Tell me! The Great Monologues

[thebitterguy]

Found an interesting list of the top ten speeches & monologues in film.

Now, the usual questionings of the author's choices occured (which is as it should be), as some people felt they focused too much on American film (although it looks like the author is Turkish, so I ask, whose fault is that?), and others on men. So, brain trust, I come to you: Can anyone name any great monolgues/speeches from non US films, or delivered by women? Because I'm stumped, but I rarely remember these things.

Comments

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

Kikuchiyo (Toshiro Mifune)'s monologue from Seven Samurai comes to mind:

What do you think of farmers? You think they're saints? Hah! They're foxy beasts! They say, "We've got no rice, we've no wheat. We've got nothing!" But they have! They have everything! Dig under the floors! Or search the barns! You'll find plenty! Beans, salt, rice, sake! Look in the valleys, they've got hidden warehouses! They pose as saints but are full of lies! If they smell a battle, they hunt the defeated! They're nothing but stingy, greedy, blubbering, foxy, and mean! God damn it all! But then who made them such beasts? You did! You samurai did it! You burn their villages! Destroy their farms! Steal their food! Force them to labour! Take their women! And kill them if they resist! So what should farmers do?

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

Oh, and let's not forget Bette Davis in All About Eve:

Funny business, a woman's career, the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common - being a woman. Sooner or later we've got to work at it no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that you're not a woman. You're something with a French provincial office or a book full of clippings but you're not a woman. Slow curtain, the end.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

For Non-US, there's the closing diatribe in the British film, Things to Come.


Well, I think it's cool. :)

[absinthe-dot-ca.livejournal.com]

Well, for women, it's gotta be Ripley from Aliens: "Get away from her, you bitch!" Short, but to the point.

Actually, one of my favourite speeches isn't technically from a movie (unless you count a movie adaptation like that of Kenneth Branagh), but it is definitely foreign (as in non-USA) - the "Saint Crispin's Day (http://www.chronique.com/Library/Knights/crispen.htm)" speech from Shakespeare's Henry V.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! That sprang immediately to mind for me, and I'd take that speech any day over stinky Mel in Braveheart.

I'm also a bit mortified that Rutger Hauer's "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe..." from Bladerunner isn't in the list, but I can understand why it isn't.

I'm also floored that Orson Welles' musings on Democracy and the Swiss from The Third Man isn't on the list.

And finally, nothing from a Coen brothers movie? Nothing? I'm aghast.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

"The cuckoo clock."

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Ex-ACT-ly.

To Kill A Mockingbird. Atticus Finch's Closing Argument in court:

[kaijugal.livejournal.com]

To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. There is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led almost exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you, having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses, his right. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the state. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt, I say guilt, gentleman, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime. She has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe is hounded from our midst, is unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her.



Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now what did she do? She tempted a Negro. She was white and she tempted a negro. She did something that in our society was unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff for Macon county, have presented themselves to you gentleman, to this court, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted. Confident that you gentleman would go along with them on the assumption, the evil assumption, that all Negroes lie, that all negroes are all basically immoral beings. All Negro men are not to be trusted around our women. That assumption one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable Negro who has had the unmitigated temerity to feel sorry for a white woman has had to put his word against two white people. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is. Now gentleman, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and our jury system. That's no ideal to me, that is a living, working reality. Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this man to his family. In the name of God do your duty. In the name of God believe Tom Robinson.

---
What is with all the "top monolouges being by men, and largely warmongering men at that?" -_-;