Classic Film Quotes & Sayings

He looked just perfect to play Dorian Gray in a film version of Oscar Wilde's novel. Young, graceful, and indecently fresh and handsome, he could easily have worn a badge that said READY FOR DEBAUCHERY! — Sergei Lukyanenko

The most interesting of the classic movie genres to me are the indigenous ones: the Western, which was born on the Frontier, the Gangster Film, which originated in the East Coast cities, and the Musical, which was spawned by Broadway. They remind me of jazz: they allowed for endless, increasingly complex, sometimes perverse variations. When these variations were played by the masters, they reflected the changing times; they gave you fascinating insights into American culture and the American psyche. — Martin Scorsese

For Instagram, people use cameras ranging from high-end DSLRs, point-and-shoots, classic film cameras, and their smartphones. I personally like to use my iPhone because I know I will always have it with me. — Connor Franta

You can't get anymore classic than being a part of a Disney animated film. To me, that's something I can have in my back pocket for the rest of my life. I'll be able to show it to my kids. I'll be walking around Disneyland, and it'll be bizarre to shake hands with Rapunzel. — Mandy Moore

I think the book struck me in a few ways that I thought very interesting to pick it as my first martial arts film. It has a very strong female character and it was very abundant in classic Chinese textures. — Ang Lee

I hadn't watched any Hitchcock movies when I made 'Tom at the Farm,' except for 'Vertigo' when I was 8 years old. I don't have a sophisticated film knowledge, but I have seen the legacy of classic movies in broader entertainment. — Xavier Dolan

I watch all the classic films that film people say that you ought to have seen, and I try to watch things in the cinema when they come out, just to keep my eye on the competition. I'm bored when I'm not working. — Sam Riley

I didn't fall into the category of the 'classic Bond girl.' I had short hair - and no Bond girl before me ever had. They put me in a wig at the beginning of the film, and then had my character cut her hair to pretend to be someone else. That was to explain why my hair was short. — Carey Lowell

I would love an old classic car, or something like that. I'd get something much more subtle than any of those cars. The Lamborghinis were unbelievable to drive and to sit in and to film in. I loved the sensation because I love driving, so I appreciate them for what they are. But, I couldn't go into a showroom and buy something of that expense. — Dominic Cooper

I came out of film school and went after movies that I thought audiences wanted to see or that the studios wanted, as opposed to the movies that I wanted. Over the last 10 years, I've gravitated more and more toward the films that I grew up loving - classic Spielberg, Lucas, James Cameron and Ridley Scott movies. — Simon Kinberg

'The Goonies' is classic. That's, like, the movie I bring with me if I go out of town for a long time, because it just makes me think of the best times I've seen it with my friends growing up. Dude, everybody knows that movie, everybody watches that film. Best family film ever made. — Logan Lerman

In classic noir fiction and film, it is always hot. Fans whirr in sweltering hotel rooms, sweat forms on a stranger's brow, the muggy air stifles - one can hardly breathe. Come nightfall, there is no relief, only the darkness that allows illicit lovers to meet, the trusted to betray, and murderers to act. — Michael Dirda

I'm a big kid, I'm a kid at heart, so I still love the classic family films, such as the great Warner Bros film 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' - not the remake, but the original. It's still one of the best movies, hands down, ever made, and of course that goes back to the ingenuity of the characters and the storyline. — Corey Feldman

I did a film called 'Black Dynamite' that was very, very funny. That seems to be a film that's kind of a cult classic. — Kevin Chapman

Your generation - you've not heard the Verve or Jimi Hendrix or Eminem, you've not read The Catcher in the Rye, you've not seen a classic film like Terminator or Blade Runner. All you've done is read dross, listen to crap and watch Disney movies with happy endings. And what kind of generation have we produced? A slow, simple, dull one who never questions anything. A stunted generation. It's devolution because in order for society to progress, you need to be able to debate ideas, to question, to see the dark and the light in things — Sam Mills

What man can quote a scene from the 1939 film classic? That does not happen in real life, hell, it doesn't even happen in books. I halted hastily in the middle of the parking lot. Of course - it was obvious as a hooker at a debutant ball - Hunter. Was. Gay. — Genna Rulon

Never say never, for if you live long enough, chances are you will not be able to abide by the simplest of such injunctions. — Gloria Swanson

The scariest movie I have ever seen, and my favorite horror film is, 'The Exorcist.' It is a must-see horror/thriller classic. I watch it every couple of years. — Keegan Allen

