled at. This is one of them.

Dustin Hoffman as Carl Bernstein in All the President's Men (1976). People who knew the Bernstein claimed that Hoffman captured virtually every detail of the Washington Post reporter. Most of us hadn't seen a lot of Bernstein on the telly when this film came out, but we imagined that this surely was what the man was like. By the strength of such such performances, the film added to our appreciation of the Watergate investigation in particular and newspaper reporting in general.

Cate Blanchett as Kate Hepburn in Aviator (2004). It was an incredible challenge for Ms. Blanchett to play someone on the screen who so many of us have seen so often on the screen. It was impossible to look "just like" her. But Ms. Blanchett managed to sound like Hepburn, walk like Hepburn and fully remind of us Hepburn while creating her own character. In other words she pulled off the double feat of being someone we knew in her own way.

Bette Davis as Queen Elizabeth I in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). There's not so much as a photograph (though often there are portraits) for an actor to go by in portraying historical figures of the more distant past. The challenge then is to create a character who seems to be what so much of the audience will imagine that person was like. Especially with so well known a figure as QEI. Many have done a fine job of portraying her, such as the aforementioned Ms. Blanchett, but no actress can outdo Davis when it comes to regal bearing. Perhaps it is a matter of my own prejudice, but I think Davis looks so good in the role because she has come to embody cinematic royalty. Anyway, acting is not just emoting, it is being. Bette Davis had that aspect of her job down to a science.

James Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). I don't know a lot about Cohan but I do know a transcendent performance when I see one and this fits the bill. More than "play" Cohan, Cagney threw himself into the role and created a version of the great showman that we can all appreciate and enjoy. It was a totally uninhibited performance that wowed everyone then and still does today. No doubt, Cohan is still beaming.

America's Unspeakable Tragedy-- Having to Press One For English

I've become aware over the years that a great number of Americans are upset about having to press 1 for English when dealing with an automated voice system. These objections are quite understandable. We're all acquainted with the difficulty of raising a digit to push a number. I know, I know, its the idea of it that Americans object to. Making accommodations for others is, evidently, un-American.

There seems to be an increase in these type of complaints in the wake of the controversy surrounding Arizona's decision to enact Jim Crow laws in the pursuit of illegal immigrants.

This country has never been particularly kind to newcomers despite it's invitations for anyone and everyone to drop in and stay awhile. To quote the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

The original illegal immigrants were, of course, those plucky European settlers of the 16th and 17th centuries who terrorized the natives, stole their land and slaughtered any one of them who proved an inconvenience. 

In the early days of the republic, indeed even in colonial times, it was the Irish who came to these fair shores only to be pushed around by the natives. They stayed and made the best of it. Then it was Germans who arrived here only to face harsh discrimination. They stayed and made the best of it. Later Italians showed up only to suffer ill treatment. They stayed and made the best of it. Finally Eastern Europeans, many of them Jews, sought a better life in America and were given a less than warm welcome. They stayed and made the best of it. Asians were next to flock to the land of the free only to be told to get lost. They stayed and made the best of it. Now it is Mexicans and others from Central and South American countries looking for a better life in the US of A. They are suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous discrimination. I venture they'll stay and make the best of it. It is as if there was a sort of unspoken hazing process for newcomers.

America is a melting pot full of xenophobes. Just as it was the home of democracy and equality and yet maintained slavery. That is to say the U.S. continues its paradoxical, contradictory utterly dumbfounding ways.

The harshest thing I can say about this country is, I believe, also one of the truest: it is a nation chock full of whiny babies. A proposed two cent tax on soda, as with any minor tax increases will get hordes of citizens off their sofas and away from their TV sets to scream "socialism!" in mass rallies. No matter who would benefit (sometimes because of) Americans will object to any raise in taxes. Indeed the very notion of any sort of self sacrifice for the greater good seems an anathema to far too many Americans. These are people who object to having to push the 1 on their telephone. It is a far cry from the US during World War II when Americans sacrificed many luxuries without complaint and gladly maintained victory gardens. And it is the polar opposite of John F. Kennedy's call for people to "ask not what their country could do for you but what you could do for your country." You could maybe press one.

