Good DIALOGUE Movies

Self | January 8, 2002 | PJ-Comix

[PJ-Comix]

Okay, I caught a bunch of flak because I found "Lord Of The Rings" BORRRRRINNNGGGG! One reason, among others, is that I found the dialogue to be dull. I like movies with good dialogue. With good dialogue, a movie can be quite interesting even with minimal action.

One problem nowadays is that Special Effects have replaced DIALOGUE which is why there are few good dialogue movies nowadays. Most of the good dialogue movies I have to catch on the tube where they play old movies.

Here is a list of a few good DIALOGUE movies. A lot of them were directed by Billy Wilder. My favorite dialogue movie is Stalag 17. The dialogue in that movie was incredible. Hardly a thing was said that wasn't fascinating. I must have seen Stalag 17 at least 50 times and I never get tired of it. The lines in that script were CLASSIC. Remember when the camp commandant portrayed by Otto Preminger said: "Curtains would do wonders for these barracks....You vill NOT get them!"

Okay, here is my partial list of great dialogue movies:

1. Stalag 17
2. A Foreign Affair
3. Casablanca
4. No Time For Sergeants
5. The African Queen
6. Sunset Boulevard
7. Stagecoach
8. Mr. Roberts
9. The Seven Year Itch
10. Dr. Strangelove

[contessa machiaveli]

LA confidential

[Varda]

A recent one that is wonderful is "Babette's Feast.

[Joan912]

These are in no particular order...

1. Adam's Rib

2. Stagedoor

3. Desk Set

4. Casablanca

5. The Great Escape

6. The Thing (original)

[PJ-Comix]

Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Hell I like you! You can come over to my house and f*ck my sister.

[mrustow]

Sgt. Lee Emery, USMC (ret., as in gunny).

[charphar]

Col. Jessup: "You want answers?"

Lt. Caffey: "I want the truth!"

Col. Jessup: "You can't handle the truth!"

YES!

[Argus]

It's the scripts. They suck now. The old screenwriters came out of the theater, book writing and yellow journalism. The new ones come out of film school. It shows. They don't know how to write dialog, and people under forty don't really converse anymore anyway. They grunt slogans at each other. Anyway, four of your top ten were written/directed by Billy Wilder (alone or with one of his great partners). Try another one of his - THE APARTMENT. Great dialog and story structure. For another, although it's in French, CHILDREN OF PARADISE has great, plain poetic dialog by Prevert. Shakespeare on film can be good (he's all dialog). Olivier's production of HENRY V is first rate. Check out SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS for snappy Broadway bile. I could go on.

[mrustow]

Emery=Ermey (sp.?)

[rockfish59]

#4-'you're the best danged sergeant in the WHOLE DANGED ARR FORCE'!

#8-'ROBERTS, you get up here ON THE DOUBLE, MISTAH'!!!

[okie01]

The Third Man, of course. Harry Lime for one of the all-time screen villains.

Another great dialogue movie, which received little in the way of credit, was The Americanization of Emily -- with James Garner and Julie Andrews trading lines written by Paddy Chayefsky.

[Consort]

"Silent Movie"

[KirklandJunction]

Trivia: Tony Hopkins broke his arm (disagreement with a horse) and filming the completion was chaos for three weeks.

[rockfish59]

ONE EYED JACKS

'you get up, you big tub of guts'!

'i'll give you a fair trial kid.....and then i'm gonna hang ya'!

[SBeck]

Ditto on the Coen brothers. One of the funniest movies ever IMHO is The Big Lebowski.

[avenir]

House of Games

Klute

Ordinary People

Lifeboat

Another Woman

Titus

Babette's Feast

[SBeck]

The movie "Pi", the best movie you never heard of. A very dark and disturbing film that will make you think about it for days on end.

[rockfish59]

day the earth stood still

'they're not human, they're democrats'!

[Polonius]

Bringing Up Baby, The Maltese Falcon, The Godfather I & II, Raiders of the Lost Ark, My Dinner With Andre (of course, it's all dialogue), Trainspotting and Pulp Fiction, just to name a few.

[BunnySlippers]

The best dialogue movie of all time is "My Dinner with Andre"

You beat me to it, hon ...

[rockfish59]

stalag 17

'wadda ya' know, the crud made it'!