This week’s question is stolen — with his permission — from Ross Miller, who tweeted it last week:
What’s your favorite bit of shocking movie dialogue?
My choice is the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the question. It’s something David Tennant says in the 2005 ITV miniseries Secret Smile (here’s my review, from 2008), in which he plays the boyfriend from hell who stalks his ex, played by Shaun of the Dead’s Kate Ashfield.
If you’ve seen Secret Smile, you probably know what line of dialogue I’m talking about. It’s so filthy, in such a repellent way, that I can barely bring myself to type it, never mind say it. Here’s the exchange of dialogue that contains it:
Miranda Cotton: [Brendan has just proposed to her sister, part of his tormenting of Miranda] Congratulations.
Brendan Block: Thanks. You know, when I was making the announcement I was looking at your mouth.
Miranda Cotton: Why?
Brendan Block: Well… it’s beautiful. I was just thinking… I’ve come in that mouth.
I think you can guess which line I’m referring to. But nothing here captures the oozy malice with which Tennant delivers it.
Your turn. Obviously, I went with something from a miniseries, not technically a film (though it’s really just a film chopped into two parts), so feel free to focus more on the shocking aspect rather than the source. Movie-ish will do.
(You can also discuss this at Substack or Patreon, if you prefer. You don’t need to be a paying subscriber to comment, but you will need to register with either site to do so.)
“Fredo, you’re nothing to me now. You’re not a brother, you’re not a friend. I don’t want to know you or what you do.” —The Godfather Part II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Os0Q9SA2k&ab_channel=CinematiC
It’s not the most memorable line in a movie full of memorable lines; but Michael disowning his brother so completely, with deadly calm—in a saga about how even terrible gangsters place familial love above all else—signaled to me that he’s crossed a particularly unthinkable line, and that this, finally, is the point he loses his soul. It’s made all the more chilling by what he says to his minion after he exits the room: “I don’t want anything to happen to him… while my mother’s alive.”
Second place goes to “That’s what people DO!” from Sherlock, because Andrew Scott’s delivery is unexpected and utterly terrifying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdUenkd8Hwg&ab_channel=MatthewLawrence
“You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in sixty years.”
2:28 min. Statement comes at the end of the clip. https://youtu.be/tzhb3U2cONs
It might not seem like a very shocking line. But, the first time I saw Citizen Kane, I saw it “blind”. I was in junior high or thereabouts, I saw it at a revival/art house on a double bill with something I can’t remember. I knew vaguely that it was a “classic”, but, so was Now Voyager and Mildred Pierce and Casablanca and It’s a Wonderful Life, etc. So, I saw Citizen Kane without all the baggage and film studies just as a story. This line — while sort of charming and flippant — was also shocking: It made clear how much this was both a kind of crusade and a toy. He didn’t know what he was doing, but, he was determined to do it at all costs.
I do know now that there is a definite stream of thought that Citizen Kane is not worthy of its hype. That is possibly true. But, I saw it uncut, in a theater, without the hype, no clue what I was getting into, and it is a helluva story and it is vividly filmed.
Forget it, Jake; it’s Chinatown.
Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.
Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you.
“Not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing.
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing?
YES, the danger must be growing, ’cause the rowers keep on rowing,
and they’re certAINLY NOT SHOWING ANY SIGNS THAT THEY ARE SLOWING!”