Speech, Speech!: Great Movie Speeches
The Philadelphia Inquirer Blog - Flickgrrl
Speech, Speech!: Great Movie Speeches
Carrie Rickey, Film Critic
While fishing on the internet for other great movie speeches, I found that AmericanRhetoric.com -- on its blogroll below "Plato on Rhetoric" and "Christian Rhetoric" and "Obama Speeches" -- has a link to Great Movie Speeches, with audio from the usual suspects (passages from Gandhi, Malcolm X and Gladiator as well as dozens of unusual ones. Check it out. Your nomination for best movie speech?
Though both Mo'Nique and Jeff Bridges delivered deeply emotional speeches at the Golden Globes awards on Sunday night in accepting (respectively) supporting actress honors (for Precious) and the prize for best actor in a drama (Crazy Heart), the evening was otherwise thin on what my speech teacher called passionate rhetoric.
My thoughts naturally turned to Great Movie Speeches -- and not only Gandhi's, and Malcolm X's and Jefferson Smith's, but also:
Kevin Costner in Bull Durham: "I believe in the soul... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days."
Elle Woods in Legally Blonde: "On our very first day at Harvard a very wise professor quoted Aristotle... "the law is reason free from passion." Well...no offense to Aristotle, but in my three years at Harvard I have come to find that passion is a key ingredient to the study and practice of law...and of life. It is with passion, courage of conviction, and strong sense of self that we take our next steps into the world. Remembering that first impressions are not always correct, you must always have faith in people, and most importantly...you must always have faith in yourself."
Queen Latifah in Hairspray (after learning that her son is dating a white girl): "Well, love is a gift, a lot of people don't remember that. So, you two better brace yourselves for a whole lotta ugly comin' at you from a neverending parade of stupid."
Your favorite movie speech?
As reminded by my husband: the final speech in Casblanca! "Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. 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." aaahhhh....— cft- One from "McLintock!" courtesy of John Wayne: "I'm gonna use good judgement. I haven't lost my temper in forty years, but pilgrim you caused a lot of trouble this morning, might have got somebody killed... and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won't, I won't. The *hell* I won't!" I cheer every time.— cft
- Two by Bill Murray: his speech rallying the troops in "Stripes" and his heartfelt plea for the Christmas spirit near the end of "Scrooged." I'd quote both, but IMDb has been acting wonky lately, and my memory isn't reliable enough.— wwolfe
- Al Pacino in "Scent of a Woman" - "Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, BLEEP YOU TOO!". Jack Nicholson as Col. Nathan Jessup in "A Few Good Men" - "You Can't Handle the Truth!".— fafafooey
- I will ever and always put forward Burt Lancaster's speech in "Sweet Smell of Success," the one starting with "Mister Falco, let it be said at once ...", where he paints a damning picture of Curtis. Odets and Ernest Lehman -- that's writing!— chris schneider
Two come to mind. Orson Welles' famous "cuckoo clock" speech in The Third Man. And James Garner's defense-of-America speech in The Americanization of Emily: "You American haters bore me to tears, Ms. Barham. I've dealt with Europeans all my life. I know all about us parvenus from the States who come over here and race around your old Cathedral towns with our cameras and Coca-cola bottles... Brawl in your pubs, paw at your women, and act like we own the world. We over-tip, we talk too loud, we think we can buy anything with a Hershey bar. I've had Germans and Italians tell me how politically ingenuous we are, and perhaps so. But we haven't managed a Hitler or a Mussolini yet. I've had Frenchmen call me a savage because I only took half an hour for lunch. Hell, Ms. Barham, the only reason the French take two hours for lunch is because the service in their restaurants is lousy. The most tedious lot are you British. We crass Americans didn't introduce war into your little island. This war, Ms. Barham to which we Americans are so insensitive, is the result of 2,000 years of European greed, barbarism, superstition, and stupidity. Don't blame it on our Coca-cola bottles. Europe was a going brothel long before we came to town."- Best movie speech ever: "You know what I'm sick and tired of, Harry? I'm sick and tired of having to eek my way through life. I'm sick and tired of being a nobody. But most of all, I'm sick and tired of having nobody." (Dumb & Dumber)— jackhammer
- I still like Henry Fonda's soliloquy in "Grapes of Wrath": "...I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be ever'-where - wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad - an' I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise, and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."— John Brumfield
