Devastating Movie Quotes

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Black suits you," he commented. "Don't get any ideas, Romeo." His frown curled into a slow grin, at once mocking and devastatingly handsome. "Ah, Shakespeare. 'How silver sweet lovers' tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears.'" He laughed. "Saw the movie, did you?" "I also saw Buffy the Vampire Slayer," I said. "Guess which one I liked better.
Cecily White (Prophecy Girl (Angel Academy, #1))
The most genuine, soul-stirring smile forms and his entire aspect brightens when his eyes meet mine. My steps falter. No one’s ever looked at me like that before—like I’m the sunrise after a long winter’s night. Or the first present on Christmas morning. It’s a look you see in movies, and from Graeme, it’s devastating.
Angie Hockman (Shipped)
I was angry, but I was also tired and devastated by the idea that I would have to spend another four hours trying to reassemble some obnoxious feel-good movie that had done nothing but make me feel bad. I did what any tough, self-reliant, overburdened, sleep-deprived, seasoned investigator would do: I cried.
Lisa Lutz (The Spellmans Strike Again (The Spellmans, #4))
The best monster films don't just parade some sort of terrifying beast in front of your eyes. They pull at a hidden element of your mind, a part that feels ugly, or afraid, or lonely. They give it flesh and blood, and sometimes sharp teeth. The power of a monster movie is in seeing that dark part of you running around on-screen. You get to watch it wreak the havoc and devastation you should never effect in real life. It's cathartic to see what happens if you let that part of yourself loose instead of shunning it and banishing it to its own Black Lagoon.
Mallory O'Meara (The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick)
I’d seen Liz fight back tears before, and it was the worst thing I’d ever witnessed. Because Liz Buxbaum was supposed to be laughing and romantic - she’d been born in a daydream and been built on love stories, for God’s sake - so seeing her devastated was the worst.
Lynn Painter (Wes & Liz’s College Road Trip (Better than the Movies, #1.7))
what does help the person who has been raped is to chew it up and then spit it the hell out. And by chew it up I mean talk about it, write about it, paint it, make a movie about it, and then be done with it and move on. Because here’s the truth about rape: you do not have to be victimized by it forever. You can take this awful, bottomless horror the rapist has inflicted on you, and you can seize it and recycle it into something wonderful and helpful and useful. You can, in this way, transform what was “done” to you into something that was “given” to you in the form of brutally raw material. You can, in other words, accept this hideous thing and embrace it and take complete control of the experience and reshape it as you please. This is not to deny the experience and how devastating it is; it is to accept the experience on the deepest level as your own possession now. An experience that is now part of you. Instead of allowing it to be a tap that drains you, you can force it into duty in service to your creative or intellectual goals. Many
Augusten Burroughs (This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't)
So where did you go, Holly?” Rafiq never tires of this conversation, no matter how often we do it. “Everywhere,” says Lorelei, being brave and selfless. “Colombia, Australia, China, Iceland, Old New York. Didn’t you, Gran?” “I did, yes.” I wonder what life in Cartagena, in Perth, in Shanghai is like now. Ten years ago I could have streetviewed the cities, but the Net’s so torn and ragged now that even when we have reception it runs at prebroadband speed. My tab’s getting old, too, and I only have one more in storage. If any arrive via Ringaskiddy Concession, they never make it out of Cork City. I remember the pictures of seawater flooding Fremantle during the deluge of ’33. Or was it the deluge of ’37? Or am I confusing it with pictures of the sea sluicing into the New York subway, when five thousand people drowned underground? Or was that Athens? Or Mumbai? Footage of catastrophes flowed so thick and fast through the thirties that it was hard to keep track of which coastal region had been devastated this week, or which city had been decimated by Ebola or Ratflu. The news turned into a plotless never-ending disaster movie I could hardly bring myself to watch.
David Mitchell (The Bone Clocks)
When live entertainment was not available, women delivered the film and ran the projectors for the hundreds of movies that were shown to the soldiers. Frances witnessed the popularity of movies time after time; they were shown in warehouses, airplane hangars, on battered portable screens, or projected against the wall of a building in the village square where townsfolk crammed in around the soldiers. “Charlie and Doug” were the two favorites, but anything showing familiar sights from home—the Statue of Liberty, a Chicago department store, or San Francisco’s Golden Gate—created a sensation and bolstered morale. Toward the end of the war German propaganda films left behind by the retreating army became a prime attraction.30 Frances traveled to and from Paris for a few days at a time, usually arriving on or near the front after a battle to witness doctors and nurses doing what they could for the injured in the shattered villages and burying the dead. She was struck by how thoroughly exhausted the Europeans were after four devastating years of war.
