100 Great Closing Lines
Monday, December 3, 2012 at 10:44PM | Post a Comment 
Last lines of movies can be prose or poetry—neat little wrap-ups, baffling enigmas, witty punch lines, weighty morals, desperate pleas and wicked surprises. And they can be a tricky, delicate thing to pull off. The lasting impression of a movie that is merely very good can be greatly elevated by a killer coda; conversely, a stinker exit can sour an otherwise satisfying night at the theater. Here are a hundred of the better ones—final sentiments that rank as our favorites, from the intertitle of a 1927 silent science fiction film to a rare spoken line from 2011’s (mostly) silent Oscar winner.
“Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Walsh (Joe Mantell)
Chinatown (1974)
“I’m not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know and they’ll say ‘Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly.’”
Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins)
Psycho (1960)
“I now pronounce you men and wives.”
Reverand Elcott (Ian Wolfe)
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
“Happy the man and happy he alone, he who can call today his own, he who is secure within can say: Tomorrow do thy worst! For I have lived today.”
Narrator (Micheál Mac Liammóir)
Tom Jones (1963)
“How’d you like to make yourself a thousand dollars a day, Mr. Boot? I’m a thousand-dollar-a-day newspaperman. You can have me for nothing.”
Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas)
Ace in the Hole (1951)
“Where ya headed, cowboy?”
“Nowhere special.”
“Nowhere special…I always wanted to go there.”
“Come on.”
Jim (Gene Wilder) and Bart (Cleavon Little)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
“What do we do now?”
Bill McKay (Robert Redford)
The Candidate (1972)
“How shall I make out the report on him, Captain?”
“Better make it ‘dead on arrival.’”
D.O.A. (1950)
“Goodbye, Mary Poppins. Don’t stay away too long.”
Bert (Dick Van Dyke)
Mary Poppins (1964)
“There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”
Narrator (Mark Hellinger)
The Naked City (1948)
