12 Januar 2010

Edward G. Robinson

Edward G. Robinson’s monologue rant in Double Indemnity (1944)

“Come now, you’ve never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why, they’ve got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide how committed; by poison, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosives, irritants, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. But, Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there’s not one single case of suicide by a leap from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour! Now how can anybody jump off a slow moving moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No, no soap, Mr. Norton. We’re sunk, and we’ll have to pay through the nose, and you know it.”