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Penelope Gilliatt
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“Black and white are the most ravishing colors of all in film.”
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“Rosalia is dressed in raven clothes forty years too old for her, so that she seems to be in mourning for her life ...”
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“People in a temper often say a lot of silly, terrible things they mean.”
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“Movies have now reached the same stage as sex — it's all technique and no feeling.”
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“Funniness is the wild card in the pack.”
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“It [humor] inhabits the marginal.”
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“Humor is subversive.”
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“... jokes are ideally pleasurable. They are an act of assassination without a corpse, a moment of total annihilation that paradoxically makes anything possible.”
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“Great comedy calls large matters into question.”
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“[On Watermelon Man:] ... it is impossible to look at this film without its giving you a share in its insane bad taste, which is rather companionable of it ...”
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“A satirist, often in danger himself, has the bravery of knowing that to withhold wit's conjecture is to endanger the species.”
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“The masters of the comic spirit are often our prophets.”
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“[On John Cleese:] He sometimes seems to swat at his own thoughts as if they were bees.”
Penelope Gilliatt, English writer, screenwriter, film critic
(1932 - 1993)