What are the best lines ever from film noir? It doesn’t have to be a one-liner, so Bogie’s send off of Brigid O’Shaughnessy (All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won’t argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we’ve got what? All we’ve got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you.) counts. And I’ll interpret film noir liberally, so that Chinatown (I don’t get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes. My lawyer does.) counts, as do the Third Man (I’m just a hack writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls) and Miller’s Crossing.
This is a good one from Double Indemnity “It’s not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They’re stuck with each other and they’ve got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it’s a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery.” (via).
Update. I like this parody from Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid “I had no trouble finding Dr Forrest’s cheese lab. It smelled like the number on the door.” (There is a 2 on the door.)
Waynski
“Baby, it’s a cage with golden bars.” Barfly.
Dave
The Big Sleep is full of them. One of my favorites was Marlowe talking to Vivian. “Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he’s walking out of your bedroom.”
Librarian
Double indemnity has so many great lines, especially in the first few scenes with MacMurray and Stanwyck, so I’ll just quote one- “I wonder if you wonder.”
T_malone
from Gilda…”if I was a ranch they would call me the Bar None”…
being released
One of my favorite lines from Hammett (a short story, I don’t remember which one) is “The room was darker than an honest politician’s prospects.”
Legalize
One of my favorite noirs is “Brick” from 2005; I don’t know if anyone saw it. Anyway, EVERY line in that movie is gold. For instance:
Brendan Frye: Hire another hash head to blade me?
Dode: Don’t need no blade, Shamus. I just gotta squawk.
Brendan Frye: What do you want?
Dode: Just to see you sweat.
And one of my favorite lines from any movie, ever:
Brendan Frye: Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.
BGinCHI
Before any lines, I implore all you noir fans to watch the first 10 minutes of Kiss Me Deadly. Aldritch just nails it with this film and it’s cruelly underrated. Based on the Spillane novel.
Mike Hammer: Okay, how much did they give you? I’ll top it.
Eddie Yeager: You can’t top this. They said they’d let me breathe.
Librarian
Phyllis: Mr. Neff, why don’t you drop by tomorrow evening about eight-thirty. He’ll be in then.
Walter Neff: Who?
Phyllis: My husband. You were anxious to talk to him weren’t you?
Walter Neff: Yeah, I was, but I’m sort of getting over the idea, if you know what I mean.
Phyllis: There’s a speed limit in this state, Mr. Neff. Forty-five miles an hour.
Walter Neff: How fast was I going, officer?
Phyllis: I’d say around ninety.
Walter Neff: Suppose you get down off your motorcycle and give me a ticket.
Phyllis: Suppose I let you off with a warning this time.
Walter Neff: Suppose it doesn’t take.
Phyllis: Suppose I have to whack you over the knuckles.
Walter Neff: Suppose I bust out crying and put my head on your shoulder.
Phyllis: Suppose you try putting it on my husband’s shoulder.
Walter Neff: That tears it.
BGinCHI
@Legalize: A very underrated film. I can’t believe it’s not more well known.
Beatrice
“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.” Body Heat
Thoughtcrime
Also from Maltese Falcon
Mnemosyne
Does it have to be film noir? Because my favorite is from a pre-Code comedy, Trouble in Paradise:
Gaston Monescu: Madame Colet, if I were your father … which fortunately I am not … and you made any attempt to handle your own business affairs, I would give you a good spanking — in a business way, of course.
Mariette Colet: What would you do if you were my secretary?
Gaston Monescu: The same thing.
Mariette Colet: You’re hired.
It’s about a master thief who’s romantically torn between his thieving true love and a rich and sexy widow, so you could call it proto-film noir with a happy ending.
Polish the Guillotines
More Big Sleep:
Gen. Sternwood: How do like your brandy, Mr. Marlowe?
Marlowe (Bogie): In a glass.
Citizen Alan
“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Harry Lime (Orson Welles) in “The Third Man.”
BGinCHI
North By Northwest
Eve Kendall: I’m a big girl.
Roger Thornhill: Yeah, and in all the right places, too.
General Stuck
I have no idea what you wrote, but after a few days in liberal jeebus land, you turn into Hemingway spouting stream of consciousness, that sounds deep and wide. Or maybe it’s the Margarita talking.
L Boom
Another from the Big Sleep when Bogart is sparring with Bacall and she mocks his manners: “I don’t mind that you don’t like my manners. I don’t like them myself. They’re pretty bad, I grieve over them long winter evenings.”
MikeJ
The Postman Always Rings Twice:
Cora: It’s too bad Nick took the car.
Frank : Even if it was here we couldn’t take it, unless we’d want to spend the night in jail. Stealing a man’s wife, that’s nothing, but stealing a man’s car, that’s larceny.
Brachiator
Baby, I don’t care – Out Of The Past
Polish the Guillotines
Farewell My Lovely starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe — a role he was born to play:
Marlowe: She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
MikeJ
@Thoughtcrime: Another Bogie, From To Have and Have Not:
You’ll both take a beating till someone uses that phone. So one of you is gonna take a beating for nothing. I don’t care which one it is. I’ll start with you.
