Only one line among America's top 100 movie quotes belongs to a CGI character
When the American Film Institute ranked the 100 most memorable lines in American cinema in 2005, a jury of 1,500 artists, critics and historians put Rhett Butler's parting brush-off from Gone with the Wind at the top. Casablanca placed six lines, and Humphrey Bogart spoke five winners himself.
The list was unveiled on June 21, 2005, during a three-hour CBS broadcast hosted by Pierce Brosnan, with actors and filmmakers chiming in. Jurors weighed each candidate on whether people repeat it in their own lives, whether it summons the memory of a treasured film, and whether it was genuinely dialogue spoken in an American movie. Song lyrics were ruled out entirely, so no musical number could slip onto the ballot.
Behind Casablanca, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz tie with three entries apiece. Rick Blaine is the most-quoted character, with four lines, and Bogart's total includes one from The Maltese Falcon. His presence stretches further still: two more of the chosen lines were addressed to him, by Alfonso Bedoya and Lauren Bacall, and Claude Rains issues the famous order about rounding up suspects for his character's benefit.
Popular memory has bent several winners out of shape. Dorothy's remark about no longer being in Kansas, a request to Mr. DeMille for a close-up and a warning to fasten seatbelts before a bumpy ride are all routinely misquoted. The best-known slip concerns Bogart, who never actually asks Sam to play it in those words; his real line is a longer, angrier demand that the pianist perform the song for him as he once did for her.
Just one pick comes from a film released this century, the precious line from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and it is also the only entry voiced by a computer-generated character. Only two of the hundred are a film's opening words, Rosebud from Citizen Kane and a greeting from Funny Girl, while twelve are closing lines.
Source: AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes
