Dir: Mary Harron • Scr: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner • Based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis • Cast: Christian Bale (Patrick Bateman)
2005 THE DEVIL’S REJECTS
A murderous kidnapper confronts his victims.
DRIFTWOOD
I am the devil, and I am here to do the devil’s work.
Dir: Rob Zombie • Scr: Rob Zombie • Cast: Bill Moseley (Otis B. Driftwood)
2006 THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA
The haughty, impatient editor of a fashion magazine upbraids her assistant.
MIRANDA
Details of your incompetence do not interest me. Tell Simone I’m not going to approve that girl that she sent me for the Brazilian layout. I asked for clean, athletic, smiling. She sent me dirty, tired and paunchy. And RSVP ‘yes’ to Michael Kors’ party - I want the driver to drop me off at 9:30 and pick me up at 9:45 sharp. Call Natalie at Glorious Foods and tell her no for the fortieth time. No! I don’t want dacquoise, I want tortes filled with warm rhubarb compote. Then call my ex-husband and remind him that the parent—teacher conference is at Dalton tonight. Then call my husband, ask him to meet me for dinner at that place I went to with Massimo. Tell Richard I saw the pictures that he sent for that feature on the female paratroopers and they’re all so deeply unattractive. Is it impossible to find a lovely, slender, female paratrooper? Am I reaching for the stars here? Not really. Also, I need to see all the things that Nigel has pulled for Gwyneth’s second cover try. I wonder if she’s lost any of that weight yet.
Dir: David Frankel • Scr: Aline Brosh McKenna • Based on a novel by Lauren Weisberger • Cast: Meryl Streep (Miranda Priestly)
The character of Miranda in the book is widely held to be a portrait of Anna ‘Nuclear’ Wintour, editor of the New York edition of Vogue. It was also reported that Wintour told fashion designers who had been approached to play cameo roles that if they accepted, their collections would never again appear in her publication. Despite being a portrait of the fashion world, the film is rarely mentioned in the magazine.
2007 NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
Anton Chigurh, a hired killer, stops at a gas station but realizes the owner may be able to identify him.
CHIGURH
How much?
He points to a bag of nuts.
PROPRIETOR
Sixty-nine cents.
CHIGURH
This. And the gas.
PROPRIETOR
Y’all getting any rain up your way?
CHIGURH
What way would that be?
PROPRIETOR
I seen you was from Dallas.
CHIGURH
What business is it of yours where I’m from, friendo?
PROPRIETOR
I didn’t mean nothing by it.
CHIGURH
Didn’t mean nothing.
PROPRIETOR
I was just passing the time. If you don’t wanna accept that, I don’t know what else to do for you. Will there be something else?
CHIGURH
I don’t know. Will there?
PROPRIETOR
Is something wrong?
CHIGURH
With what?
PROPRIETOR
With anything?
CHIGURH
Is that what you’re asking me? Is there something wrong with anything?
The proprietor sounds afraid.
PROPRIETOR
Will there be anything else?
CHIGURH
You already asked me that.
PROPRIETOR
Well. . . I need to see about closing.
CHIGURH
See about closing.
PROPRIETOR
Yessir.
CHIGURH
What time do you close?
PROPRIETOR
Now. We close now.
CHIGURH
Now is not a time. What time do you close?
Dir: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen • Scr: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen • Based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy • Cast: Javier Bardem (Anton Chigurh), Gene Jones (Proprietor)
Directors Joel and Ethan Coen based Chigurh’s bizarre hairdo on a 1979 photograph they found of a man visiting a brothel. When the normally suave Javier Bardem saw the results of the styling, he complained to the Coens: ‘Now I won’t get laid for the next two months.’ The brothers just high-fived each other.
2008 THE DARK KNIGHT
Alfred warns Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) not to query their adversary’s motives.
ALFRED
Some men just want to watch the world burn.
Dir: Christopher Nolan • Scr: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan • Cast: Michael Caine (Alfred Pennyworth)
When Heath Ledger, playing the Joker, first appeared in a scene with Michael Caine, his performance was so frightening that Caine forgot his lines.
2010 SHUTTER ISLAND
Two US Marshals investigate a murder in a mental hospital on a remote island.
TEDDY
You know, this place makes me wonder.
CHUCK
Yeah, what’s that, boss?
TEDDY
Which would be worse — to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?
Dir: Martin Scorsese • Scr: Laeta Kalogridis • Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane • Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Teddy Daniels), Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule)
De Niro’s career has provided stand-out performances and awards in equal measure: here he plays the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Terry Jones as Simon the Holy Man attempts to save wardrobe costs in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979).
Orson Welles and his groundbreaking cinematographer Gregg Toland on the set of Citizen Kane (1941).