Legalize
@BGinCHI:
Srsly. It’s in my top 10 or 15.
Thoughtcrime
From Out of the Past
Kathie Moffat: Oh, Jeff, I don’t want to die!
Jeff Bailey: Neither do I, baby, but if I have to I’m gonna die last.
——–
Jeff Bailey: It was the bottom of the barrel, and I was scraping it.
———–
Jack Fisher: You know, a dame with a rod is like a guy with a knitting needle.
———–
Ann Miller: She can’t be all bad. No one is.
Jeff Bailey: Well, she comes the closest.
————
Jeff Bailey: I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn’t know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don’t know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end.
———–
And so many more in this gem of a film.
Squarely Rooted
Not sure if you’d call this a noir, but it’s of the era, and an all-time great zinger:
“You despise me, don’t you?”
“If I gave you any thought I probably would.”
This is not at all related to film noir but definitely a favorite:
“You’re tacky and I hate you!”
There’s also this memorable dialogue, from Rififi:
“…”
“…”
“…”
Dixon Steele
“In a Lonely Place” (Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, directed by Nicholas Ray, from a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes)
“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
ed_finnerty
Maltese Falcon could just keep giving
Spade : “How much is the dingus worth”
Gutman : “If I told you sir, you would call me a liar”
Spade : “No, not even if I thought so”
***** or
“People lose teeth talking like that”
or (already posted)
“When you slapped you’ll take it and like it”
randiego
More Big Sleep:
Vivian (Lauren Bacall), not talking about horses: “Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they’re front runners or come from behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.”
Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart): “Find out mine?”
Vivian: “I think so.”
Marlowe: “Go ahead.”
Vivian: “I’d say you don’t like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.”
Marlowe: “You don’t like to be rated yourself.”
Vivian: “I haven’t met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?”
Marlowe: “Well, I can’t tell till I’ve seen you over a distance of ground. You’ve got a touch of class, but I don’t know how far you can go.”
Vivian: “A lot depends on who’s in the saddle.”
Marlowe: (to Vivian’s father, about his younger daughter Carmen): “She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.”
Thoughtcrime
@Brachiator:
Yes!!!!!!!!!
Also the title of his biography: http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Mitchum-Baby-Dont-Care/dp/0312285434
Gregory
Since the line from Body Heat (great film!) is taken, how about:
“They’re desperate characters. Not one of them looked at my legs.” — Jennifer Jones in “Beat the Devil,” which is chock full of good lines.
MikeJ
@Thoughtcrime: A dame with a rod?
Give me your hand
Get in the van
Do you understand?
He’s got a plan
Jim Kakalios
@BGinCHI: and Legalize:
The director of BRICK has a new science fiction film coming out, LOOPER, with Joseph Gordon-Leavitt and Bruce Willis that is getting a great deal of advance buzz. I agree that BRICK is a brilliant film.
Legalize
@BGinCHI:
I throw that line around at home to Mrs. Legalize on occasion. Hello!
gussie
New shit has come to light. Man.
K488
@Beatrice: Thank you! One of the best! From The Long Goodbye (novel – I think it’s there): I felt like a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
Shawn in ShowMe
Dave Bannion to gangster Mike Lagana: You know, you couldn’t find enough flowers around here to kill the smell.
– The Big Heat
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
Bacall in To Have and Have Not: You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow.
Also, Sunset Bldv. “I’m still big. It’s the pictures that got small!”
LarsThorwald
Thank you for acknowledging Miller’s Crossing.
Tom: (casually walking into a womens restroom to confront Vera) Hello, ladies…
Vera: (the only woman not to run from the restroom screaming) You think you raised Hell.
Tom: Sister, when I’ve raised Hell, you’ll know it.
Vera: Shouldn’t you be doing your job?
Tom Reagan: Intimidating helpless women is my job.
Verna: Then go find one, and intimidate her.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
A veritable masterpiece, by Ernst Lubitsch. Deserves to be seen, and re-seen. And seen again.
@Polish the Guillotines:
Great lines. Reminds me of this exchange from Casino Royale. Bond, after a huge loss at cards, asks for a drink at the bar.
James Bond: [after Bond has just lost his 10 million in the game, to the bartender] Vodka-martini.
Bartender: Shaken or stirred?
James Bond: Do I look like I give a damn?
And from My Man Godfrey, not noir, but a tough minded comedy that fits right into contemporary times:
Godfrey: Opportunity is just around the corner.
Mike Flaherty: Yeah, it’s been there a long time. I wish I knew which corner.
JGabriel
__
__
A bit obvious, but since no one else has taken it yet, isn’t this the quintessential film noir line?
ETA: Well, no one else had gotten there when I started the post. Damn you, What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ).
.
Concerned Citizen
@Waynski: What a great movie. My favorite exchange:
Wanda: I can’t stand people, I hate them.
Henry: Oh yeah?
Wanda: Do you hate them?
Henry: No, but I seem to feel better when they’re not around.
