 |
 Greatest
Opening Film Lines and Quotes  1950s - 1960s |
(chronological, by film title) 1920s-1940s | 1950s-1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s Return to Entire Quotes Index |
1950s - 1960s |
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| (voice-over) "This is the story of a land, of the people who lived on it in the year 1870, and of a man whose name was Cochise. He was an Indian - leader of the Chiricahua Apache tribe. I was involved in the story and what I have to tell happened exactly as you'll see it - the only change will be that when the Apaches speak, they will speak in our language. What took place is part of the history of Arizona and it began for me here where you see me riding. Since getting out of the Union Army, I'd been prospectin' for gold off and on. One day, I got a message that a new Colonel (that) had come to Tucson wanted to see me. The story started when I saw buzzards circlin' in the sky. The buzzard's a smart bird. Something or somebody, was getting ready to die. I figured it was a hurt deer or a rabbit or a snake. Not a rabbit, not a deer. His kind was more dangerous than a snake. He was an Apache. For ten years, we'd been on a savage war with his people - a bloody, no-give, no-take war." | |
(voice-over) (sirens) "Yes, this
is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It's about five o'clock
in the morning. That's the Homicide Squad - complete with detectives
and newspapermen. A murder has been reported from one of those great
big houses in the ten thousand block. You'll read about it in the
late editions, I'm sure. You'll get it over your radio and see it
on television because an old-time star is involved - one of the biggest.
But before you hear it all distorted and blown out of proportion,
before those Hollywood columnists get their hands on it, maybe you'd
like to hear the facts, the whole truth. If so, you've come to the
right party. You see, the body of a young man was found floating
in the pool of her mansion - with two shots in his back and one in
his stomach. Nobody important, really. Just a movie writer with a
couple of 'B' pictures to his credit. The poor dope! He always wanted
a pool. Well, in the end, he got himself a pool - only the price turned
out to be a little high. Let's go back about six months and find
the day when it all started." |
|
| (narrator voice-over): "Of all the questions left unanswered by the last war and probably any war, one comes back constantly to my mind - Why does a spy risk his life, for what possible reasons? If the spy wins, he's ignored. lf he loses, he's shot. But a man stays alive as long as he's remembered and is killed only by forgetfulness. Let the names of men like this remain unknown, but let the memories of some of them serve as keys to the meanings of treason." | |
(voice-over) (pounding drums) "This
is the Appian Way. The most famous road that leads to Rome, as all
roads lead to Rome. On this road march her conquering legions. Imperial
Rome is the center of the empire, an undisputed master of the world.
But with this power inevitably comes corruption. No man is sure of
his life, the individual is at the mercy of the state, murder replaces
justice. Rulers of conquered nations surrender their helpless subjects
to bondage. High and low alike become Roman slaves, Roman hostages.
There is no escape from the whip and the sword. That any force on
earth can shake the foundations of this pyramid of power and corruption,
of human misery and slavery, seems inconceivable. But thirty years before
this day, a miracle occurred. On a Roman cross in Judea, a man died to
make men free, to spread the Gospel of love and redemption. Soon that humble
cross is destined to replace the proud eagles that now top the victorious
Roman standards. This is the story of that immortal conflict. In this,
the early summer in the year 64 A.D., in the reign of the Antichrist known
to history as the emperor Nero, the victorious fourteenth legion
is on its way back to Rome under the command of one Marcus Vinicius." |
|
- "Excuse me." |
|
"Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are in luck today here
in Los Angeles. Through the years, the Bullwinkle Galleries have brought
up for auction many collections of the personal effects of your famous
movie stars. But today is indeed a red-letter day. The personal effects
of Tony Hunter! Lot 94. Ladies and gentlemen, let's start out with
Lot 94. Some of the potpourri of Mr. Hunter's own personal costumes
that he used in his famous dancing-singing pictures. Remember this?