I conclude with this scenario: Pedro has moved -- legally -- from Mexico to the U.S. He is gainfully employed as a carpenter. Pedro is good at his work, he's a law abiding citizen and pays his taxes. In addition to working all day he goes to ESL classes every night to improve his English. He is determined to speak and write better English. But when he calls the local cable company to inquire about a bill or a possible change in service he knows that the English voice instructions and menu will be a bit too complicated to understand. So he presses two (it's an option!) and gets all he needs to know in his native tongue. He is thus able to handle his business. Pedro hopes that someday he'll be able to push 1 for English. When that day comes, he'll be proud to do so.

Don't You Just Love Great Lines From Movies? I Do Too! Here's 20 More of My Favorites This Time We Hear From the Ladies

As you my legion of readers (both of us) may recall, yesterday I offered a sequel to previous posts comprised of favored film lines. Today I offer part two of the sequel (is a prequel in the works?) with film lines uttered by the fairer sex. 

The original posts ran last November, the first featuring lines uttered by men and as now the second had lines said by women.

No further ado....

The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self awareness. - Susan Sarandon as Annie Savoy in Bull Durham (1989).

Arrange it, are you crazy? Where am I gonna get a farm? I haven't even got a window box! Barbara Stanwyck as in Christmas In Connecticutt (1945).


The last mass trials were a great success. There are going to be fewer but better Russians. - Gretta Garbo as Ninotchka in Ninochtka(1939).


Why couldn't you have brought this up last week!... Six months isn't so long... not everyone gets corrupted... you have to have a little faith in people. - Mariel Hemingway as Tracy in Manhattan (1979).


If it was raining hundred dollar bills, you'd be out looking for a dime you lost someplace! - Barbara Stanwyck as Ann in Meet John Doe (1941).


I don't want to be worshipped. I want to be loved. - Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord in Philadelphia Story (1940).


Well, I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb. - Claudettte Colbert as Ellie Andrews in It Happened One Night (1934).


Ever since you got off that boat you've been chasing me like an amorous goat. You've tried your darnedest to make me fall in love with you and now you have. So from now on I'm going to do the chasing, and believe me brother, you're going to know you've been chased. - Myrna Loy as Kay Wilson in I Love You Again (1940).


You... Benedict Arnold in sheep's clothing! - Jean Arthur as Mary Jones in The Devil and Miss Jones (1941).

Well you son-of-a-sea-snake! Have you got on my new pajamas? - Jean Harlow as Lil in Red-Headed Woman (1932).


Well that's your estimate of me, not mine. That check is framed, not cashed! I put it there to remind me never to get mixed up with your kind again!  - Joan Blondell as Carol King in Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933).


"Stone-Age Stuff!" "Mad with Desire!" "Lovers' Brawl!" Is that the way you prove that you just more than care for me? Treating me like a strip act in a burlesque show! A glamorous bombshell, eh? A glorified chump, that's what I've been! Well, I'm sick of it, you understand? With the business and everybody! You can get another "It Girl," a "But Girl" or a "How, When and Where Girl." I'm clearing out, and you can all stay here in this half-paid-for car barn and get somebody else to pull the apple cart! I'm going where ladies and gentlemen hang their hats and get some peace and quiet... and if any of you try to interfere with me, I'll complain to the authorities! - Jean Harlow as Lola Burns in Bombshell (1933).


I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is 50% illusion. - Vivian Leigh as Blanche duBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).


Well I wanna be the real thing! And you better wise up coz if I grow and you stay as stupid as you are we're gonna have big problems Ray! - Tracy Ullman as French in Small Time Crooks (2000).


She's my sister AND my daughter! -Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown (1974).


Command performances leave me quite cold. I've had more fun in the back seat of a '39 Ford than I could ever have in the vault of the Chase Manhattan Bank. - Elizabeth Taylor as Gloria Wandrous in BUtterfield 8 (1960).


Just because I wear a uniform doesn't make me a girl scout.- Shirley MacLaine as Fran Kubelik in The Apartment (1960).


No, no, don't speak. Don't speak. Please don't speak. Please don't speak. No. No. No. Go. Go, gentle Scorpio, go. Your Pisces wishes you every happy return. - Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway (1994).