28 Percent
Does Hitchcock’s Notorious count as film noir? Whatever, I love this bit in it:
Captain Paul Prescott: [about Alicia Huberman] I don’t like this, I don’t like her coming here.
Walter Beardsley: She’s had me worried for some time. A woman of that sort.
Devlin: What sort is that, Mr. Beardsley?
Walter Beardsley: Oh, I don’t think any of us have any illusions about her character. Have we, Devlin?
Devlin: Not at all, not in the slightest. Miss Huberman is first, last, and always not a lady. She may be risking her life, but when it comes to being a lady, she doesn’t hold a candle to your wife, sitting in Washington, playing bridge with three other ladies of great honor and virtue.
Shawn in ShowMe
Johnny Rocco: After living in the USA for more than thirty-five years they called me an undesirable alien. Me. Johnny Rocco. Like I was a dirty Red or something!
-Key Largo
flukebucket
“You’re dumber than you think I think you are.” Chinatown (does it count as film noir?)
Thoughtcrime
@MikeJ:
Not that type of rod! And since your mind is in the gutter, here’s another for you:
Jeff Bailey: You can never help anything, can you? You’re like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another.
Politically Lost
“The Royale with cheese”
Jim Kakalios
@gussie: Yes! – I remember the first time watching THE BIG LEBOWSKI and being perplexed about its structure until I realized that it was a hard boiled detective story. The setting through me initially. Then the plot and characters clicked into place. Thus, I’m hard pressed to think of a line from TBL that wouldn’t qualify for this thread.
pulling his head out of the toilet:
“Where’s the money Lebowski?”
“I think I can see it. Let me take another look!”
burnspbesq
“Hello, Kitty-Cat. … You’re a very nosy fellow, kitty cat. Huh? You know what happens to nosy fellows? Huh? No? Wanna guess? Huh? No? Okay. They lose their noses.”
Chinatown
BGinCHI
@Jim Kakalios: Can’t wait to see that. THanks.
BGinCHI
@gussie: Calmer than you, Dude. Calmer than you.
Gregory
Also from the crazy awesome “Kiss Me Deadly”:
“Do me a favor, will you? Keep away from the windows. Someone might blow you a kiss.”
— Velda, to Mike Hammer
EdTheRed
@Thoughtcrime: Yeah, that one’s always been one of my favorites.
I’ll offer this one from Miller’s Crossing up for our favorite half-term former governor:
Tom: …She sees the angle – which is you – and she plays it. She’s a grifter, just like her brother. They probably had grifter parents and grifter grandparents and someday they’ll each spawn little grifter kids.
Also, too, “Jesus, Tom, dammit!”
elmo
Totally not noir, but I adore this exchange:
Ilsa: What’s that?
Indiana Jones: Ark of the Covenant.
Ilsa: You sure?
Indy: Pretty sure.
EdTheRed
@BGinCHI: “No, Walter, you’re not wrong, you’re just an ASSHOLE!”
policomic
Pretty much the entire script of Double Indemnity, including: “‘Margie?’ I bet she drinks from the bottle.”
From Sweet Smell of Success: “I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”
And, not a movie, but the noirish radio show, Pat Novak, For Hire, is a treasure-trove of hard-boiled dialogue, like “She sauntered in, moving slowly from side to side like 118 pounds of warm smoke.”
billiecat
I think your title is the best. Also:
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.
General Stuck
Private Detective Visser: [narrating] The world is full o’ complainers. An’ the fact is, nothin’ comes with a guarantee. Now I don’t care if you’re the pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin’ can all go wrong. Now go on ahead, y’know, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, ‘n watch him fly. Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else… that’s the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an’ down here… you’re on your own.
Shawn in ShowMe
Max to Irene: Always looking for a new way to get hurt from a new man. Get smart, there hasn’t been a new man since Adam.
– House of Strangers
LarsThorwald
Vera, Jesus, it was Verna. I messed that one up. To repair the tear, here’s another gem from the film:
Verna: That’s not why you came, either.
Tom Reagan: Tell me why I came.
Verna: (poses seductively) The oldest reason there is.
Tom Reagan: There are friendlier places to drink.
Threadkiller
Loach: What happened to your nose, Gittes? Somebody slam a bedroom window on it?
Gittes: Nope, your wife got excited. She crossed her legs a little too quick. You understand what I mean, pal?
Polish the Guillotines
@BGinCHI:
“Nothing is fucked here!? The goddamned plane has crashed into the mountain!”
Threadkiller
Yelburton: My goodness, what happened to your nose?
Gittes: Cut myself shavin’.
Yelburton: Oh, you ought to be more careful. That must really smart.
Gittes: Only when I breathe.
BGinCHI
@Polish the Guillotines: If you will it, Dude, it is no dream.
Mike E
Oh, man, don’t do that. Not on the rug, man. And:
Da Fino, Private Snoop: I’m a brother shamus!
The Dude: Brother Seamus? Like an Irish monk?
Da Fino, Private Snoop: What the fuck are you talking about?
Legalize
Should be self-evident:
“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switerzland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”
and
“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.”