Perhaps the most famous top hat and stick of our generation. Yes, the
one he used in Swinging
Down to Panama and all his other famous pictures. Let's start with
$5. Do I hear $5? It's worth a lot more. All right. Let's start with
$2. Well? 50 cents? Anything?" |
|
- "Somebody's comin', Pa." |
|
(voice-over) (snare drums) "I don't
know about you, but it always makes me sore when I see those war
pictures. All about flying leathernecks and submarine patrols and
frogmen and guerrillas in the Philippines. What gets me is that there
never was a movie about POWs - about prisoners of war. Now, my name
is Clarence Harvey Cook: they call me Cookie. I was shot down over
Magdeburg, Germany, back in '43. That's why I stammer a little once
in a while, 'specially when I get excited. I spent two and a half
years in Stalag 17. 'Stalag' is the German word for prison camp,
and number 17 was somewhere on the Danube. There were about 40,000
POWs there, if you bothered to count the Russians, and the Poles,
and the Czechs. In our compound, there were about 630 of us, all
American airmen: radio operators, gunners, and engineers. All sergeants.
Now you put 630 sergeants together and, oh mother, you've got yourself
a situation. There was more fireworks shooting off around that joint.
Take for instance the story about the spy we had in our barracks.
It was about a week before Christmas in '44 and two of our guys,
Manfredi and Johnson to be exact - were just getting set to blow
the place..." |
|
| (voice-over) "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void. This is the planet Earth, newly born and and cooling rapidly from a temperature of 6,000 degrees to a few hundred in less than 5 billion years. Heat rises, meets the atmosphere, the clouds form, and rain pours down upon the hardening surface for countless centuries. The restless seas rise, find boundaries, are contained. Now, in their warm depths, the miracle of life begins. In infinite variety, living things appear, and change, and reach the land, leaving a record of their coming, of their struggle to survive, and of their eventual end. The record of life is written on the land, where 15 million years later, in the upper reaches of the Amazon, man is still trying to read it." | |
- "Now you take it from here, slugger." |
|
| (voice-over) "How shall I begin my story that has no beginning? In these arroyos, my great grandfather raised cattle before the Anglos ever came. Our roots go deep in this place, deeper than the pines, deeper than the mine shafts. This is my village. When I was a child, it was called San Marcos. The Anglos changed the name to Zinc Town. Zinc Town, New Mexico, U.S.A. This is our home. The house is not ours. But the flowers, the flowers are ours. My name is Esperanza, Esperanza Quintero. I am a miner's wife. Eighteen years my husband has given to that mine, living half his life with dynamite and darkness. The land where the mine now stands - that was owned by my husband's own grandfather. Now it belongs to the company. Who can say when it began, my story? I do not know. But this day I remember as the beginning of an end. It was my Saint's Day. I was thirty-five years old. A day of celebration. And I was seven months gone with my third child. And on that day, I remember I had a wish, a thought so sinful, a thought so evil that I prayed to the Virgin to forgive me for it. I wished, I wished that my child would never be born. No. Not into this world." | |
- "Gelsomina!....Gelsomina! Mother says to
come home right away. There's a man here. He came on a big motorcycle.