Cari Beauchamp (Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood)
Cannes was to blame, he told himself defensively. It was a city made for the indulgence of the senses, all ease and sunshine and provocative flesh. “What had he seen, what had he learned? He had seen all kinds of movies, good and bad, mostly bad. He had been plunged into a carnival, a delirium of film. In the halls, on the terraces, on the beach, at the parties, the art or industry or whatever it deserved to be called in these few days was exposed at its essence. The whole thing was there—the artists and pseudo-artists, the businessmen, the con men, the buyers and sellers, the peddlers, the whores, the pornographers, critics, hangers-on, the year’s heroes, the year’s failures. And then the distillation of what it was all about, a film of Bergman's and one of Bunuel's, pure and devastating.
Irwin Shaw (Evening in Byzantium)
We deal with so many nightmares on a regular basis. When I’m watching a horror movie, there’s a pattern, a sense of control in them. I’m just an observer, not having to deal with any of the repercussions. It’s a nice dream to think monsters play by the rules, that they’ve got a pattern you can unlock and follow. Real life’s messy, and the chaos leaves you devastated in the wake.
Katherine McIntyre (Rising for Autumn (Philadelphia Coven Chronicles #3))
Marilyn Monroe was so much more than just a famous movie star. She was a vulnerable soul, a generous spirit, and a brave soldier in a devastating battle with her own mind. Attempting to explain her difficult journey is the challenge I set for myself with this book. At the heart of the story, I discovered a very different kind of Marilyn, a woman far more complex and serious—and maybe even tragic—than the one I thought I knew.
J. Randy Taraborrelli (The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe)
Well,” he sighed, squeezing my hand back. “I guess we were both running away in different ways.” “What do you mean?” Dad shook his head. “Your mother took a Mustang. I took a whiskey bottle.” He reached up and readjusted his glasses, an unconscious habit-he always did it when he was making a point. “I was so devastated by what your mother did to me that I forgot how horrible drinking is. I forgot to look on the bright side.” “Dad,” I said, “I don’t think there is a bright side to divorce. It’s a pretty sucky thing all around.” He nodded. “Maybe that’s true, but there are a lot of bright sides to my life. I have a job I like, a nice house in a good neighborhood, and a wonderful daughter.” I rolled my eyes. “Oh God,” I muttered. “Don’t go all Lifetime movie on me. Seriously.” “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling. “But I mean it. A lot of people would kill for my life, but I didn’t even consider that. I took it-and you-for granted. I’m so, so sorry for that, Bumblebee.
Kody Keplinger (The DUFF: Designated Ugly Fat Friend (Hamilton High, #1))
All television programs are rooted in drama and conflict: good versus evil, cops versus robbers, doctors versus devastating illnesses, space explorers versus evil alien invaders. Siskel & Ebert was the first and perhaps greatest TV show in history where the struggle between the two antagonists was entirely intellectual. Tensions were never resolved with fistfights or shoot-outs, but with conversation and analysis. Hell, for the entirety of their twenty years on television, Roger and Gene clashed and quarreled without ever getting out of their seats-comfy chairs in a Chicago studio designed to look like a cozy movie theater balcony. And yet their verbal sparring matches often contained more suspense than the movies they reviewed.
Matt Singer (Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever)
You can make quite a life for yourself hosting charity dinners and collecting art. You can find a way to be happy with whatever the truth is. Until your daughter dies. Connor was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer two and a half years ago, when she was thirty-nine. She was given months to live. I knew what it was like to realize that the one you love would leave this earth well before you. But nothing could prepare me for the pain of watching my child suffer. I held her when she puked from the chemo. I wrapped her in blankets when she was so cold she was crying. I kissed her forehead like she was my baby again, because she was forever my baby. I told her every single day that her life had been the world’s greatest gift to me, that I believed I was put on earth not to make movies or wear emerald-green gowns and wave at crowds but to be her mother. I sat next to her hospital bed. “Nothing I have ever done,” I said, “has made me as proud as the day I gave birth to you.” “I know,” she said. “I’ve always known that.” I had made a point of not bullshitting her ever since her father died. We had the sort of relationship where we believed each other, believed in each other. She knew she was loved. She knew that she had changed my life, that she had changed the world. She made it eighteen months before she passed away. And when they put her in the ground next to her father, I broke like I have never broken before. The devastating luxury of panic overtook me. And it has never left.
Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
I slumped down on the couch with the kids. Coco had been such a big movie last year. What would be the next Pixar hit? Whatever it was, Aunt Linda would never get to know it. Even if it was bigger than Frozen, she'd never know it existed. Any song that come out from this week onward, Aunt Linda would never hear. Not once. Everything she was ever going to know about had already happened. Britney Spears could be voted the new president of the United States, and Aunt Linda would never know. The government might finally admit they have aliens in a warehouse, and Aunt Linda would never know. The world would keep moving, and tragedies would happen, and beautiful things would happen, and we'd invent things and grow and Aunt Linda would never see any of it.
Sophie Gonzales (Only Mostly Devastated)
In the nineteen-forties in Nazi-occupied Paris, an artist named Marcel Carné made a movie. He filmed it on location on the Street of Thieves, the old Parisian theater street where at one time there was everything from Shakespearean companies to flea circuses, from grand opera to girlie shows. Carné's film was a period piece and required hundreds of extras in nineteenth-century costume. It required horses and carriages and jugglers and acrobats. The movie turned out to be over three hours long. And Carné made it right under the Nazi's noses. The film is a three hour affirmation of life and an examination of the strange and sometimes devastating magnetism of love. Romantic? Oh, babe, it's romantic enough to make a travel poster sigh and a sonnet blush. But completely uncompromising. It's a celebration of the human spirit in all of its goofy, gentle, and grotesque guises. And he made it in the very midst of Nazi occupation, filmed this beauty inside the belly of the beast. He called it Les Enfants du Paradis–Children of Paradise–and forty years later it's still moving audiences around the world. Now, I don't want to take anything away from the French resistance. Its brave raids and acts of sabotage undermined the Germans and helped bring about their downfall. But in many ways Marcel Carné's movie, his Children of Paradise, was more important than the armed resistance. The resisters might have saved the skin of Paris, Carné kept alive its soul.
Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)
Trump’s shortcomings stood out particularly during emergencies. I remember briefing the president in the Oval Office on the projected storm track of an Atlantic hurricane. At first, he seemed to grasp the devastating magnitude of the Category 4 superstorm, until he opened his mouth. “Is that the direction they always spin?” the president asked me. “I’m sorry sir,” I responded, “I don’t understand.” “Hurricanes. Do they always spin like that?” He made a swirl in the air with his finger. “Counterclockwise?” I asked. He nodded. “Yes, Mr. President. It’s called the Coriolis effect. It’s the same reason toilet water spins the other direction in the Southern Hemisphere.” “Incredible,” Trump replied, squinting his eyes to look at the foam board presentation. We needed him to urge residents to evacuate from the Carolinas, where it looked like the storm would make landfall, but the president mused about another potential response. “You know, I was watching TV, and they interviewed a guy in a parking lot,” Trump leaned back and recounted. “He was wearing a red hat, a MAGA hat, and he said he was going to ‘ride it out.’ Isn’t that something? That’s what Trump supporters do. They’re tough. They ride it out. I think that’s what I’ll tell them to do.” Sometimes his irreverence could be funny, even charming. That day it wasn’t. Worried looks filled the room. A clever communications aide piped up. “Mr. President, I wouldn’t take that chance. This is going to be a pretty bad storm, and you don’t want to lose supporters in the Carolinas before the 2020 election.” The president thought about it for a moment. “That’s such a good point. We should urge the evacuations.” You couldn’t write such a stupid scene in a movie, but it always got a little worse.