Edit: I see that I was too late ….
BGK
Another “Maltese Falcon:”
Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation… Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?
Tehanu
@Mnemosyne:
L.A. Confidential:
Bud White: Merry Christmas.
Lynn Bracken: Merry Christmas to you, officer.
Bud White: That obvious, huh?
Lynn Bracken: It’s practically stamped on your forehead.
And from Sullivan’s Travels, which I admit isn’t a noir film:
Studio Suit: It [your art movie] died in Pittsburgh.
Sullivan: Ah, what do they know in Pittsburgh?
Studio Suit: They know what they like.
Sullivan: If they knew what they liked, they wouldn’t live in Pittsburgh.
Pappy G
Not sure it counts as a strict textualist noir, but Sweet Smell of Success is full of doozies. Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman collaborated on the screenplay.
Sally: But Sidney, you make a living. Where do you want to get?
Sidney Falco: Way up high, Sam, where it’s always balmy. Where no one snaps his fingers and says, “Hey, Shrimp, rack the balls!” Or, “Hey, mouse, mouse, go out and buy me a pack of butts.” I don’t want tips from the kitty. I’m in the big game with the big players. My experience I can give you in a nutshell, and I didn’t dream it in a dream, either – dog eat dog. In brief, from now on, the best of everything is good enough for me.
J.J. Hunsecker: I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.
Sidney Falco: The cat’s in a bag and the bag’s in a river.
forked tongue
“I don’t kneel. It bags my nylons.”
–Jan Sterling telling Kirk Douglas why she doesn’t go to church, from Billy Wilder’s incredibly black-hearted Ace in the Hole.
Marc
“You’ve got a great big dollar sign there where most women have a heart.” — The Killing
“They know more tricks than a carload of monkeys.” — Double Indemnity
“It seems to me you fellows could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the Actors Studio.” — North by Northwest
Actually, you could just quote every line from Double Indemnity and North by Northwest.
jl
From Hammett, always good for when Cole goes looking for the TunchMass
” Why is he tailing me all over town? Does he think I’m pretty or what? “
No One of Consequence
@Concerned Citizen
Not the way I remember that…
“What, you sayin’ you hate cops?!”
“Naw, I don’t hate cops. I just feel better when they’re not around.”
– NOoC
redshirt
“The Naked Gun” counts, right?
“Frank: It’s the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl, girls dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange Bowl on New Year’s Day.
Jane: Goodyear?
Frank: No, the worst.”
forked tongue
Oh yeah, I see Out of the Past has gotten some love here, but let us not forget:
Jane Greer, playing roulette badly: “Is there a way to win?”
Mitchum: “There’s a way to lose more slowly.”
Shawn in ShowMe
Quinlan: Well, when this case is over, I’ll come around some night and sample some of your chili.
Tana: Better be careful. Maybe too hot for you.
– Touch of Evil
felwith
My two favorites from The Big Sleep:
“Another dope who thinks a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.”
“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like’em myself, they’re pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.”
And from the as-yet-unmentioned Who Framed Roger Rabbit:
“You got me all wrong, Valiant! I’m a cartoon maker, not a murderer!”
“Everybody’s gotta have a hobby.”
Kiril
Miller’s Crossing
Tom: If I’d known we were gonna cast our feelings into words, I’d have memorized the Song of Solomon.
^^^That is one of my favorite lines in all of movies^^^
Dane: Where’s Leo?
Leo’s guy: If I tell you, how do I know you won’t kill me?
Dane: Because if I killed you and you were lying, I wouldn’t get to kill you then. Where’s Leo?
Leo’s guy: They’re all meeting tomorrow at Paddy’s Pub. Check it, it’s gold.
Dane: You know what, jeag? (cocking his pistol) I believe you.
hueyplong
In Miller’s Crossing, either Mitt Romney or Johnny Caspar says:
“It’s gettin’ so a businessman can’t expect no return from a fixed fight. Now, if you can’t trust a fix, what can you trust? For a good return, you gotta go bettin’ on chance – and then you’re back with anarchy, right back in the jungle.”
Dennis SGMM
After disarming Wilmer Cook.
Spade: Come on. This will put you in solid with your boss.
Dork
JurPark: “You bred raptors?”
Jim Kakalios
I don’t trust my memory and I can’t find the exchange on line, but the interrogation scene between the mobster Bobo and Lily (Angelica Huston) in THE GRIFTERS is total noir.
jl
I think Treasure of the Sierra Madre is close enough.
Gold Hat: Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.
LarsThorwald
My favorite from North By Northwest:
ROT: Now you listen to me, I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself “slightly” killed.
Bob2
I love how every other film mentioned is a Billy Wilder film.
Sunset Boulevard again with
“All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”
craigMC
Miller’s Crossing:
The Dane: Everyone is so goddamn smart.
Well, we’ll go out
to Miller’s Crossing…
and we’ll see who’s smart.
You understand if we don’t
find a stiff out here,
we leave a fresh one.
Dennis SGMM
@jl:
Nobody makes a fool out of Fred C. Dobbs.