He says Rosa is dead." |
|
(voice-over) "The island of Manhattan derives its
name from its earliest inhabitants - the Manhattan Indians. They
were a peaceful tribe, setting traps, fishing, hunting. And there
was a custom among them. Every July, when the heat and the humidity
on the island became unbearable, they would send their wives and
children away for the summer, up the river to the cooler highlands,
or, if they could afford it, to the seashore. The husbands, of course,
would remain behind on the steaming island to attend to business
- setting traps, fishing, and hunting. [As
soon as the Indian squaws were out of sight, the Indian chiefs followed
an attractive Indian squaw.] Actually, our
story has nothing whatsoever to do with Indians. It plays 500 years
later...We only brought up the subject to show you that in all that
time, nothing has changed. Manhattan husbands still send their wives
and kids away for the summer, and they still remain behind in the steaming
city to attend to business, setting traps, fishing, and hunting. Now
we want you to meet a typical Manhattan husband whose family is leaving
for the summer..." |
|
(added prologue) |
|
(voice-over) "Call me Ishmael. Some
years ago, having little or no money, I thought I would sail about
and see the oceans of the world. Whenever I get grim and spleenful,
whenever I feel like knocking people's hats off in the street, whenever
it's a damp, drizzly November in my soul, I know that it's high time
to get to sea again. Choose any path you please and ten to one, it
carries you down to water. There's a magic in water that draws all
men away from the land, leads them over the hills, down creeks, and
streams and rivers to the sea. The sea - where each man, as in a mirror,
finds himself. And so it was I duly arrived at the town of New Bedford
on a stormy Saturday late in the year 1841." |
|
(opening scrolling text) "You are about to land
in a lonely zone of terror.. on an uncharted atoll in the Pacific!
You are part of The Second Scientific Expedition dispatched to this
mysterious bit of Coral reef and volcanic rock. The first group has
disappeared without a trace! Your job is to find out why! There have
been rumors about this strange atoll.. frightening rumors about
happenings way out beyond the laws of nature.." |
|
- "Who are you?" |
|
(Narrator): "This is a true story.
How often have you seen that statement at the beginning of a picture?
It sometimes means that there was a man named Napoleon, but that any
similarity between what he did in life and what he's going to do in
this movie is strictly miraculous. Well, this is a true story,
about a sweet, rather baffled young housewife who, in 1951 in her hometown
in Georgia, suddenly frightened her husband by behaving very unlike
herself. Well, there's nothing unique in that. We all have moods. We
all have a secret yen to behave like somebody we particularly admire.
In fact, a modern writer has said that inside every fat man, a thin
man is struggling to get out. Well, in a literal and terrifying sense,
inside this demure young woman, two very vivid and different personalities
were battling for the mastery of her character. She was, in fact, a
case of what is called 'multiple personality', something that all psychiatrists
have read about and very few have ever seen. Certainly not Dr. Thigpen
and Dr. Cleckley, of the Medical College of Georgia, who one day were
confronted with a woman who had one personality more than Dr. Jekyll.
Now, their account of the case was delivered to the American Psychiatric
Association in 1953 and it's already a classic of psychiatric literature.
So this movie needed no help from the imagination of a fiction writer.
The truth itself was fabulous enough. And all the episodes you're going
to see happened to this girl whom they call Eve White, and much of
the dialogue is taken from the clinical record of the doctor that we
call Dr. Luther. The date is August the 20th, 1951..." |
|
(voice-over narration) "Great scientific advances
are oftentimes sudden accomplished facts before most of us are even
dimly aware of them. Breathtakingly unexpected, for example, was
the searing flash that announced the Atomic Age. Equally unexpected
was the next gigantic stride when Man moved out of his very orbit
to a point more than 20 million miles to Earth." |
|
| "Bonjour, monsieur. Bonjour, madame and company. Good afternoon. As you see, this lovely city all around us is Paris. And this lovely park is, of course, the Bois de Boulogne. Pardon me. Who am l? Well, allow me to introduce myself. l am Honor Lachaille. Born: Paris. Date: Not lately. This is 1900 so let's just say not in this century. Circumstances: Comfortable. Profession: Lover and collector of beautiful things. Not antiques, mind you. Younger things. Yes, definitely younger. Married? What for? Now, please don't misunderstand. Like everywhere else, most people in Paris get married. But not all. There are some who will not marry and some who do not marry. But here in Paris, those who will not are usually men and those who do not are usually women." | |
- "Even if you accept the belief that a high
Trendex automatically means a rising sales curve which incidentally... " |
|
"Greetings, my friend! We are
all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going
to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events
such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in
the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable; that is why you are
here. And now for the first time we are bringing to you the full story
of what happened on that faithful day. We are giving you all the evidence,
based only on the secret testimonies of the miserable souls who survived
this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places, my friend, we can
not keep this a secret any longer; let us punish the guilty, let us
reward the innocent. My friend, can your heart stand the shocking
facts about the grave robbers from outer space?" |
|
(title card) "Chicago, 1929" |
|
"I am William Castle, the director of the motion
picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some
of the sensations, some of the physical reactions which the actors on
the screen will feel, will also be experienced for the first time in
motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say 'certain
members' because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic
impulses than others. These, uh, unfortunate, sensitive people will at
times feel a strange, tingling sensation. Others will feel it less strongly.
