Adolphe Menjou movie quotes

View Quote [to Dax, about Mireau] Well, it had to be done. France cannot afford to have fools guiding her military destiny.

View Quote Maybe the attack against the Ant Hill was impossible. Perhaps it was an error of judgment on our part. On the other hand, if your men had been a little more daring, you might have taken it. Who knows? Why should we have to bear more criticism and failure than we have to?...These executions will be a perfect tonic for the entire division. There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die...You see, Colonel, troops are like children. Just as a child wants his father to be firm, troops crave discipline. And one way to maintain discipline is to shoot a man now and then.

View Quote Broulard: Come, come, Colonel Dax. Don't overdo the surprise. You've been after the job from the start. We all know that, my boy.
Dax: I may be many things, sir. But I am not your boy.
Broulard: It would be a pity to lose your promotion before you get it - a promotion you have so very carefully planned for.
[Dax refuses the promotion, telling him what he can do with it]
Broulard: Colonel Dax, you will apologize at once or you shall be placed under arrest!
Dax: I apologize for not being entirely honest with you. I apologize for not revealing my true feelings. I apologize, sir, for not telling you sooner that you're a degenerate, sadistic old man. AND YOU CAN GO TO HELL BEFORE I APOLOGIZE TO YOU NOW OR EVER AGAIN.
Broulard: Colonel Dax, you're a disappointment to me. You've spoiled the keenness of your mind by wallowing in sentimentality. You really did want to save those men, and you were not angling for Mireau's command. You are an idealist - and I pity you as I would the village idiot. We're fighting a war, Dax, a war that we've got to win. Those men didn't fight, so they were shot. You bring charges against General Mireau, so I insist that he answer them. Wherein have I done wrong?
Dax: Because you don't know the answer to that question, I pity you.

View Quote Powell: Now, whether you were acting in my office or no, you did show fire and emotion and that's what I need in this part.
Terry: But I'm not an emotional person.
Powell: You will be when I get through with you. I'll mold you into one.
Terry: I don't want to be molded. I believe in acting with my brain.

View Quote Terry: By what right do you barricade yourself behind closed doors and refuse to see people?
Powell: That happens to be none of your business.
Terry: Do you know a girl just fainted in your outer office because you broke an appointment with her?
Powell: I'm sorry, I didn't know.
Terry: As long as you keep that door closed, you'll never know anything. You're a producer. You ought to see people. Why, the greatest actress in the world might be living out there fifteen feet away from you and you'd never even give her a chance!
Powell: Are you the greatest actress in the world?
Terry: Never mind about me, I don't need you, but those other girls do. They sweat and slave and go without food and decent clothes in the hope that someday, someone like you will come out of his office and notice them.
Powell: Do you realize that if I saw all of the girls that came up here that I wouldn't have time for anything else?...Every year, about fifty thousand girls decide that they want to go on the stage for one reason or another. Well, forty-nine thousand, five hundred of them are wrong! They'd be much better off home washing dishes...They'd be so much better off at home raising families.

View Quote Terry: [about Jean] In the first place, I like her.
Powell: She won't like you very much after this.
Terry: Oh, she'll see the light in time.
Powell: You mean you'd jeopardize your own reputation. Aren't you a kind of a Girl Scout?
Terry: Just a girl who uses her brain. Anyway, I wanted to show you that I can act.
Powell: You are a faker.
Terry: Oh, we're both fakers. Isn't faking the essence of acting?
Powell: Well, it may apply to actors, but it does not apply to me.
Terry: You - you're a bigger faker than I am.
Powell: That's libel.
Terry: Not if I can prove it.

View Quote [to Frederic] Poor baby. Tomorrow I will get you drunk, and I will take out your liver, and I will put you in a good Italian liver, and make a man of you again. Ciao, baby!

View Quote Rinaldi: I will see you are decorated for bravery. Perhaps we can get you the medalgio d'argento. But certainly the bronze one. Did you carry somebody out of battle?
Lieutenant Frederic Henry: I didn't carry anyone. I couldn't move.
Rinaldi: Surely there was something heroic. Tell me what you did.
Lieutenant Frederic Henry: I was blown up eating cheese.