Davis X. Machina
“I heard a story once. As a matter of fact, I’ve heard a lot of stories in my time. They went along with the sound of a tinny piano, playing in the parlor downstairs. ‘Mister, I met a man once when I was a kid,’ they’d always begin…”
Brachiator
@Pappy G:
Film noir was never an actual genre, but a retrospective look at a slice of films by those wacky French critics. And Sweet Smell of Success definitely is sufficiently tough minded to fit in.
There’s also DOA, from 1950:
Paula Gibson: I told him I was your confidential secretary, but I guess I didn’t sound confidential enough.
jl
Should probably just print out the whole script for the Big Sleep
Vivian: You go too far, Marlowe.
Marlowe: Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he’s walking out of your bedroom.
***
Marlowe: You know what he’ll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.
Pappy G
@Bob2: It’s the blogs that got small.
Noah Brand
“She was the greatest of them all. You wouldn’t know, you’re too young. In one week she received 17,000 fan letters. Men bribed her hairdresser to get a lock of her hair. There was a maharajah who came all the way from India to beg one of her silk stockings. Later, he strangled himself with it.”
Chills, every time. Every time I read one of those Neil Gaimany stories about gods who stopped being worshipped, I think of Sunset Boulevard, and that line in particular.
craigMC
Philip Marlowe: Hmm.
General Sternwood: What does that mean?
Philip Marlowe: It means, hmm.
joel hanes
NICK:
No anchovies? You’ve got the wrong man.
I spell my name “Danger”.
[ click ]
CALLER:
What ?
kc
@No One of Consequence:
I think both of those lines were in the movie. Love it.
Not noir, but from De Palma’s Scarface: “I never fucked anybody over in my life didn’t have it coming to them.”
MikeJ
@Jim Kakalios: One question. Do you want to stick to that story, or do you want to keep your teeth?
canuckistani
The Big Sleep is really it:
Eddie Mars: Convenient, the door being open when you didn’t have a key, eh?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, wasn’t it. By the way, how’d you happen to have one?
Eddie Mars: Is that any of your business?
Philip Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Eddie Mars: I could make your business mine.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, you wouldn’t like it. The pay’s too small.
MikeJ
@jl: She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.
merrinc
“Sometimes the shit comes down so heavy I feel like I should wear a hat.” – Body Heat.
Also too, this statement is appropriate for anyone who is forced to watch Fox News for more than 2 minutes.
Steeplejack (phone)
“Baby, I don’t care.” Robert Mitchum, Out of the Past.
Pappy G
My favorite exchange from Casablanca –
Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I’m a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world.
Lowkey
@Tehanu: Man, I do love LA Confidential. Modern noir, me thinks it. Bud White is still one of my all time favorite characters. (edited, ‘cos script writing is weird)
*****
D.A. LOWE: So what if some homo actor is dead? Boys, girls, ten of ’em get off the bus to L.A. every day.
WHITE smashes LOWE’s face into the mirror, drags him across the room, and delivers a swirlie.
LOWE, screaming: Pull him off me, Exley!
EXLEY: I don’t know how.
WHITE delivers another swirlie, then drags LOWE’s face up to his.
WHITE: Now, I know you think you’re the A number one hotshot, but here’s the juice. If I take you out, there’ll be ten more lawyers to take your place tomorrow. They just won’t come on the bus, that’s all.
mclaren
NUN: “You don’t even know what love is!”
HARD-BOILED POSTAL INSPECTOR: “Of course I know what love is, sister. It’s what goes on between a man and his .32 automatic.”
Alan Ladd, “Appointment With Danger,” 1951
Hawes
Miller’s Crossing in one line:
“Jeez, Tom. That’s you all over. A lie and no heart.”
And I can’t believe no one has gone to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:
Gay Perry: “Jesus, look up idiot in the dictionary and you know what you’ll find?”
Harry: “A picture of me?”
GP: “No! The definition of the word idiot, which you are!”
And
Harry: “I got five bucks says you could still get him.”
Perry: “Really? That’s funny. I got a ten that says pass the pepper. I got two quarters sing harmony on “Moonlight in Vermont”.
Harry: What?
Harry: Talking money.
Harry: A talking monkey?
Perry: A talking monkey, yeah, yeah. Came here from the future. Ugly sucker. Only says “ficus”.
mclaren
@Citizen Alan:
And did you know that Orson Welles improvised that entire speech?
It wasn’t even written in the script!
gogol's wife
@28 Percent:
I love that one too. And Cary does it so well!
Jim Kakalios
@MikeJ: I’m thinking in particular about the exchange where Bobo asks Lily if she has been skimming, and she admits to taking a little, because, as Bobo always says, anyone not smart enough to look after themselves is not smart enough to look after….
Arghhh. As the pirate on Robot Chicken said about the steering wheel on his crotch, it’s driving me nuts! I had to go look up the scene in Jim Thompson’s novel:
Lily: “Not much. My folks didn’t raise any stupid kids. I just clip a buck here and a buck there. It mounts up but nobody gets hurt.”
Bobo Justus: “That’s right. Take a little, leave a little.”