But don't be alarmed - you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious
of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming.
Don't be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all
you've got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably
be screaming too. And remember this - a scream at the right time may
save your life." |
|
| (voice-over) "On November 1st, 1959, the population
of New York City was 8,042,783. If you laid all these people end to end,
figuring an average height of five feet six and a half inches, they would
reach from Times Square to the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan. I know
facts like this because I work for an insurance company - Consolidated
Life of New York. We're one of the top five companies in the country.
Our home office has 31,259 employees - which is more than the entire
population of, uh, Natchez, Mississippi. I work on the 19th floor - Ordinary
Policy Department - Premium Accounting Division - Section W - desk number
861. My name is C. C. Baxter - C. for Calvin, C. for Clifford,
however most people call me Bud. I've been with Consolidated for three
years and ten months and my take-home pay is $94.70 a week. The hours
in our department are 8:50 to 5:20. (Closing bell rings) They're
staggered by floors, so that sixteen elevators can handle the 31,259
employees without a serious traffic jam. As for myself, I very often
stay on at the office and work for an extra hour or two, especially
when the weather is bad. It's not that I'm overly ambitious, it's just
a, a way of killing time until it's all right for me to go home. You
see, I have this little problem with my apartment. I live in the West
60s, just half a block from Central Park. My rent is $85 dollars a
month. It used to be $80 until last July when Mrs. Lieberman, the landlady,
put in a second-hand air conditioning unit. It's a real nice apartment
- nothing fancy - but kind of cozy - just right for a bachelor. The
only problem is - I can't always get in when I want to." Play clip (excerpt):  |
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| (voice-over) "After all, I'm an asshole." | |
- "It'll be two quid. Shut the door." |
|
- "You never did eat your lunch,
did you?" |
|
| - "Hey! Hey, baby. What's going on here?" |
|
(voice-over) "On Sunday, August 13th, 1961,
the eyes of America were on the nation's capital, where Roger Maris
was hitting home runs # 44 and 45 against the Senators. On that same
day, without any warning, the East German Communists sealed off the
border between East and West Berlin. I only mention this to show
the kind of people we're dealing with - REAL SHIFTY! Having been
stationed in Berlin and having dealt with them, I know what I'm
talking about. Let's go back to last June. Considering the abnormal
situation of a divided city, life in Berlin was more or less normal.
