|
 Introduction: Film speeches are normally
delivered orally and directed at an audience of three or more
people, although there can be exceptions. They are usually persuasive-type
speeches, either designed to promote or to dissuade, and they
are highly quotable.
Key to Iconic Symbol:
 - Entries in Blockbuster Video's Top 20 Best Film Speeches and Monologues with ranking number (#)
Note: The films that are marked
with a yellow star  are the films that
"The Greatest Films" site has selected as the 100 Greatest Films
| |
| Film
and Brief Title |
Speech |
Example |
Citizen Kane (1941)
 Speech to Executives on the Inquirer's Success
|
# 17
Charles Foster Kane's (Orson Welles) speech: ("Six
years ago, I looked at a picture of the world's greatest newspaper
men. I felt like a kid in front of a candy store. Well, tonight,
six years later, I got my candy -- all of it. Welcome, gentlemen,
to the Inquirer! Make up an extra copy of that picture
and send it to the Chronicle, will you please? It will
make you all happy to learn that our circulation this morning
was the greatest in New York, 684,000.") |
|
| "News
on the March" Opening Narration |
The famous fictional newsreel News
on the March opening that chronicled the life of Charles Foster
Kane (Orson Welles): ("...Twice married, twice divorced. First
to a president's niece, Emily Norton, who left him in 1916. Died
1918 in a motor accident with their son. Sixteen years after his
first marriage, two weeks after his first divorce, Kane married
Susan Alexander, singer at the Town Hall in Trenton, New Jersey.
For Wife Two, one-time opera singing Susan Alexander, Kane built
Chicago's Municipal Opera House. Cost: $3 million dollars. Conceived
for Susan Alexander Kane, half finished before she divorced him,
the still-unfinished Xanadu. Cost? No man can say...") |
|
| Kane's
Self-Portrait |
Kane's portrait of himself to Thatcher
(George Coulouris): ("...I am the publisher of the Inquirer!
As such, it is my duty - and I'll let you in on a little secret,
it's also my pleasure - to see to it that the decent, hard-working
people in this community aren't robbed blind by a pack of money-mad
pirates just because - they haven't anybody to look after their
interests"); also his grinning response when told of the Inquirer's
losses: ("You're right, Mr. Thatcher. 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") |
|
| Unforgettable Memories of a Girl With a Parasol |
Mr. Bernstein's (Everett Sloane) sublime
monologue where he reminisces about an unforgettable moment years
earlier: ("A fellow can remember a lot of things you wouldn't
think he'd remember. You take me. One day back in 1896, I was crossing
over to Jersey on the ferry. And as we pulled out, there was another
ferry pulling in. And on it there was a girl waiting to get off.
A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only
saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all. But I'll bet a
month hasn't gone by since that I hadn't thought of that girl.") |
|
How Green Was My Valley
(1941)
Opening
Voice-Over
|
The opening monologue in which Huw (pronounced
Hugh) Morgan (Roddy McDowall as the winsome boy) idealistically
looks back (in flashback with offscreen narration in a first-person,
singular, adult voice-over provided by the eloquent, mellifluous
voice of Irving Pinchel) about life in his Welsh mining town: ("I
am packing my belongings in the shawl my mother used to wear when
she went to the market. And I'm going from my valley. And this time,
I shall never return. I am leaving behind me my fifty years of memory.
Memory. Streams that the mind will forget so much of what only this
moment has passed, and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what
happened years ago - of men and women long since dead. Yet who shall
say what is real and what is not?...") |
|
Casablanca (1942)
Airport
Farewell
|
Rick Blaine's (Humphrey Bogart) self-sacrificing
"We'll always have Paris" and "No good at being Noble"
airport farewell speech to Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman): ("Ilsa,
I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that
the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans
in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now. Here's
looking at you, kid.") |
|
|
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Opening
Narration
|
An opening monologue narrated by Orson
Welles: ("The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873.
Their splendor lasted throughout all the years that saw their Midland
town spread and darken into a city. In that town in those days,
all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who
wore silk or velvet and everybody knew everybody else's family horse
and carriage. The only public conveyance was the streetcar. A lady
could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would halt
at once, and wait for her, while she shut the window, ... put on
her hat and coat, ... went downstairs... found an umbrella... told
the 'girl' what to have for dinner...and came forth from the house.
Too slow for us nowadays, because the faster we're carried, the
less time we have to spare.") |
|
| The
Source of Everything |
In a rambling, incoherent speech (from
Booth Tarkington's original novel), old Major Amberson (Richard
Bennett) disjointedly muses on the source of life: ("It must
be in the sun. There wasn't anything here but the sun in the first
place...The Earth came out o' the sun, and we came out of the Earth.
So whatever we are...";) when the light fades, his voice grows
silent, the screen turns slowly to black, and his life ends |
|
| Mrs. Miniver (1942)
Vicar's
Patriotic "It is Our War" Speech
|
The vicar's (Henry Wilcoxon) moving speech
in a bombed out church, before the congregation sings Onward
Christian Soldiers: ("...Why in all
conscience should these be the ones to suffer? Children, old people,
a young girl at the height of her loveliness. Why these? Are these
our soldiers? Are these our fighters? Why should they be sacrificed?
I shall tell you why. Because this is not only a war of soldiers
in uniform. It is a war of the people, of all the people, and it
must be fought not only on the battlefield, but in the cities and
in the villages, in the factories and on the farms, in the home,
and in the heart of every man, woman, and child who loves freedom!