Lily: “I look on it this way. A person that don’t look out for himself is too dumb to look out for anyone else. He’s a liability, right, Bo?”
Bobo: “Absolutely. You’re one thousand percent right, Lil!”
If memory serves, the dialog in the film is VERY close to what is in the novel.
David Hunt
Since the Naked Gun has been brought up, here is my favorite line from the Naked Gun 2 ½.
Frank: An investigation is like sex. It’s a long grueling arduous task that seems to go and on forever. And then, just when you think you’re finally getting somewhere…nothing happens.
meander
@BGinCHI, #7 : Perhaps “Kiss Me Deadly” isn’t widely popular, but it is a big favorite with critics and academics. It was the example of Noir for my intro to film class many years ago at University of Illinois.
Jim C
My favorite from Double Indemnity:
Phyllis: I’m a native Californian. Born right here in Los Angeles.
Walter Neff: They say all native Californians come from Iowa.
gogol's wife
Since people are mentioning “North by Northwest,” since anything by Hitchcock seems to have a noir feeling to it, my favorite line in that film is James Mason saying “Rapid City, South Dakota.” You have to hear it in his voice to get the effect.
Polish the Guillotines
@David Hunt: Let’s go back to the original TV Series, Police Squad:
Frank Drebbin: It took me two weeks to find Stella’s apartment, as she had neglected to give me her address.
joel hanes
Renault: And what in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Renault: The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed
joel hanes
NICK:
What’s the birds-eye lowdown on this case? (Whatever that means …)
Anton Sirius
@Shawn in ShowMe: The best line in Touch of Evil is the last one. “He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?”
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Tehanu:
Still waiting for the Coens to make Hey Hey In the Hayloft.
Anton Sirius
@joel hanes: Come in out of the corn starch and dry your mukluks by the fire.
Legalize
Chief Karlin: [shoving Fletch into a wall] Dipshit! You go back on that goddamn beach and you won’t live to regret it! All right?
Fletch: [sees a picture on the wall] Hey, you and Tommy LaSorda!
Chief Karlin: Yeah.
Fletch: I hate Tommy LaSorda! [punches glass out of the picture frame]
craigMC
Blade Runner.
Gaff: It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?
billiecat
From Miller’s Crossing.
Nobody knows anybody. Not that well
SGEW
Miller’s Crossing:
Verna: What´re you chewin´over?
Tom Reagan: Dream I had once. I was walkin’ in the woods, I don’t know why. Wind came up and blew me hat off.
Verna: And you chased it, right? You ran and ran, finally caught up to it and you picked it up. But it wasn’t a hat anymore and it changed into something else, something wonderful.
Tom: No, it stayed a hat and no, I didn’t chase it. Nothing more foolish than a man chasin’ his hat.
Verna: Maybe that’s why I like you, Tom. I’ve never met anyone who made being a son of a bitch such a point of pride.
Mnemosyne
@Pappy G:
I tend to fall on the side that says noir is a style, not a genre. That’s how you can have noir musicals like A Star is Born (the Judy Garland version) or Love Me or Leave Me and noir comedies like Unfaithfully Yours (the good Preston Sturges version, not the crap Dudley Moore remake).
ETA: Also, too, Forty Guns, a noir Western by Sam Fuller.
Citizen_X
More Nick Danger:
“Nick Danger walked down the street. Doggedly…”
“Arf!”
“…Ruthlessly…”
“I wonder where Ruth is?”
“Suddenly, he turned and walked into a red brick building.”
THUMP. “Ow, my nose!”
Mnemosyne
@SGEW:
One of our cats sat down and watched most of Miller’s Crossing with us.
We think she was waiting for the hat to return.
Lowkey
@Hawes: A thousand times yes!
HARRY: It’s like God took America by the East Coast and shook it, and all the normal girls managed to hang on.
Jim Kakalios
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I’ll take Ants in the Pants of 1933!
Trooptrap Tripetrope
This one is not from a film noire, but from the pen of Raymond Chandler, which for all intents and purposes is the same thing:
“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.”
Citizen_X
More The Killing, Sterling Hayden and the beatnik gunman:
“It’s not like you’re shooting a man. You’re shooting a horse. I don’t even know if that’s illegal. Worse thing they could probably get you for is inciting a riot.”
“Crazy, pops. But what’s your angle?”
“You know, fifty thousand dollars buys a lot. One of the things it buys is for you not to ask any questions.”
“Solid.”
Listening to Hayden’s rapid-fire delivery, you can see why Kubrick would pick him again, to be the deadpan-lunatic Gen. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove.
craigMC
Repo Man.
Bud: Goddamn-dipshit-Rodriguez-gypsy-dildo-punks. I’ll get your ass.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Jim Kakalios:
I prefer Ants In Your Pants of 1939, Sullivan’s entry in the franchise. Erich von Stroheim’s 1933 film is too dark for me.
Peter VE
(Paraphrased)
“See this face? Isn’t she beautiful?”
…
(smashes a bottle across the girls face)
“That’s what I do to someone I love. I don’t even like you.”
