What’s interesting is that rather than being great insightful quotes most
Posted in General on 13. Oct, 2010
What’s interesting is that, rather than being great, insightful quotes, most of these lines are ‘zingers’ – the one-liners that writers were hired by studios to come up with in the 1980s.”Also, the best and worst lists are almost interchangeable. I’d sum that up by quoting a film that includes lots of classic lines, This is Spinal Tap: ‘There’s a very thin line between clever and stupid’.”. 1 ‘You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.’ (The Italian Job, 1969)If, after 75 years of talking pictures, this is the line that our “film buffs” remember best, then we may be in more trouble than we thought. Alas, I haven’t time, overnight, to view a film I haven’t seen since it opened, but I think I can hear the drab voice of Michael Caine uttering what is one of those lines that ask the audience to join in the large sneer of derision at the foolish ways movies work.
2 ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn’ (Gone with the Wind, 1939)In Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Rhett leaves Scarlett with “My dear, I don’t give a damn”.
In the movie, producer David O Selznick is famous for battling the code to retain “damn”; in the end, he had to pay a fine, but it was worth the publicity. Less often remarked is the genius of “frankly”, a sign of the bluff confidence trickster in Clark Gable When a man like that bothers to mention honesty, he’s lying. He’ll be back.3 ‘We want the finest wines available to humanity. We want them here and we want them now.’ (Withnail and I, 1987)It’s part of the charm of Withnail and I that it foresaw the way in which, by now, most of life seems to be the predicament of unemployed actors – all that energy with no goal – and allied it with the movie’s original function as the magic that realises fantasy.
Withnail talks like a book person, and the autocratic rhythm of the line is a thing of beauty – drunk before the wine arrives.4 ‘You talkin’ to me?’ (Taxi Driver, 1976)It’s not just that line – which De Niro improvised in the spirit of the Paul Schrader screenplay – but the whole way in which Travis Bickle has this delusion that he’s already on camera, being interviewed, long before he’s committed an outrage. So many films deal in the unknown man getting ready for fame In The King of Comedy, Rupert Pupkin longed to get on TV. But Travis was always there.5 ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning.’ (Apocalypse Now, 1979)For a moment, it may sound like the kind of thing only a hardcore American military mind could utter. But listen to our real officer corps – their talk is strangled by jargon. No, this is just something an actor would say, and something a Kilgore or a Robert Duvall has been saving up for years.