Well, we have buried our dead, but we shall not forget them. Instead
they will inspire us with an unbreakable determination to free ourselves
and those who come after us from the tyranny and terror that threaten
to strike us down. This is the people's war! It is our war! We are
the fighters! Fight it then! Fight it with all that is in us, and
may God defend the right!") |
 |
| The Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Lou
Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" Farewell Address to Baseball
|
Dying ball player Lou Gehrig's
(Gary Cooper) farewell speech in the New York Yankees baseball stadium to 62,000 fans:
("I have been walking on ballfields for 16 years, and I've
never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you
fans. I have had the great honor to have played with these great
veteran ballplayers on my left -- Murderers Row, our championship
team of 1927. I have had the further honor of living with and playing
with these men on my right -- the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of
today. I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys
up there behind the wire in the press box -- my friends, the sports
writers. I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time,
Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy. I have a mother and father who
fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth. I have
a wife, a companion for life, who has shown me more courage than
I ever knew. People all say that I've had a bad break. But today
-- today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the
earth." (applause)) |
|
| The Talk
of the Town (1942)
Defense
of Wrongly-Accused Man and the Law
|
Supreme Court nominee Professor Michael
Lightcap (Ronald Colman) bravely defends wrongly accused fugitive-arsonist
Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant) from an angry mob in the front of a courtroom:
("His (Dilg's) only crime was that he had courage and spoke
his mind...This is your law and your finest possession. It makes
you free men in a free country. Why have you come here to destroy
it? If you know what's good for you, take those weapons home and
burn them - and then think. Think of this country and of the law
that makes it what it is. Think of a world crying for this very
law. Then maybe you'll understand why you ought to guard it, and
why the law has got to be the personal concern of every citizen,
to uphold it for your neighbor as well as for yourself. Violence
against it is one mistake. Another mistake is for any man to look
upon the law as just a set of principles. Just so much language
printed on fine, heavy paper. Something he recites and then leans
back and takes it for granted that justice is automatically being
done. Both kinds of men are equally wrong. The law must be engraved
in our hearts and practiced every minute, to the letter and spirit.
It can't even exist unless we're willing to go down into the dust
and blood and fight a battle every day of our lives to preserve
it, for our neighbor as well as ourselves.") |
|
| The Ox-Bow
Incident (1943)
Lynched
Man's Dying Letter
|
The heart-breaking reading, posthumously
by Gil Carter (Henry Fonda), of a letter written by a lynched man,
Donald Martin (Dana Andrews), to his wife: ("...A man just
naturally can't take the law into his own hands and hang people
without hurtin' everybody in the world, 'cause then he's just not
breakin' one law, but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you
put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry
it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice
and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity.
There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have
a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it
except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience
except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?
I guess that's all I've got to say except - kiss the babies for
me and God bless you...") |
|
| Double
Indemnity (1944)
Suicide
Statistics Speech
|
Insurance agent Barton Keyes' (Edward
G. Robinson) suicide statistics speech ("...Why, they've got
10 volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation,
by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed:
by poisons, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison,
subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic,
gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps,
subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains,
under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats.
But Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there's not one single
case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train...") |
|
| Final
Dying Confession of a "Perfect Crime" |
Wounded insurance salesman Walter Neff's
(Fred MacMurray) confessional narration of a memorandum about his
'perfect crime' murder: ("...Yes, I killed him. I killed him
for money and for a woman. I didn't get the money and I didn't get
the woman. Pretty, isn't it?') |
|
| Henry V (1944)
St. Crispin's Day Address to the Troops
|
Henry V's (Laurence Olivier) stirring St. Crispin's Day address to his
weary troops: ("...We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,
for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother;
be he ne'er so vile..")
See also Henry V (1989) |
|
| Laura (1944)
"I
Shall Never Forget" Speech
|
Waldo Lydecker's (Clifton Webb) famous
opening narration as the camera tracked from left to right across
glass cabinets with beautifully-displayed shelves of priceless objets
d'art: ("I shall never forget the weekend Laura died. A silver
sun burned through the sky like a huge magnifying glass. It was
the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I felt as if I were the only
human being left in New York. For Laura's horrible death, I was
alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her.
And I had just begun to write Laura's story when - another of those
detectives came to see me. I had him wait. I could watch him through
the half-open door. I noted that his attention was fixed upon my
clock. There was only one other in existence, and that was in Laura's
apartment in the very room where she was murdered.") |
 |
| To Have and
Have Not (1944)
"Just
Put Your Lips Together and Blow" Come-on
|
The incredibly sensuous scene between
Steve / Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) and Slim / Marie Browning
(Lauren Bacall), who is trying to seduce him: ("Who was the
girl, Steve?... The one that left you with such a high opinion of
women? She must have been quite a gal. You think I lied to you about
this, don't you? Well, it just happens there's thirty-odd dollars
here. Not enough for boat fare, or any other kind of fare. Just
enough for me to say 'no' if I feel like it, and you can have it
if you want it... You wouldn't take anything from anybody would
you?... You know Steve, you're not very hard to figure. Only at
times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of
the time. The other times, the other times you're just a stinker");
after kissing him a second time after he has become more receptive,
she coos as she leaves his room: ("It's even better when you
help.... Uh, sure you won't change your mind about this?... This
belongs to me, and so do my lips, I don't see any difference...
Okay, you know you don't have act with me, Steve. You don't have
to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not with me.
Oh, maybe just whistle. You remember how to whistle, don't you?
Just put your lips together... and blow.") |
|
| The Lost
Weekend (1945)
Benefits
of Drinking
|
Alcoholic Don Birnam's (Ray Milland)
delusion on how drinking improves his mind to bartender Nat (Howard
da Silva): ("It shrinks my liver, doesn't it? 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 competent, supremely competent. 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 moves the
barge of Cleopatra.") |
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BEST FILM SPEECHES AND MONOLOGUES