Marty Augustine to Marlowe in Altman’s “The Long Goodbye”
Gus
@Gregory: Another good Body Heat Exchange
Ned: Maybe you shouldn’t dress like that.
Matty: This is a blouse and a skirt. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Ned: You shouldn’t wear that body.
joel hanes
@Anton Sirius:
CATHERWOOD : Allow me to introduce myself. I am Nick Danger.
NICK : No, allow me to introduce myself, I am Nick Danger.
CATHERWOOD : If you’re so smart, why don’t you pick up your cues faster?
NICK : Are those my cues?
CATHERWOOD: Yes, and they should be dry by now; why don’t you pick them up out of the cellophane before they scorch?
All right, sah. May I take your hat and goat?
I assume you’ve come to see my mistress, Mr. Danger.
NICK: I don’t care about your private life, or what his name is. I’ve come to see Nance … uh, I mean, Mrs. Haber.
legion
@craigMC: Even though Ford and Scott both hated it, I always thought the voiceover at the beginning was awesome.
“Sushi. Cold fish. It’s what my ex-wife used to call me.”
Joel
“Sammy Jankis wrote himself endless notes. But he’d get mixed up. I’ve got a more graceful solution to the memory problem. I’m disciplined and organized. I use habit and routine to make my life possible. Sammy had no drive. No reason to make it work.”
RobNYNY1957
@mclaren:
“Improvised” is not quite right. He had delivered that line in other contexts. “Iterpolated” is more like it.
Hungry Joe
From Dashiell Hammett. His detective is in a bar in Tijuana:
“I was reading a sign high on the wall behind the bar:
ONLY GENUINE PRE-WAR AMERICAN AND BRITISH WHISKEYS SERVED HERE
I was trying to count how many lies could be found in those nine words, and had reached four, with promise of more.”
Pappy G
@Brachiator:
Oh, yeah, agreed. I was just trying to slip in a little Scalia snark in a thread that has nothing to do with SCOTUS. Ill-advised.
Speaking of DOA, I love Luther Adler as the heavy. Also his turn as Hitler in The Desert Fox. And though I haven’t seen it since it first came out in the mid 80’s, I remember enjoying the Dennis Quaid/Meg Ryan DOA remake.
utterdregs
“Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
Brachiator
Related. Vertigo Displaces Citizen Kane as The Greatest of All Tiiiiiime
Classic quote:
Scottie: I hope we will, too.
Madeleine: What?
Scottie: Meet again sometime.
Madeleine: We have.
ETA: story link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/aug/01/vertigo-hitchcock-bfi-greatest-film?newsfeed=true
Fort Geek
“The Untouchables”:
Ness is coming along the sidewalk in front of his home; Frank Nitti’s in a car across the street.
Nitti: Hey! Nice house! I said, nice house! Do you live there? Little girl’s havin’ a birthday, huh?
Ness: Yes.
Nitti: Nice to have a family.
Ness: Yes, it is.
Nitti: A man should take care, see that nothin’ happens to them.
Spike
@Pappy G: My favourite exchange from Casablanca:
Yvonne: Where were you last night?
Rick: That’s so long ago I don’t remember.
Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?
Rick: I never make plans that far ahead.
Don K
@BGinCHI:
Agreed. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt in his post-Third Rock learning how to act out of the public eye phase did some really good work.
JGabriel
Guardian via Brachiator:
Eventually, Renoir’s Le Regle Du Jeau (The Rules of the GAme) will top them both. Bet it’s in the top 5 anyway.
ETA: Ayup, it’s #4.
.
Jim Kakalios
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Well, I guess I’m just a purist. I think that only six years, from 1939 to 1933, is too soon to reboot the whole Ants in Your Pants series. Though Sullivan’s films can always be counted on to have a little sex.
Dan
“Sorry I got up on my hind legs, boys, but you fellas tryin’ to rope me made me nervous. Miles gettin’ bumped off upset me, and then you birds crackin’ foxy, but it’s all right now, now that I know what it’s all about.”
Bogart (obviously). Also from Maltese Falcon.
Don K
@joel hanes:
“Why she’s no fun, she fell right over.”
*****
“I think you’re bluffing, flatfoot.”
(sound of gun firing and woman falling onto floor)
“No, you weren’t bluffing.”
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
I like Le Regle Du Jeau very much.
But I love La Grande Illusion and Les enfants du paradis.
I also get a giggle over the idea that Jean Renoir is rightly considered one of the greatest filmmakers ever, and that he mastered a new medium and got out from under the possible shadow of his father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
And right on to Stanley the K, coming in at the six spot in the all time list with 2001: A Space Odyssey.
JGabriel
__
__
Brachiator:
Umm, hate to be the pedant, but I’m looking right at the Criterion edition of Les enfants du paradis on the shelf to my right, and it’s by Marcel Carné, not Renoir.
ETA:
Hey, don’t be skipping over Tokyo Monogatari. I fell in love with Setsuko Hara in the first 15-20 minutes of that film, even though she seemed like a side character at that point, and then she broke my heart at the end with The Monologue.