Miles Taylor (Blowback A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump)
We need to be humble enough to recognize that unforeseen things can and do happen that are nobody’s fault. A good example of this occurred during the making of Toy Story 2. Earlier, when I described the evolution of that movie, I explained that our decision to overhaul the film so late in the game led to a meltdown of our workforce. This meltdown was the big unexpected event, and our response to it became part of our mythology. But about ten months before the reboot was ordered, in the winter of 1998, we’d been hit with a series of three smaller, random events—the first of which would threaten the future of Pixar. To understand this first event, you need to know that we rely on Unix and Linux machines to store the thousands of computer files that comprise all the shots of any given film. And on those machines, there is a command—/bin/rm -r -f *—that removes everything on the file system as fast as it can. Hearing that, you can probably anticipate what’s coming: Somehow, by accident, someone used this command on the drives where the Toy Story 2 files were kept. Not just some of the files, either. All of the data that made up the pictures, from objects to backgrounds, from lighting to shading, was dumped out of the system. First, Woody’s hat disappeared. Then his boots. Then he disappeared entirely. One by one, the other characters began to vanish, too: Buzz, Mr. Potato Head, Hamm, Rex. Whole sequences—poof!—were deleted from the drive. Oren Jacobs, one of the lead technical directors on the movie, remembers watching this occur in real time. At first, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then, he was frantically dialing the phone to reach systems. “Pull out the plug on the Toy Story 2 master machine!” he screamed. When the guy on the other end asked, sensibly, why, Oren screamed louder: “Please, God, just pull it out as fast as you can!” The systems guy moved quickly, but still, two years of work—90 percent of the film—had been erased in a matter of seconds. An hour later, Oren and his boss, Galyn Susman, were in my office, trying to figure out what we would do next. “Don’t worry,” we all reassured each other. “We’ll restore the data from the backup system tonight. We’ll only lose half a day of work.” But then came random event number two: The backup system, we discovered, hadn’t been working correctly. The mechanism we had in place specifically to help us recover from data failures had itself failed. Toy Story 2 was gone and, at this point, the urge to panic was quite real. To reassemble the film would have taken thirty people a solid year. I remember the meeting when, as this devastating reality began to sink in, the company’s leaders gathered in a conference room to discuss our options—of which there seemed to be none. Then, about an hour into our discussion, Galyn Susman, the movie’s supervising technical director, remembered something: “Wait,” she said. “I might have a backup on my home computer.” About six months before, Galyn had had her second baby, which required that she spend more of her time working from home. To make that process more convenient, she’d set up a system that copied the entire film database to her home computer, automatically, once a week. This—our third random event—would be our salvation. Within a minute of her epiphany, Galyn and Oren were in her Volvo, speeding to her home in San Anselmo. They got her computer, wrapped it in blankets, and placed it carefully in the backseat. Then they drove in the slow lane all the way back to the office, where the machine was, as Oren describes it, “carried into Pixar like an Egyptian pharaoh.” Thanks to Galyn’s files, Woody was back—along with the rest of the movie.
Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
[I]n order for the movie [Lord, Save Us from Your Followers] to mock Christian moralists it had to rely on the objective standard of Christian morality to do so. Think about it. Because Christianity is grounded in an immutable standard of rightness and wrongness--an absolute moral compass, if you will--it has the unique ability to be self-critical and self-correcting and to repent, reform, revive and return to the right standard that Merchant [the film's producer], and others, are bemoaning has been compromised. Without orthodoxy (right ideas) there is no way to criticize others for lacking orthopraxy (right behavior).
Everett Piper (Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth)
Adult Warning Signs Lack of peer relationships outside the family Feelings of guilt or shame Difficulty with social skills such as keeping a conversation going Difficulty with intimacy in relationships Sense of being different, alienated from others Drug or alcohol dependency Feelings of loneliness Depression Suicidal thoughts Quick temper Difficulty making or keeping friends Devastated reaction to rejection Fear of humiliation A sense of reality as black or white Distorted body image Anxiety attacks, especially in social situations Difficulty making decisions Anxiety reactions in restaurants, banks, movies Persistent difficulty with job, career Sexual-identity problems Physical complaints/hypochondria Self-destructive behavior Stress-related physical symptoms Fear of groups
Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
Mr. Zelenskyy thinks he was assigned a movie project, titled "Foolish Brave President ". Shooting has started but it has no pack-up date, devastated cities, villages are the artificial movie setup, producer's money, so he doesn't care. There are no refugees also. 3 million citizens who fled are actually junior artists. millions of junior artists. There are working in this movie, 3 million have already returned home after playing their role. Shooting is also going live on telecast. He's glad to feel happy as the world media appreciates his acting, so throughout he's enjoying playing this role. And he's damn sure he will be entitled to each and every award. His character has deep emotions, touching drama, great actions, but the very important thing is completely missing, which is the main character of the leader. Diplomacy and citizens' safety policy !!!