Power
1941 CITIZEN KANE
Kane admits the newspaper he owns is an expensive folly.
KANE
You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in. . . sixty years.
Dir: Orson Welles • Scr: Herman J. Mankiewicz, Orson Welles • Cast: Orson Welles (Charles Foster Kane)
Citizen Kane topped Sight and Sound magazine’s poll as best film for over fifty years from 1962 to 2012, but was so unpopular on its release that at the 1941 Oscars it was booed every time one of its nine nominations was announced.
YOUR ONLY COMPETITION IS IDIOTS
Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897–1953) was one of cinema’s most talented writers, responsible for seventy-eight films including Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful World and The Pride of St Louis. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles, he cabled his journalist friend Ben Hecht (Scarface, Notorious, Wuthering Heights): ‘Will you accept $300 per week to work for Paramount? All expenses paid. $300 is peanuts. Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.’
Writers have always had a conflicted relationship with film; for many, it feels like a choice between money and integrity. Many start out as acclaimed playwrights, novelists or journalists and resent the fact that in the world of screenplays their freedom diminishes in inverse proportion to the size of their pay cheque. As Harry Zimm says in Get Shorty (1995): ‘I once asked this literary agent what kind of writing paid the best. He said, “Ransom notes”.’
Mankiewicz probably didn’t spend much time pondering this dilemma, since within a month of beginning his new career he was earning $400 [$5,000] a week. Hecht was similarly rewarded, with the additional advantage that he turned in his work with startling speed; he delivered Scarface (1932) in nine days.
At the time this new breed of writer was arriving on the West Coast the industry was still in upheaval following the advent of sound and it was the perfect opportunity to transform film from a medium of mute spectacle into a more sophisticated art form. Mankiewicz already had a reputation as the cleverest, funniest man in N
ew York – Hecht famously described him as ‘the Central Park West Voltaire’ – and his style was perfectly suited to giving audiences the blend of fast-paced, intelligent and gritty humour we now associate with that era.
Perhaps the one aspect of cinema that didn’t change once sound had become universally accepted was its hierarchy of talent. In the theatre, a successful playwright will have a higher billing than the director: the work is essentially his. But the legacy of silent films meant that audiences paid primarily to see the actors. They might remember the studio and the director’s name, but the idea of going to the pictures on the basis of who had written the film remained largely irrelevant.
Mankiewicz was well aware he would never be as famous as the films he wrote, although he never lost his sense of humour about the way the industry operated:
In a novel the hero can lay ten girls and marry a virgin for the finish. In a movie this is not allowed. The villain can lay anybody he wants, have as much fun as he wants cheating and stealing, getting rich and whipping the servants. But you have to shoot him in the end. When he falls with a bullet in his forehead, it is advisable that he clutch at the Gobelin tapestry on the wall and bring it down over his head like a symbolic shroud. Also, covered by such a tapestry, the actor does not have to hold his breath while being photographed as a dead man.
Not surprisingly, his outspoken manner caused plenty of battles with his paymasters. Pauline Kael recounts of one lost screenplay:
When a studio attempted to punish him for his customary misbehaviour by assigning him to a Rin Tin Tin picture, he rebelled by turning in a script that began with the craven dog frightened by a mouse and reached its climax with a house on fire and the dog taking a baby into the flames.
Sometimes, it seemed, he longed for a quieter life, settling down with one of the leading ladies from his films. Even then, his tongue remained firmly in his cheek:
Barbara Stanwyck is my favorite. My God, I could just sit and dream of being married to her, having a little cottage out in the hills, vines around the door. I’d come home from the office tired and weary, and I’d be met by Barbara, walking through the door holding an apple pie she had cooked herself. And wearing no drawers.
1941 MAJOR BARBARA
Undershaft is not afraid to tell his daughter what he feels about his money.
UNDERSHAFT
My religion? My dear, I’m a millionaire. That’s my religion.
Dir: Gabriel Pascal • Scr: George Bernard Shaw, based on his play • Cast: Robert Morley (Andrew Undershaft)
1942 THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER
Whiteside terrorizes everyone in the house where he stays as a guest.
WHITESIDE
Now will you all leave quietly, or must I ask Miss Cutler to pass among you with a baseball bat?
Dir: William Keighley • Scr: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein • Based on a play by George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart • Cast: Monty Woolley (Sheridan Whiteside)
1951 THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL
Klaatu, a visitor from outer space, brings a message to all humanity.
KLAATU
Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.
Dir: Robert Wise • Scr: Edmund H. North • Based on a story by Harry Bates • Cast: Michael Rennie (Klaatu)
1951 STRANGERS ON A TRAIN
Barbara seems at ease with the political world her family inhabits.
