Wednesday, February 04, 2009

The Great Liberal England Movie Dialogue Quiz

Stephen Glenn has a movie quote game on his blog that I thought I would emulate. He explains the rules:

Pick 20 of your favourite movies.

Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.

Post them in a note for everyone to guess.

NO GOOGLING/using IMDB search functions.

So here are my 20 quotations. Please leave your answers as a comment.

I shall fill in the answers as they are guessed. It may help you to bear in my mind that, thanks to my taste in films, not many of these are terribly recent.

The winner gets tea at Bonkers Hall (terms and conditions apply).

Film 1
I was sorry about the girl, but found some relief in the reflection that she had presumably during the weekend already undergone a fate worse than death.
Kind Hearts and Coronets

Film 2
What are we going to do with this one, Frank?
Once Upon a Time in the West

Film 3
Poor Baines. He did want it so badly. When she comes back, I'll ask her for my freedom, too.
The Fallen Idol

Film 4
There are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road, and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers. The same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing, as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend in the road, where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head, to see them on the road behind me.
A Canterbury Tale

Film 5
The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness. Am I right? Eh?
Performance

Film 6
What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it! Give me those pictures. You can't photograph people like that.
Blowup

Film 7
Vindaloo. Evil. It's a beast of a curry, yea, it's a real wicked bitch. Pilau rice, sweet rice, yellow rice. Rice is rice, and forever more shall be so. Potatoes with cabbage. Bombay sag potatoes. Have you ever had 'em? Beautiful. I promise you.
Last Resort

Film 8
She takes care of my mum. She used to take care of me and my sister Susie, until Susie was killed.
The Nanny

Film 9
But you're my personal bodyguard and champion gladiator, I don't want to die! I may not be a very good live emperor but I'd be a worse one dead!
Carry On Cleo

Film 10
Call me Dutch.
The Lavender Hill Mob

Film 11
What? You think this is the wheel of fortune? You think you can make your dough and fuck off? Leave the table? Thanks Don, see you Don, off to sunny Spain now Don, fuck off Don. Lying in your pool like a fat blob laughing at me, you think I'm gonna have that? You really think I'm gonna have that, ya ponce? All right, I'll make it easy for you. God knows you're fucking trying. Are you gonna do the job? It's not a difficult question, are you gonna do the job, yes or no?
Sexy Beast

Film 12
Position - nil, repeat nil. Age - 27, 27, did you get that? Very important. Education - interrupted, violently interrupted. Religion - Church of England. Politics - Conservative by nature, Labour by experience. What's your name?
A Matter of Life and Death

Film 13
People around here are very poor I suppose.

Not poor, they just haven't got money.

It's the same thing.

Oh no, it's something quite different.
I Know Where I'm Going

Film 14
You know, I was so surprised when I heard what you were playing. It brought back something that, really, I'd completely forgotten all about: my 21st birthday party. You see, my father had engaged a string quintet to come in and play in the evening; and while they were playing Boccherini, someone came in and said the old queen had passed away. And everyone went home. And that was the end of my party, all that time ago, in Pembroke.
The Ladykillers

Film 15
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.
The Third Man

Film 16
Ye can't feed a dog on the dole, and ye can't feed a family either.
Lassie Come Home

Film 17
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Think when we talk of horses that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who, prologue-like, your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with His Battell Fought at Agincourt in France

Film 18
There's no living with a killing. There's no goin' back from one. Right or wrong, it's a brand... a brand sticks. There's no goin' back. Now you run on home to your mother and tell her... tell her everything's alright. And there aren't any more guns in the valley.
Shane

Film 19
Do you think that we Hollanders who threw the sea out of our country will let the Germans have it? Better the sea.
One of Our Aircraft is Missing

Film 20
Why does there have to be evil?

I think it has something to do with free will.
Time Bandits

34 comments:

HE Elsom said...

Do you want answers in the comments?

1 Kind Hearts and Coronets (collateral damage from one of the murders)

4 A Canterbury Tale

10 Knut Rockne All American (a guess, spoken by Ronald Reagan)

12 A Matter of Life and Death (Peter describing himself to June over the radio)

15 The Third Man (Harry Lime at the top of the Ferris wheel)

16 Henry V (not sure if it matters whether it's Olivier or Branagh)

Alex Wilcock said...

Ah, knowing your Powell and Pressburgerness I'd have guessed A Canterbury Tale, though it's one of there's that I've not seen... I *did* know three of Helen's, though.

9 is, of course, Carry On Cleo, (stopping, I think, just prior to the famous nicked bit).

20 is Time Bandits (he is the nice one).

It's a wild guess as I've not seen the film for ages, but is 7 Withnail and I? The vocal rhythms feel like they could be Mr Camberwell Carrot (whatever his name is).