- Who can forget John Belushi's "We didn't quit after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor" speech as John "Bluto" Blutarski in "Animal House"?— Lancer248
- I'm glad garyk referenced Sandra Bullock. Yes, she was wonderful at the Globes, handling herself with perfection. (Too bad her award wasn't for Harper Lee in "Infamous," a much more impressive job than Catherine Keener's in "Capote.") But the night was awash with really bad acceptance speeches - Christopher Waltz, pontificating about his own personal universe; Drew Barrymore, rambling, incoherent and nakedly needy, and, yes, Meryl Streep who actually quoted her mother about forgetting about all the "gloom and doom" (read: Haiti) - "she had not time for that" - and just put on your gown and drink champagne (read: Your Big Night). I know what she probably meant to say, but it didn't come out that way. It came out sounding entitled and narcissistic.— Pash
- Have to agree with jonc. The "speech" Spencer Tracy gives as Henry Drummond when he has Brady on the stand. Particularly like the part that starts with "progress has never been bargain."— LizzieB
- Kenneth Branagh's speech to the troops in Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt. Between the swelling music and the passionate words, my eyes mist every time.— CPven
- Thomas More, in "Man for All Seasons": And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted with laws from coast to coast. Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the wind that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.— Mark Bowden
- Cate Blanchett advocating the manage a trois to Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis in "Bandits"; Ewan MacGregor demanding his job back in "A Life Less Ordinary;" Jimmy Stewart refusing Mr. Potter's offer in "It's A Wonderful Life"; Gabtriel Byrne's grifter speech to Albert Finney in "Miller's Crossing"; Nicole Kidman at the ball, on the fatherhood of native children in "Australia;" Kurt Russell's pregame talk at the Olympic semifinals in "Miracle"; Julia Stiles' sonnet to Heath Ledger in "10 Things I Hate About You;" Reese Witherspoon's preelection prayer in "Election;" Colin Firth and especially Jennifer Ely in the proposal scene in "Pride And Prejudice;" Jennifer Ely to Lady Catherine, also in "P&P"; Bogart to Mary Astor at the end of "The Maltese Falcon" and Cary Grant's "I stick my neck out for no one" speech to Laraine Day in "Mr. Lucky."— JDM
- I like the speech at the end of "The American President" delivered by Michael Douglas, culminating with "My name is Andrew Shepherd, and I AM the President of the United States." Great speech.— goodgirldaddy
- I thought Sandra Bullock's speech at the Globes was very nice and inspiring. She was classy--thanking the Tuohy family, and made a touching remark to her husband. She even thanked her publist, acknowledging that those behind the scenes help those in front of the camera. As for great movie speeches, I do like Rupert Pupkin's monologue at the end of THE KING OF COMEDY. "Better to be King for a day...."— garyk
- For me? Jack Lemmon as a young first selectman addressing the citizens of Cape Ann, Maine at a townhall meeting, admonishing them for not standing behind Doris Day in Richard Quine's wonderful "It Happened to Jane," a film that continually improves with age. The fact that it is a real small-town town hall (in Chester, Connecticut) with real people makes it all the more special for me.— Pash
- I suppose George C. Scott's wonderful Patton speech and some of the remarks made by Sterling Hayden as Gen. Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, which weren't delivered as actual speeches, but might have been. (I'm thinking particularly of his dialogue with Group Captain Mandrake that begins "Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau said about war?")— ccjroberts
- My favorite of the decade is the one where Edward Cullen gets out of his volvo with the raybans on and puts his arm around Bella....oh wait...— moviemom
- Warren Beatty in "Heaven Can Wait" addressing the board of the company he now runs (got a cheer every time I saw it); it's not a speech per se, but Spencer Tracey questioning Frederick March in "Inherit the Wind" -- nine minutes long and done in one take (goes the story); Kevin Costner again in "The Untouchables" "I have forsworn myself, I have broken every law that I vowed to obey, I have become what I beheld but I am conent that I've that I've done right" Jamie Lee Curtis in "Love Letters" when she tells her married lover (James Stacy) what she wants from their relationship.— jonc
- I don't have the time to look for something now. I ALREADY WORK AROUND THE CLOCK! (Okay, fine: Hackman, Hoosiers.)— Adam B.
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