BARBARA
Oh, Daddy doesn’t mind a little scandal. He’s a senator.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock • Scr: Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde, Whitfield Cook • Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith • Cast: Patricia Hitchcock (Barbara Morton)
Raymond Chandler, one of the screenwriters, did not enjoy his collaboration with Hitchcock. As the director arrived for one story meeting, Chandler yelled out of the window: ‘Look at the fat bastard trying to get out of his car!’
1956 THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON
After the war, American troops are sent to Okinawa to teach the locals democracy.
COLONEL PURDY
You’ll need an interpreter.
CAPTAIN FISBY
I can study the language.
COLONEL PURDY
No need. We won the war.
Dir: Daniel Mann • Scr: John Patrick, adapted from his play • Based on a book by Vern J. Sneider • Cast: Paul Ford (Colonel Purdy), Glenn Ford (Captain Fisby)
1957 SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS
Musician Jimmy is furious that his expensive publicity agent is not advancing his career.
JIMMY
It’s a dirty job, but I pay clean money for it.
Dir: Alexander Mackendrick • Scr: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman • Based on a novella by Ernest Lehman • Cast: Unknown (Jimmy Weldon)
1957 12 ANGRY MEN
Twelve jurors deliberate their verdict in a murder trial.
JUROR #3
You’re talking about a matter of seconds. Nobody can be that accurate.
JUROR #8
Well, I think that testimony that can put a boy into the electric chair should be that accurate.
Dir: Sidney Lumet • Scr: Reginald Rose • Cast: Lee J. Cobb (Juror #3), Henry Fonda (Juror #8)
Henry Fonda, at that time a huge star, was asked by United Artists to make the film and he acted as producer as well as leading man; he personally chose Sidney Lumet to direct. The process was intense, as Lumet insisted on long rehearsals in which the cast remained in the jurors’ room without respite to create the feeling of a group under relentless pressure. Although the film failed to make a profit on its initial release, Fonda maintained it was one of the three pictures he made of which he was most proud.
The film lasts ninety-six minutes, of which ninety-three take place in the room where the jurors congregate; the set was a mere sixteen by twenty-four feet. As the story progresses, Lumet gradually increased the focal length of the camera’s lenses and lowered the angle of the shots to intensify his portraits of the characters and emphasize the claustrophobia of their surroundings.
1958 TOUCH OF EVIL
VARGAS
A policeman’s job is only easy in a police state.
Dir: Orson Welles • Scr: Orson Welles • Based on a novel by Whit Masterson • Cast: Charlton Heston (Miguel ‘Mike’ Vargas)
1961 JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG
An American judge passes sentence on a German counterpart accused of war crimes.
JUDGE HAYWOOD
Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and death of millions by the government of which he was a part. Janning’s record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial. If he and the other defendants were all depraved perverts — if the leaders of the Third Reich were sadistic monsters and maniacs — these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake or other natural catastrophes. But this trial has shown that under the stress of a national crisis, men — even able and extraordinary men — can delude themselves into the commission of crimes and atrocities so vast and heinous as to stagger the imagination. No one who has sat through this trial can ever forget. The sterilization of men because of their political beliefs, the murder of children — how easily that can happen. There are those in our country today, too, who speak of the ‘protection’ of the country. Of ‘survival’. The answer to that is: survival as what? A country isn’t a rock. And it isn’t an extension of one’s self. It is what it stands for — when standing for something is the most difficult. Before the people of the wo
rld — let it now be noted in our decision here that this is what we stand for: justice, truth — and the value of a single human being.
Dir: Stanley Kramer • Scr: Abby Mann • Cast: Spencer Tracy (Judge Dan Haywood)
Many of the cast worked for less than their usual salary because they believed the subject matter was so important. Some of the court scenes feature actual footage from the concentration camps.
1962 KNIFE IN THE WATER (NÓŻW WODZIE)
Andrzej and a mysterious traveller become antagonistic on a sailing trip.
ANDRZEJ
If two men are on board, one is the skipper.
Dir: Roman Polanski • Scr: Jakub Goldberg, Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski • Cast: Leon Niemczyk (Andrzej)
1964 MY FAIR LADY
Pickering has offered to pay for Eliza Doolittle’s elocution lessons, but Eliza’s father demands a share of his generosity too.
PICKERING
Have you no morals, man?
DOOLITTLE
Nah, can’t afford ’em. Neither could you, if you were as poor as me.
Dir: George Cukor • Scr: Alan Jay Lerner • Based on a play by George Bernard Shaw • Cast: Wilfrid Hyde-White (Colonel Hugh Pickering), Stanley Holloway (Alfred P. Doolittle)
1966 A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
Cromwell, a minister of Henry VIII, applies political pressure to Sir Thomas More.
SIR THOMAS MORE
All the Best Lines Page 19