Traffic flowed freely through the Brandenburg Gate and it wasn't
really too much trouble to pass from one side of the Iron Curtain
to the other. Some of the East German police were rude and suspicious,
others were suspicious and rude. The eastern sector under Communist
domination was still in rubble but the people went about their daily
business, parading...These constant provocations failed to provoke
the West Berliners. They were too busy rebuilding. The western sector,
under Allied protection, was peaceful, prosperous and enjoyed
all the blessings of democracy. Just by coincidence, this happens
to be the company [Coca-Cola] I work for." |
|
"Watch this
shot now. Hey. Shoot, man. Go. Hey, yeah." |
|
- "He was the most extraordinary
man I ever knew." |
|
(voice-over) "Maycomb was a tired old town,
even in 1932 when I first knew it. Somehow, it was hotter then. Men's
stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before
noon after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft
teacakes with frostin's of sweat and sweet talcum. The day
was 24 hours long, but it seemed longer. There was no hurry,
for there was nowhere to go and nothin' to buy...and no money to
buy it with. Although Maycomb County had recently been told that
it had nothin' to fear but fear itself. That summer, I was six years
old." |
|
| (voice-over) "Want to see it again, little girl? It shouldn't frighten you." | |
- "Oh, la!" |
|
(voice-over) "An evil old house, the kind some
people call haunted, is like an undiscovered country waiting to be
explored. Hill House had stood for 90 years and might stand for 90
more. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House,
and whatever walked there, walked alone..." |
|
- "My car's thirsty. Can I please have some
water?" |
|
(title card) Once upon a time |
|
- "Excuse me, sir...My name's Barrett, sir." |
|
(scrolling title card) "It is the stated position of
the U.S. Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence
of such events as are depicted in this film. Furthermore, it should
be noted that none of the characters portrayed in this film are meant
to represent any real persons living or dead." |
|
| "This house, this plantation, this whole damned parish belonged to my family before your people stepped aboard the stinkin' cattle boats that brought 'em to this country. Don't you dare talk back to me, boy! My family's seen this state crawlin' with lousy carpetbaggers that knew more about behavin' like a gentleman than you do! I can't even look at Charlotte without ugly thoughts rip my guts. I'd sooner it had been one of my field boys. I could have killed him. Do you know what it's costin' me not to kill you? My daughter and Jewel Mayhew's husband. You gutless, soft, sucklin' swine! My daddy sat out there on that veranda, and let the whole place slide to dust. When he died, there was nothin' but debts and dirt. I touched that dirt and made it blossom. I fought to keep this house and to bring it back up. I don't have a son to give it to. Only Charlotte. And she ain't gonna give it to you. You ain't gonna have my home or my child. I created both and I'm gonna keep 'em. I ain't watched over my girl all these years to have some, to have some, to have some creature like you take her away." | |
(voice over) "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in
a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains: sex.
Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled.
Yet violence doesn’t only destroy – it creates and molds
as well… Let’s examine closely, then, this dangerously
evil creation, this new breed, encased and contained within the
supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable
smell of female. The surface shiny and silken. The body yielding
yet wanton. But a word of caution – handle with care and don’t
drop your guard! This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in
packs, operating at any level! Any time! Anywhere and with any body!
Who are they? One might be your secretary! Your doctor’s receptionist!
Or a dancer in a go-go club!" |
|
(sung) "The hills are alive, With the sound
of music / With songs they have sung for a thousand years / The
hills fill my heart with the sound of music / My heart wants to
sing every song it hears." |
|
(voice-over) "This is a story of long, long
ago, when the world was just beginning... A young world, a world
early in the morning of time. A hard, unfriendly world. Creatures
who sit and wait. Creatures who must kill to live. And man, superior
to the creatures only in his cunning. There are not many men yet.
Just a few tribes scattered across the wilderness. Never venturing
far, unaware that other tribes exist even. Too busy with their own
lives to be curious. Too frightened of the unknown to wander. Their
laws are simple: the strong take everything. This is Akhoba, leader
of the Rock Tribe... " |
|
- "Hey boy. What you doin' with my Mama's car?
Wait there! Ain't you ashamed? You're tryin' to steal an
ol' lady's automobile." |
|
"Hello, gorgeous." |
|
- "Please, sir, I want some more." |
|
- "Here you are, sir. Main Level, please." |
|
"Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou,
nor thy sons with thee, least ye shall die. Look not though upon
the wine when it is red, and when it bringeth his color in the cup,
when it moveth itself aright. At the last, it biteth like a serpent
and stingeth like an adder. Now, folks... that's from the Good Book,
but in this here town, it's five cents a glass. Five cents a glass.
Does anyone really think that that is the price of a drink? The price
of a drink. Let him decide who has lost his courage and his pride
who lies a groveling heap of clay not far removed...." |
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