.
mellowjohn
just in case no one’s mentioned it: “Your not to bright, are you? I like that in a man.” –from Body Heat
James E. Powell
More from The Maltese Falcon:
When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something. It makes no difference what you thought of him. He was your partner, and you're supposed to do something about it . . . and it happens we're in the detective business.
Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be.
NotMax
Late to the thread, and cannot recall the name of the movie (may have had Dick Powell in it) but the back-and-forth from one scene always elicited a giggle. From memory, so not guaranteed to be verbatim.
Man #1: I don’t know. I still think he’s a dick.
Man #2: He used to be a dick. But he works for me now, so he’s no longer a dick.
Yes, I know that the word is slang for private detective. It’s still a funny interchange.
DrProcter
From the greatest no-budget, Sweaty Desperation Noir of all, “Detour” (starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage comes the line that DEFINES film noir, from the end…
“You never can tell when life or some mysterious force is going to put the finger on your for no good reason at all.”
Brachiator
@NotMax:
Not sure where that’s from. But it did bring to mine some dialog from Powell in Murder My Sweet.
Helen Grayle: I hadn’t supposed there were enough murders these days to make detecting very attractive to a young man.
Philip Marlowe: I stir up trouble on the side.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Impressive that Powell managed to successfully transition from warbling fresh-faced naif to hard-bitten gumshoe.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
Sloppy writing, not a mental slip. I did not mean to indicate at all that these two films were by the same director.
Tokyo Monogatari is another film that I admire and can acknowledge is great, but don’t esteem as highly as the work of Kurosawa or Hiroshi Ignagaki’s Samurai trilogy.
I would also have included Rainer Werner Fassbinder in the upper tier of directors, for Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Wait, crap, Krzysztof Kieślowski and his Three Colors films. Too many great directors.
cg
A little love for David Mammet’s Heist.
Bergman: Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.
Bergman: Don’t you want to hear my last words?
Joe Moore: I just did.
Pinky: Nice day for the race.
Thug: What race is that?
Pinky: The human race. Kids growing up, so on. Hope for the future.
Thug: Get in the fucking car!
joel hanes
@Don K:
she’s no fun, she fell right over
Wait a minute!
Didn’t I say that on the other side of the record ?
I’d better check.
[ !thgir ruoy no sdneirf on tog t’nia uoY ]
It’s OK — they’re speaking Chinese.
mcfrank
Camp Noir: [Mae West/Cary Grant/She Done Him Wrong]
[Captain Cummings approaches Lou with a pair of handcuffs]
Lady Lou: Those absolutely necessary? You know I wasn’t born with them.
Captain Cummings: No. A lot of men would’ve been safer if you had.
Lady Lou: Oh, I don’t know – hands ain’t everything.
Mornington Crescent
“He had a face like the back of a hairbrush.”
From “Deadline at Dawn”, screenplay by Clifford Odets.
Don K
@joel hanes:
“Do you have a key?”
“No, only half a key, I had to split it with the sound effects man.”
(in distnance) “Thanks, Rocky!”
And thanks, Joel, for the return to those thrilling days of yesteryear…
peorgietirebiter
@Citizen_X:
“There was only one joker in this town sensitive enough ti wear that scent and I had to find out who he was.”. Nick Danger
“I like being a private eye, even if I do get my gums massaged with tire iron every once and awhile, the sweet smell of greenbacks makes it all worth it.” Kaiser Lischitz in Woody Allen’s Looking For Mr. Big
smintheus
Murder, My Sweet:
marv
From Treasure of the Sierra Madre (noirish at least): They give us tobacco and we give them tobacco. I don’t get it. Why not everybody smoke their own?
Jess
Another great line from Brick (Gordon-Levitt):
“I gave you Jerr to see him eaten, not to see you fed.”
joel hanes
@Don K:
NICK: You know how it is, Bradshaw:
“The great prince founds states, vests fiefs;
inferior people should not be employed”
SERGEANTLIEUTENANT BRADSHAW:I don’t know how you do it, Nick;
but I still say you put me through too many changes.
DaddyJ
Eve Kendall in North by Northwest notices Roger Thornhill’s monogrammed matchbook, which spells “ROT.”
Eve: What’s the “O” stand for?
Roger: Nothing!
Tehanu
@joel hanes:
And there she stood. All those curves, hidden beneath that flimsy burnoose.
Chet
Ray Milland’s Don Birnam, in Wilder’s The Lost Weekend:
“It shrinks my liver, doesn’t it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys, yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, I’m above the ordinary. I’m confident, supremely confident. I’m walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I’m one of the great ones. I’m Michelangelo molding the beard of Moses. I’m Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I’m Horowitz playing the Emperor Concerto. I’m John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I’m Jesse James and his two brothers, all three of ’em. I’m W. Shakespeare. And out there, it’s not Third Avenue any longer? It’s the Nile, Nat, the Nile, and down it floats the barge of Cleopatra.”
joel hanes
@Tehanu:
Who are you talking to, and how do you make your voice do that ?