That’s why DMovies has decided to come up with a list of the top 10 dirtiest films quotes of all times. Our team has selected films from various corners of the planet and from different times, in no special order. They include famous lines from Hitchcock and Billy Wilder classics, but also lesser-known gems from countries such as Germany, France, Spain and Brazil. And of course we haven’t the UK out, with a hilarious line from this year’s winner of the Palme d’Or in Cannes, in what’s for us the most urgent film of the year.
So keep your eyes, your ears and your mind open! Let these pungent and heady words into your world. Allow the twisted sages of cinema wreak havoc in your life!
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1. “Nobody’s Perfect.” – Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959)
Daphne (Jack Lemmon) is not a woman, but this does not matter to the millionaire Osgood Fielding III, (Joe E. Brown). At the final sequence of the movie, Jack’s character famously removes his wig and shouts, “I’m a man!”, revealing the much feared secret to his dalliance. An unaffected Osgood simply responds: “Well, nobody’s perfect”. This is likely the most subversive final movie line ever, at a time when homosexuality was illegal in most of the planet.
2. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” – Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Napalm is a flammable liquid used in warfare. It was initially used as an incendiary device against buildings and later as an anti-personnel weapon, as it sticks to skin and causes severe burns when on fire. Yet for Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, its fragrance seems to evoke a grotesquely romanticised belligerence.
3. “A boy’s best friend is his mother.” – Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) relationship to his his mother is a very unusual one, complete with jealousy, murder, necrophilia, crossdressing and split personality disorder. Oh, there are also hints of incest. Would you envisage such “friendship” with your mum?
4. “OK, look, your role isn’t inspired by you!” – The Law of Desire (Pedro Almodóvar, 1987)
Juan (Miguel Molina) is developing a monologue his transsexual sister, Tina (played by the cisgender Carmen Maura). But at one point he has to break the devastating news to the diva-wannabe: “OK, look, your role isn’t inspired by you”. He then tries to comfort her: “there’s certain affinity: in terms of problems with men”, he says before having another line of coke.
5. “I’m big! It’s the pictures that got small” – Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson, also pictured at the top of the article) is blissfully ignorant of her demise as a silent movie. In her fantastically delusional world, she remains as big as ever. It’s everyone else’s fault that they can’t see enviable grandeur. She remains the biggest star of all times, it’s just a pity there’s no one to worship and adore her.
6. “Dora, everything has a limit!” – Central Station (Walter Salles, 1998)
Would you sell a child to an organ-trafficking network in order to buy a television with that money? Well, Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) did, in this Brazilian classic. The words above are uttered in indignation by her friend Irene (Marília Pêra) upon seeing a large television in Dora flat, and thereby deducing that she traded the orphaned child under her care for the device.
7. “Could you please defrost it?” – I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, 2016; click here for our review of the movie)
Daniel is unable to work due to a recent heart attack. so and has to claim Job Seekers Allowance. The problem is that he has to do it online, and he has never used a computer before in his life, describing himself instead as “pencil by default”. He heads to a library in order to use the internet, but he is soon told that his device froze, to which he reacts with the question above. A hilarious moment urging people and government to rethink the benefit system.
8. “But secretly, you’d love to know what it’s like, wouldn’t you, what it feels like for a girl”Cement Garden – (Andrew Birkin, 1993)
Julie (played by Charlotte Gainsbourg) explains the challenges of being a woman in this relatively obscure French film. Julies’ words were catapulted to fame when Madonna incorporated it into one of her songs: “Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, because it’s OK to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, because you think that being a girl is degrading. But secretly you’d love to know what it’s like, wouldn’t you? What it feels like for a girl?”
9. “This is love, baby. Believe me, it’s rare.” – Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976)
The manly lorry driver Krassky (Joe Dallesandro) is obsessed with anal sex. He has a young and handsome partner called Padovan (Hugues Quester), but he is soon infatuated with the highly androgynous female Johnny (a short-haired version of Jane Birkin). But the only way he can engage with his new lover is through her back entrance. Love is indeed a double-sided sentiment.
10. “You’ve given me a great deal of happiness”; “I sold it to you!” – Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981)
Veronika Voss is a formerly popular UFA film star who is now struggling to get roles, but she finds comfort in the opiate pills prescribed by Marianne Katz (Annemarie Düringer). The dialogue above takes place when Veronika expresses her gratitude to her doctor. It is is both a reflection and a joke about Fassbinder’s own very unbashed drug use. The German director overdosed on fatal cocktail of valium, cocain and alcohol less than a year after the film was completed.
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