Just for fun, I did a quick troll for two of mine that neither you nor Stephen picked:

"Do you like gin? It is my only weakness."
"Here, have a cigar... they're my only weakness!"

From the same character in the same movie, of course. And from another of my favourites, but by way of a clue:

"Yeah, I used to go out with his sister."
"His sister?"
"Yeah, Phyllis."

Jonathan Calder said...

Helen: All correct except no. 10 (though I have seen it).

Alex: Two more correct, but it is not Withnail.

HE Elsom said...

Ooh, is 19 One of Our Aircraft is Missing?

Alex Wilcock said...

I thought it was unlikely, but worth a shot.

And I notice I've managed to use the wrong "theirs". The shame! That'll teach me to post after my bedtime.

I was looking for one from Went the Day Well, but none of them feel like it... Though with the general 1940s atmosphere, I automatically assumed that Henry V was Olivier's.

Jonathan Calder said...

19 is!

Alex: I am not sure that

"Do you know what 'morale' is?"

"Yeah, it's somefing what the Wops ain't got."

would have gone down well with my readers. So Went the Day Well does not feature in the quiz.

Andy Strange said...

11 is Sexy Beast

Not sure, but the line about "the old queen" rings a bell. Is 14 Brief Encounter?

Stephen Glenn said...

Isn't 10 "Call me Dutch" what the charecter Henry Holland says in the Lavender Hill Mob

And 14 is the Ladykillers

Jonathan Calder said...

Three more correct identifications, gentlemen.

David said...

Film 13 "I know where I'm going"
(Wish I did)
The others I knew have been identified already.

Unknown said...

Number 18 is Shane

Jonathan Calder said...

Two more correct. Thanks.

Unconventional Wisdom said...

Film 3: The Fallen Idol

Unconventional Wisdom said...

Film 6: The Knack

Jonathan Calder said...

Yes and no.

Unconventional Wisdom said...

A second crack at elusive Film 6:
Blow Up

Jonathan Calder said...

Correct! We are in the home straight now.

HE Elsom said...

All guesses:

5 Performance (never seen it but I can imagine whichever Fox it was saying it) or The Hands of Orlac, or a title from Phantom of the Opera
6 Agreed about Blow Up as a guess, though I don't remember anybody saying anything that substantive in it.
7 Trainspotting (Withnail was my first guess as well, as it's rather similar to Withnail's tearoom discourse)

Talking of tearooms, my very favourite bit in A Canterbury Tale is the exchange between the GIs in the tearoom, where one says he hates tea, the other says "it's not marijuana", the first says that he'd prefer marijuana and the second says "you'll have tea and like it!". I've never remembered to write it down accurately to put it in the IMDB.

Jonathan Calder said...

Performance is correct. In fact Mick Jagger says it to James Fox (he's the brother who can act).

Fox plays an East End gangster with total conviction. It is an amazing performance.

I am surprised no one has got 2 yet and 16 could be guessed. I admit the other two are hard.

Unconventional Wisdom said...

16: Love on the Dole

Jonathan Calder said...

No. Try concentrating on another word in the quotation.

Unconventional Wisdom said...

The Family Way

Jonathan Calder said...

Wrong word!

HE Elsom said...

I know I've seen 2 and am pretty sure that "it" is a corpse in addition to the expected one. My first thought was The Ladykillers at the start of the final sequence of murders, but that's already taken. So it's something with a similar Girardian theme. "Frank" must be a clue, and rules out Kill Bill or the Korean trilogy. Reservoir Dogs or one of the comedy segments in Once Upon a Time in America?

Jonathan Calder said...

One word out!

Jonathan Calder said...

Well two, actually.

HE Elsom said...

Ah, Once Upon a Time in the West. All I remember about that is Claudia Cardinale having tantrums, Jason Robards playing the harmonica and sending the wrong signals if you've seen High Noon, and Henry Fonda's eyes (stunning).

Jonathan Calder said...

That's it! It's a wonderful film.

HE Elsom said...

7 is either underworld/underclass themed or food themed. The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover covers both but again I can't remember much about it except the dreadful light, and I'm not sure that curry would have been on that sort of menu in the 1980s.

Jonathan Calder said...

7. Spoken by Paddy Considine and filmed in Margate, if that helps.

8. "She" is played by Bette Davis (and it's a British film)

16. We have established that the key word is not "dole" or "family".

Unconventional Wisdom said...

8. The Nanny

Jonathan Calder said...

Well done.

"Time for your bath, Master Joey."

HE Elsom said...

16 is about feeding dogs? I'm tempted to say Jezebel, but that might just be interference from Bette Davis. What's the canine equivalent of Kes?

Jonathan Calder said...

That's the idea, though it has a happier ending.

7. Could be an unflattering description of Margate.