Her first really great role, the one that cemented the "Jean Arthur character," was as the wisecracking big-city reporter who eventually melts for country rube Gary Cooper in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). It was the first of three terrific films for Capra: Jean played the down-to-earth daughter of an annoyingly wacky family in Capra's rendition of Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You (1938), and she was another hard-boiled city gal won over by a starry-eyed yokel in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). "Jean Arthur is my favorite actress," said Capra, who had successfully worked with Stanwyck, Colbert and Hepburn. " ... push that neurotic girl ... in front of the camera ... and that whining mop would magically blossom into a warm, lovely, poised and confident actress." Capra obviously recognized that Jean was often frustrated in her career choice. — Eve Golden

I'll definitely say that, before film school, I didn't have much of a film-history background. I didn't know much about classic cinema. — Cary Fukunaga

The advent of DVD/Blu-ray reissues of classic Hollywood and foreign films has been a boon to film buffs, who can now study their favorites in all their glistening detail and restored palettes. — James Wolcott

One of the main reasons I am so drawn to Hitchcock is that he planned his shots way in advance on story-boards, which he designed like classic paintings (he was an art connoisseur). It's why he found shooting on set boring - because he had already composed the film in his head. — Camille Paglia

Michael made his debut in John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic, Halloween , possibly the best scare movie to come along in the last twenty-five years ... [W]ith the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) movie to bear the Halloween moniker, we see how far the mighty have fallen ... In the final analysis, The Curse of Michael Myers is a horrific motion picture just not in the way the film makers intended - Directed By Joe Chappelle. — James Berardinelli

My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s. — John Cusack

To evoke the classic period of Italian cinema in a little film seemed like a great, fun thing to do. I had relations to that period. I had known Fellini and I had known Antonioni. I had made a movie with Antonioni and I had visited Fellini in his studios. So, it seemed like something worthwhile doing. You bring yourself to that mythical cinema. — Wim Wenders

Deanna Durbin's movies are about innocence and sweetness. They're from a different time and a different place. Outside the movie house, there was Depression, poverty, war, death, and loss. Audiences then were willing to pretend, to enter into a game of escape. No one really thought that the world was like a Deanna Durbin movie, they just wanted to pretend it was for about an hour and a half. — Jeanine Basinger

I'd never studied film. I had movies that I loved and movie stars that I looked up to, but I really had not seen a lot of the great classic films that he felt like he wanted me to see before I took on such a huge role. — Mary Steenburgen

I would trade many an art-film classic for the final exchange between Redford and Streisand in front of the Plaza. — Molly Haskell

I'd like to do a piece of Shakespeare. Any upcoming Shakespeare film. Just a bit to say I did a classic. — Jim Varney

You look up after many years and you find that a film has become a classic because it's meaningful to people and alive, decade after decade. — Woody Allen

If you are going to remake a film, you may as well remake a classic. — Liev Schreiber

The act of seeing any film generally is you knowing more than the characters, even if it's the classic Hitchcock shot of two people talking and a bomb being under the table. Part of the pleasure of it is seeing where people go wrong, and the irony of situations. — Richard Ayoade

How may a mortal, face and defeat the Kraken — Beverley Cross

It's sad that women characters have lost so much ground in popular movies. Didn't 'Thelma and Louise' prove that women want to see women doing things on film? Thelma and Louise were in a classic car; they were being chased by cops; they shot up a truck - and women loved it. — Robin Quivers

Personally, I consider 'Titanic' the most brilliant example of successful counterprogramming; the film actually countered itself by embedding an epic chick flick within a classic disaster movie. — Diablo Cody

That's what I like about film-it can be bizarre, classic, normal, romantic. Cinema is to me the most versatile thing. — Catherine Deneuve

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of "happily ever after" films. But some victors didn't feel too good about their spoils. They'd seen too much by then. Too much warfare, too much poverty, too much greed, all in the service of rapacious progress. A bundle of unfinished business lingered from the Depression - nagging questions about ingrained venality, mean human nature, and the way unchecked urban growth threw society dangerously out of whack. Writers and directors responded by delivering gritty, bitter dramas that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it - and liked it. — Eddie Muller

When I was in school, and even after, I did a lot of classic plays, and I guess it sort of extended into film. — Andre Holland

I'd like to do a cowboy film. I suppose I've come close to it on occasion, but not really to a classic cowboy film. — Sean Bean

I am a fan of movies and there is something about watching film that is burned into celluloid for all time that is now a piece of history. You go watch, being a fan of classic films and my children and their children are going to be watching these movies. — Edward Zwick

I'd always wanted the show to be more reality based science fiction, something along the lines of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which I consider to be the classic science fiction film. — Gil Gerard