Mohammed Zaki Ansari ("Zaki's Gift Of Love")
Where Jolson conquered, Bing Crosby convinced and charmed, and like Astaire, Jolson too for that matter, he did not possess the physical gifts of a standard leading man (angles and ears and hair, yet again). Also like Astaire, he made it all seem easy, with the laid-back acting and the unforced way that devastating baritone could pour out and swing out. In one crucial sense he was more beholden to Jolson than Astaire, being primarily a solo performer who sang to people more than he sang with them. Recall: who was Crosby’s only steady partner on film? Bob Hope, in a partnership based in jokey rivalry. Other singers in Crosby films, besides Hope and Dorothy Lamour, seldom counted. Nor did most of Crosby’s films. Paramount, his home studio, was a formula-bound factory for most of the 1930s and ’40s, and the golden goose of the Crosby films did not countenance feather-ruffling. One after another, they were amiable time-passers, relaxed escapism that made a mint and sold tons of records and sheet music. For many then and some now, these vehicles offered unthreatening comfort—few chances taken, little deviation from formula, a likable guy ambling through some minor plot and singing mostly great songs. On occasion there was something as glaring as the ridiculous Dixie: as composer Dan Emmett, Crosby speeds up the title song into an uptempo hit only because the theater’s caught on fire. Generally, his films lacked even that cuckoo invigoration, which is why posterity dotes on Holiday Inn and its splashy, inferior semi-remake, White Christmas, and few of the others. While it would not be accurate to view Crosby as another megalomaniacal Jolson type, he lacked Astaire’s forceful imagination. Greater professional curiosity might have made his films—not simply his singing—transcend time and circumstance.
Richard Barrios (Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter)
When Sasha was ten she had such an intense crush on Harrison Ford that sometimes she would lie in bed and cry with deep sorrow that they would never be together. She knew it was weird. He was a grown man and a famous actor and she was a child with a dawning awareness that little hairs were growing up and down her legs, and it all compounded into a tragedy so devastating that she could barely stand to watch him in movies when anyone else was in the room. Her brothers obviously noticed her mooning after him and taunted her mercilessly. Later in life, when she saw in some celebrity magazine at the nail salon that Harrison got an earring, she felt embarrassed all over again that she had been obsessed with someone so old.
Jenny Jackson (Pineapple Street)
I cleared my throat. I hated ruining the night’s vibes with talk of college. Talk of next year always left me feeling devastated because I knew firsthand how fast everything changed. Life pressed forward with a burning velocity that left all of the beautifully-pressed details quickly forgotten.
Lynn Painter (Better Than the Movies (Better than the Movies, #1))
Could it be that end-times prophecies had become a kind of biblical sci-fi movie to my friends, where explosions are all fake and the crowds all background actors and paid extras? Did they consider the Damascus prophecy as something that might happen to real people, like the devastating reality of September 11? How could they not be tormented by the very thought?
Lois Tverberg (Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewish Words of Jesus Can Change Your Life)
One of the greatest decorum scenes in movie history graces the climax of 8 Mile, Eminem’s semiautobiography. He gets talked into a competition at a dance club in downtown Detroit where hip-hop artists (orators, if you will) take turns insulting each other. The audience chooses the winner by applause. Eventually, the contest comes down to two people: Eminem and a sullen-looking black guy. (Well, not as sullen as Eminem. Nobody can be that sullen.) Eminem wears proper attire: stupid skullcap, clothes a few sizes too big, and as much bling as he can afford. If he showed up dressed like Cary Grant, he would look terrific—to you and me. But the dance club crowd would find him wildly indecorous. Clothing is the least of his decorum problems, though. He happens to be white, and everyone else in the room is black. Eminem nonetheless manages to devastate his adversary by revealing a nasty little secret: this putative gangbanger attended a prep school! All the poor guy’s hip-hop manners are pointless, because the audience finds them phony.
