66 quotes found
"I'm not going to tell the story the way it happened. I'm going to tell it the way I remember it."
"What's it like not to feel anything?"
"I knew that little girl and I saw the light in her eyes, and no matter what you say or do, that's still what I see."
"Seven years passed, I stopped going to Paradiso Perduto, I stopped painting. I put aside the fantasy and the wealthy, and the heavenly girl who did not want me. None of it would happen to me again. I'd seen through it. I elected to grow up."
"The night all of my dreams came true, and like all happy endings, it was a tragedy, of my own device, for I succeeded. I had cut myself loose from Joe, from the past, from the Gulf, from poverty I had invented myself. I'd done it cruelly, but I had done it. I was free!"
"If this isn't love, I don't think I can handle the real thing, baby."
"It's my heart, and it's broken."
"Everything I have ever done, I've done for you."
"I did it! I did it! I am a wild success! I sold 'em all, all my paintings. You don't have to be embarrassed by me anymore, I'm rich! Isn't that what you wanted, aren't we happy now. Don't you understand, that everything I do, I do it for you. Anything, that might be special in me, is you."
"We are who we are. People don't change."
"Let's say there was a little girl, and from the time she could understand, she was taught to fear... let's say she was taught to fear daylight. She was taught that it was her enemy, that it would hurt her. And then one sunny day, you ask her to go outside and play and she won't. You can't be angry at her, can you?"
"She'll only break your heart, it's a fact. And even though I warn you, even though I guarantee you that the girl will only hurt you terribly, you'll still pursue her. Ain't love grand?"
"Nothing harder than being given your chance. At least, that's what I hear."
"Let desire be your destiny."
"Ethan Hawke – Finn"
"Gwyneth Paltrow – Estella"
"Hank Azaria – Walter Plane"
"Chris Cooper – Uncle Joe"
"Anne Bancroft – Ms. Dinsmoor"
"Robert De Niro – Prisoner / Lustig"
"[about Jasper] When I'm dressed, I feel as if he were looking through the wall at me!"
"Miss Twinkleton: [addressing her students] Ladies, a crisis is a test of breeding. Remember you're Britons!"
"Mr. Septimus Crisparkle: [to Neville] Tomorrow you're my pupil, but today you are my guest."
"Claude Rains — John Jasper"
"David Manners — Edwin Drood"
"Heather Angel — Rosa Bud"
"Valerie Hobson — Helena Landless"
"E.E. Clive — Mayor Sapsea"
"Francis L. Sullivan — The Rev. Mister Septimus Crisparkle"
"Douglass Montgomery — Neville Landless"
"Walter Kingsford — Mr. Grewgious"
"Zeffie Tilbury — Princess Puffer"
"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip."
"Long after I'd gone to bed that night, I thought of Estella and how common she would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith. I thought how he and my sister were sitting in the kitchen and how Miss Havisham and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of such common things."
"As I watched Joe that Tuesday morning dressed grotesquely in a new suit, let me confess that if I could have kept him away by paying money I certainly would have paid money. In trying to become a gentleman I had succeeded in becoming a snob."
"I went to Richmond yesterday to speak to Estella, Miss Havisham, and finding that some wind had blown her here, I followed. What I have to say to Estella I will say before you in a few moments. It will not surprise you, it will not displease you. I'm as unhappy as you could ever have meant me to be. I have found out who my patron is. It isn't a fortunate discovery, and is not likely ever to enrich me in reputation, station, fortune, anything. But there are reasons why I can say no more of that. It is not my secret, but another's."
"I have something to tell you. Can you understand what I say? You had a child once who you loved and lost. She lived and found powerful friends. She is living now. She is a lady and very beautiful. And I love her."
"Biddy, you have the best husband in the world. And, Joe, you've the best wife in the world."
"You may kiss me if you like. … Now you are to go home."
"Pip! A young gentleman of great expectations."
"Dear boy. … I thought you wasn't coming and yet I knew somehow that you would. … God bless you! You have never deserted me and what's best of all is you've been more comfortable alonger me since I was under a dark cloud... than... than when the sun shone. That's best of all."
"Come close. Look at me. You're not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?"
"Take nothing on its looks, take everything on evidence. There is no better rule."
"Now, Pip: put the case that this legal advisor has often seen children tried at the criminal bar. Put the case that he has known them to be habitually imprisoned, whipped, neglected, cast out, neglected, cast out, qualified in all ways for the hangman, and growing up to be hanged. Put the case that here was one pretty little child out of the heap that could be saved. Put that last case to yourself very carefully, Pip. … Did he do right?"
"One of the great things about Charles Dickens is the way his people colonize your memory. I wonder if there's any writer except Shakespeare who has created more characters whose names we remember, and whose types seem so true to human nature. A director adapting a Dickens novel finds that much of his work has been done for him. Certainly that's the case with David Lean's Great Expectations (1946), which has been called the greatest of all the Dickens films, and which does what few movies based on great books can do: Creates pictures on the screen that do not clash with the images already existing in our minds. Lean brings Dickens' classic set-pieces to life as if he'd been reading over our shoulder: Pip's encounter with the convict Magwitch in the churchyard, Pip's first meeting with the mad Miss Havisham, and the ghoulish atmosphere in the law offices of Mr. Jaggers, whose walls are decorated with the death masks of clients he has lost to the gallows."
"It was quite a surprise to learn that David Lean had not read Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations before he embarked on his film version in 1945. The closeness of the adaptation, the understanding of the characters, make one swear it was made by an aficionado, for Dickens is part of every English child’s education. Lean was not "well read" — amongst Dickens’ works, he claimed acquaintance only with A Christmas Carol — but like Dickens, he was a born storyteller. Lean brought to the project all his experience as a film editor — he cuts, dovetails, transposes, and simplifies, without betraying the source novel, though the ending to one of Dickens’ most pessimistic works has been somewhat modified. … Great Expectations reveals a director free of any stage conventions and relishing his craft. The opening of the film has been studied for years and is held up as an exemplar of film editing. But it is also a brilliant synthesis of location shooting (the pan across the marshes with their lonely gibbets) with a studio set (graves with a back-projected church and looming sky), in which the hero, Pip, has his first fateful meeting with the fearsome Magwitch. … Fortunately, the Dickens-Lean partnership was more than a great strength. It was a marriage made in heaven."
"From the Vivid Pages of Charles Dickens' Masterpiece!"
"Great Thrills! Great Romance! Great Suspense! Great Adventure!"
"NOW The Screen Fulfills Your Greatest Expectations...In ACTION! In ADVENTURE! In ROMANCE!"
"Anthony Wager - Pip as a boy"
"John Mills - Pip as an adult"
"Jean Simmons - Estella as a girl"
"Valerie Hobson - Estella as an adult, and as Molly"
"Martita Hunt - Miss Havisham"
"Finlay Currie - Abel Magwitch"
"Francis L. Sullivan - Mr. Jaggers"
"Bernard Miles - Joe Gargery"
"Alec Guinness - Herbert Pocket as an adult"
"John Forrest - Herbert Pocket as a boy"
"Freda Jackson - Mrs. Joe Gargery"
"Eileen Erskine - Biddy"
"Ivor Barnard - Mr. Wemmick"
"Torin Thatcher - Bentley Drummle"
"O. B. Clarence - the Aged Parent"
"Hay Petrie - Uncle Pumblechook"
"Everley Gregg - Sarah Pocket"