Heaven help me. I love a psychotic! - Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950).


If you don't start undressing me soon this is going to turn into a panel discussion. - Scarlett Johansson as Cristina in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008).

Don't You Just Love Great Lines From Movies? I Do Too! Here's 20 More of My Favorites

I recently took a stroll down this blog's memory lane. I variably winced, guffawed, nodded approvingly and dozed off as I read the ghosts of posts past. But there were a couple of posts, offered on consecutive day last November, that I really, really enjoyed. In a sense I was not the author, the words having been provided by several dozen screenwriters from the past 80 or so years. 


The first of these posts was a compilation of 20 memorable film lines uttered by male actors in English language movies. The second was another 20, this time as spoken by female actors. I found re-reading the lines exhilarating. Each recalled not only a film, but a scene and an actor. They bespoke the excellence, not just of that movie, but of cinema in general. 


So having had had one success with an idea I find myself ascribing to the current Hollywood philosophy and repeating it. Yes, here I offer the first of a two-part sequel to those posts with 20 more of my favorites from male actors with 20 from actresses to follow. 

You know what to do, feed the French and shoot the Germans! - Lee Marvin as Major Reisman in The Dirty Dozen (1967).


Just look at that parking lot. - Simon Helberg as Rabbi Scott in A Serious Man (2009).


You're a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are. - Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup (1933).


Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no! - John Belushi as Bluto in Animal House (1978).


And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death. - Lew Ayers as Paul Baumer in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).


Oooh, that's a bingo! - Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds (2009).

It's just like the first time I came here, isn't it? We were talking about automobile insurance, only you were thinking about murder. And I was thinking about that anklet. - Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity(1944).



You think you're God Almighty, but you know what you are? You're a cheap, lousy, dirty, stinkin' mug! And I'm glad what I done to you, ya hear that? I'm glad what I done! - Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954).


As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. - Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas (1990).


I knew all that stuff about you helping us was baloney. I'll tell you why we can't go home--because our folks are poor. They can't get jobs and there isn't enough to eat. What good will it do you to send us home to starve? You say you've got to send us to jail to keep us off the streets. Well, that's a lie. You're sending us to jail because you don't want to see us. You want to forget us. But you can't do it because I'm not the only one. There's thousands just like me, and there's more hitting the road every day. - Frankie Darro as Eddie Smith in Wild Boys of the Road (1933).


I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die. - Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty in Blade Runner (1982).


I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. - Woody Allen as Fielding Melesh in Bananas (1971).


Yes, it's safe, it's very safe, it's so safe you wouldn't believe it. - Dustin Hoffman as Babe in Marthon Man (1976).


And what are you? So full of hate you want to go out and fight everybody! Because you've been whipped and chased by hounds. Well that might not be living, but it sure as hell ain't dying. And dying's been what these white boys have been doing for going on three years now! Dying by the thousands! Dying for *you*, fool! I know, 'cause I dug the graves. And all this time I keep askin' myself, when, O Lord, when it's gonna be our time? Gonna come a time when we all gonna hafta ante up. Ante up and kick in like men. LIKE MEN! You watch who you call a nigger! If there's any niggers around here, it's YOU. Just a smart-mouthed, stupid-ass, swamp-runnin' nigger! And if you not careful, that's all you ever gonna be!  - Morgan Freeman as Sgt. Rawlins in Glory (1989).


Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals. - Paul Newman as Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).


I gotta know what day it is. I gotta know what's the name of the game and what the rules are without anyone else telling me. You gotta own your own days and name 'em, each one of 'em, every one of 'em, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you.  - Jason Robards as Murray Burns in A Thousand Clowns (1965).


 I don't wanna badmouth the kid, but he's a horrible, dishonest, immoral louse. And I say that with all due respect. - Woody Allen as Danny Rose in Broadway Danny Rose (1984).


Hey, pilgrim! You forgot your pop-gun! - John Wayne as Tom Doniphon in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).


Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another. - Martin Sheen as Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now (1979).



You sit around here and you spin your little webs and you think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn't, Mr. Potter. In the whole vast configuration of things, I'd say you were nothing but a scurvy little spider. - Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life (1946).