Jay Heinrichs (Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion)
It is devastating when you have downloaded the full movie of your perfect love but the other person seems to still buffer over his feelings for you!!!!
Karisma Dhawan
All the experts proved what we’ve all known all along. That they are full of shit. They all got it so wrong they needed cover and when they saw something, no matter how asinine, it became gospel to cover their abject failure. Still, the left wouldn’t feel sorry for itself for long. First it picked up the Russian spy story and started pushing it to every devastated reporter who would listen. Then it did everything it had told us the Trump supporters would do if Hillary won. Think about it. For weeks leading up to the election, we had been hearing about all the horrible things Donald Trump would force his supporters to do if he lost. DJT wouldn’t accept the defeat they were all so sure was coming. The editorial boards at the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran many articles warning us about the chaos that was about to ensue. According to popular opinion, Trump supporters were going to riot in the streets, refuse to accept the results of the election, and begin some kind of underground coup against the duly elected president, Hillary Clinton. They would start a second civil war. The streets would become absolute anarchy. And when things didn’t go the way the Democrats had wanted them to go, what happened? Let’s see. They held riots in the streets. (Check.) They refused to accept the results of the election, cooking up one of the strangest spy-movie stories I’ve ever heard in order to maintain their collective delusion. (Check.) Then they formed an underground group of online keyboard warriors called “the Resistance,” dedicated to taking down my father one stupid hashtag at a time. Prominent journalists, liberal activists, and actors have all identified themselves as proud members of “the Resistance” on Twitter. When I’m attacked by an outraged mob online, their voices are usually among the loudest. (And Check.)
Donald Trump Jr. (Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us)
in responding to challenging life events from the devastating (becoming handicapped, losing a loved one) to the difficult (a divorce, an illness), people do better than they anticipate. They believe that they’ll never laugh again, but they do. They think they’ll never love again, but they do. They go grocery shopping and see movies; they have sex and dance at weddings; they overeat on Thanksgiving and go on diets in the New Year—the day-to-day returns.
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
At age fifteen, when I accompanied my mother and her three sisters to see the movie premiere of Waiting to Exhale, I knew what it meant, then, when Bernadine, after being newly separated from her cheating husband, went to the hairdresser and asked her stylist to chop off nearly every inch of her beautiful luxurious mane. Even though I didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand the devastation of losing a marriage, I knew how much effort it took to grow that length and thickness of hair and keep it beautiful. I knew how much Black women and girls envied having long, thick hair in a world where white women’s ability to grow and regrow hair like weeds was the standard of beauty. Chopping it all off meant she was going through something exceedingly terrible.
Brittney Cooper (Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower)
I tell John about what’s known as the psychological immune system. Just as the physiological immune system helps your body recover from physical attack, your brain helps you recover from psychological attack. A series of studies by the researcher Daniel Gilbert at Harvard found that in responding to challenging life events from the devastating (becoming handicapped, losing a loved one) to the difficult (a divorce, an illness), people do better than they anticipate. They believe that they’ll never love again, but they do. They think they’ll never love again, but they do. They go grocery shopping and see movies; they have sex and dance at weddings; they overeat on Thanksgiving and go on diets in the New Year – the day-to-day returns.
Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)
But film sometimes flinches at the expertise of actresses, and the sympathetic viewer may come to realize that there was a mute honesty in Novak: she did not conceal the fact that she had been drawn into a world capable of exploiting her. Filming seemed an ordeal for her; it was as if the camera hurt her. But while many hostile to the movies rose in defense of the devastation of Marilyn Monroe—whether or not she was a sentient victim—Novak was stoical, obdurate, or sullen. She allowed very few barriers between that raw self and the audience and now looks dignified, reflective, and responsive to feeling where Monroe appears haphazard and oblivious. Novak is the epitome of every small-town waitress or beauty contest winner who thought of being in the movies. Despite a thorough attempt by Columbia to glamorize her, she never lost the desperate attentiveness of someone out of her depth but refusing to give in. Her performances improve with time so that ordinary films come to center on her; even Vertigo, Hitchcock’s masterpiece, owes some of its power to Novak’s harrowing suspension between tranquility and anxiety.
David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Expanded and Updated)