Great One Liners

[carl browne]

"Too early to tell," is even better! Especially in the late afternoon.

Reminds me of "Casablanca."

Yvonne: Where were you last night?
Rick: That's so long ago, I don't remember.
Yvonne: Will I see you tonight?
Rick: I never make plans that far ahead.


"Charade" was not a Hitchcock movie. I can't remember who directed it, but he certainly understood Hitchcock's style. An example of this is when Audrey Hepburn is asked to identify her husband's body at the morgue. When the police inspector closes the refrigerated compartment, the camera shows him from the point of view of the corpse. But full agreement on the other movies, Hitchcock was one of a kind.

Hitchcock was a pretty elegant fellow too. Obese, bald, ugly, he was always beautifully dressed--like a very elegant undertaker.

[Trey]

Carl:

I should have read your earlier post more closely when you wrote "never" instead of "ever". Stanley Donen directed "Charade".

Trey

[storeynicholas]

Talking of Hitchcock - there are a couple of little incidents in at least two pictures which especially intrigue me. In Rebecca the dreadful woman to whom the heroine is a companion (Mrs Van Hopper) very deliberately stubs out a cigarette in a tub of cold cream. In To Catch a Thief, Jessie Stevens (mother of Grace Kelly's character, Francie), stubs out a cigarette in an abandoned breakfast fried egg. There is an interview with Hitch's grand daughter in which she explains that the egg incident might be to demonstrate Hitch's abhorrence of fried eggs. That may well be true (although it seems a little trivial and self-indulgent to make such a joke that only the director's family could understand) but it does not then explain the inappropriate stubbing out in the jar of cold cream in the other film. Could these incidents actually be a little social commentary, disclosing Hitch's view of the rich and extravagant?
NJS

[carl browne]

I am no expert on smoking etiquette, but stubbing out a cigarette on anything except an ashtray seems incredibly vulgar and disrespectful.

Let me take a stab at the Mrs. van Hopper scene: The older, and very middle-class van Hopper would never allow herself to be seen in public without make-up. Her age especially would make it indespensible. Stubbing out her cigarette in a jar of cold cream is a jesture of jealousy and contempt for the much younger Joan Fontaine character, who, I assume, wouldn't need make-up and certainly would have no use for a product that would remove it.

I suspect that Hitchcock has Grace Kelly's mother in "To Catch a Thief" out her cigarette in the egg simply to make her look common and put Kelly and Grant--who are not--in sharper relief.

I also suspect that Hitchcock was a student of Freud. Note the end credits for "North by Northwest" and "Vertigo" and "Spellbound" in their entirety. I can only try to imagine what Freud would say about a woman who would put out a cigarette by pushing it into the center of an egg.

[carl browne]

WC Fields was good with one liners:

There's a story--true, I think--that has the athiest WC in the hospital, on his death-bed, leafing through a copy of the Bible. When a friend asks him what he's doing, he responds, "looking for loopholes."

The other great line is of WC saying that he loves children, "but only if they're properly cooked."

[marcelo]

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

To conclude; Behaviour seemeth to me as a garment of the mind, and to have the conditions of a garment. For it ought to be made in fashion; it ought not to be too curious; it ought to be shaped so as to set forth any good making of the mind, and hide any deformity; and above all, it ought not to be to strait or restrained for exercise or motion.

In: The Advancement of Learning, Bk. II

[marcelo]

From A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord, recalling the fate of the Titanic and her passengers as she sank:

“These men on the Titanic had a touch – there was something about Ben Guggenheim changing to evening dress… about Howard Case flicking his cigarette as he waved to Mrs. Graham… or even about Colonel Gracie panting along the decks, gallantly if ineffectually searching for Mrs. Candee. Today nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night.
An air of noblesse oblige has vanished…”

I like the expression little gestures of chivalry…

[RWS]

From A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord, recalling the fate of the Titanic and her passengers as she sank:
“. . . . Today nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night.
An air of noblesse oblige has vanished…”

I like the expression little gestures of chivalry…

The two most recent world wars wiped out intellectual and cultural refinement as keenly as the lives of the flower of European youth. There's no reason, however, why we cannot individually act in accord with our better natures. In time, we may even help to restore grace and selflessness to daily living -- if the New Dark Ages don't descend first!

[marcelo]

From A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord, recalling the fate of the Titanic and her passengers as she sank:
“. . . . Today nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night.
An air of noblesse oblige has vanished…”

I like the expression little gestures of chivalry…

The two most recent world wars wiped out intellectual and cultural refinement as keenly as the lives of the flower of European youth. There's no reason, however, why we cannot individually act in accord with our better natures. In time, we may even help to restore grace and selflessness to daily living -- if the New Dark Ages don't descend first!

Very well said, RWS.

[storeynicholas]

From A Night to Remember, by Walter Lord, recalling the fate of the Titanic and her passengers as she sank:
“. . . . Today nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night.
An air of noblesse oblige has vanished…”

I like the expression little gestures of chivalry…

The two most recent world wars wiped out intellectual and cultural refinement as keenly as the lives of the flower of European youth. There's no reason, however, why we cannot individually act in accord with our better natures. In time, we may even help to restore grace and selflessness to daily living -- if the New Dark Ages don't descend first!

Very well said, RWS.

Here! Here!!
NJS

[marcelo]

Evelyn Waugh, An Open Letter to the Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd on a Very Serious Subject, p. 77:

"My father told me that no gentleman ever wore a brown suit"

[Frog in Suit]

Evelyn Waugh, An Open Letter to the Hon. Mrs Peter Rodd on a Very Serious Subject, p. 77:

"My father told me that no gentleman ever wore a brown suit"

From the same book: "No gentleman has soup at luncheon". I think E.W. is quoting various, faily absurd, examples, to demonstrate a contrario what defines a "gentleman" (cf. the bit about ichtyotomy!). I have also read (in the same book?) something to the effect that whoever comes to the front door is a "gentleman".

Frog in Suit

[marcelo]

Cher Frog in Suit

Waugh’s definitions of a gentleman may, indeed, be misleading. But the supposition that there is the ‘right’ definition is no less elusive. Waugh himself realised that any definition of a gentleman is usually contrived in such a way as to include the very person who proposes the definition, leaving aside everybody else he judges to be immediately bellow him. In a letter, Waugh affirms the following:

“… the basic principle of English social life is that everyone… thinks he is a gentleman. There is a second principle of almost equal importance: everyone draws the line of demarcation immediately below his own heel.”

Waugh himself seems to have been throughout his life quite unsure as to where to draw this line. John Howard Wilson recalls a telling episode in Waugh’s biography: after having been admitted to the gentleman’s club Beefsteak, Waugh once ordered a door man to go outside, under pouring rain, to get him a cab. The doorman refused and shouted: ‘A taxi for Mr Waugh, what isn’t a gentleman’. Waugh was outraged and expected the doorman to be fired. This did not happen and Waugh, then, resigned. But does one fail to be a gentleman if a doorman refuses to act upon one's wish? Indeed, maybe a gentleman would not even have made such a request, in those circumstances, in the first instance. But then I have already chosen a definition of gentleman…

Incidentally, this portion of Wilson’s book, narrating this episode in Waugh’s life, is available at:
http://books.google.com/books?id=RQ7Jiw ... #PPA103,M1 )

[marcelo]

John Stuart Mill: Autobiography:

The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.

[storeynicholas]

John Stuart Mill: Autobiography:

The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient.

I've seen literature defined as human feelings rendered into memorable prose and, to me, this is a good example.
NJS