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Introduction: These are many of the best-known opening lines, fade-ins, and first words of dialogue heard throughout cinematic history - the initial opening words of films sometimes heard even before the title credits. In quite a few cases, the memorable opening lines are also some of the greatest lines in film history. They often reveal a vital truth about the film, introduce the film, or help to define what the film was all about. The words, often spoken by an off-screen narrator or character, often help to set a mood or tone before the film begins, and they are often great one-liners. See also Greatest Last Words and Closing Film Lines.
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(chronological, by film title - Part 1) Part 1 | Part 2 |
| Famous Opening Line | Film Title |
| “Revolution is the only lawful, equal, effectual war. It was in Russia that this war was declared and begun.” (title card) | Battleship Potemkin (1925, USSR) |
| “OK. Say, Jones and Barry are doing a show!” | 42nd Street (1933) |
| (sung) “Gone are my blues and gone are my tears. I've got good news to shout in your ears. The long-lost dollar has come back to the fold. With silver you can turn your dreams to gold. So...” | Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) |
| “Hunger strike, eh? How long has this been going on?” | It Happened One Night (1934) |
| Senator Samuel Foley - dead, yeah, yeah, died a minute ago - here at St. Vincent's.” | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) |
| “This picture takes place in Paris in those wonderful days when a siren was a brunette and not an alarm --- and if a Frenchman turned out the light, it was not on account of an air raid!” | Ninotchka (1939) |
| “Apaches, Captain! The hills are swarmin' with 'em.” | Stagecoach (1939) |
| “For nearly forty years this story has given faithful service to the Young in Heart; and Time has been powerless to put its kindly philosophy out of fashion. To those of you who have been faithful to it in return...and to the Young in Heart...we dedicate this picture.” (title card) | The Wizard of Oz (1939) |
| “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” | Rebecca (1940) |
| “R-O-S-E-B-U-D.” | Citizen Kane (1941) |
| “You're only wasting your time writing speeches like that. Why worry about the people and their problems? Think of your own.” | The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) |
| “I am packing my belongings in the shawl my mother used to wear when she went to the market. And I'm going from my valley. And this time, I shall never return. I am leaving behind me my fifty years of memory. Memory. Streams that the mind will forget so much of what only this moment has passed, and yet hold clear and bright the memory of what happened years ago - of men and women long since dead...” | How Green Was My Valley (1941) |
| “Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness.” | Cat People (1942) |
| “The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873.” | The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) |
| “Our story takes us down this shadowed path to a dark and guarded building in the British midlands...” | Random Harvest (1942) |
| “I am Matthew Macauley. I have been dead for two years, but so much of me is still living that I know now the end is only the beginning. As I look down on my homeland of Ithaca, California, with its cactus, vineyards and orchards, I feel so much of me is still living there - in the places I've been, in the fields, the streets, the church, and, most of all, my home where my hopes, my dreams, my ambitions, my beliefs still live in the daily lives of my loved ones.” | The Human Comedy (1943) |
| “This is a Hallowe'en tale of Brooklyn, where anything can happen - - and it usually does. At 3 P.M. on this particular day, this was happening -” (title screen) | Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) |
| “This is the story of that unconquerable fortress - the American home, 1943.” | Since You Went Away (1944) |
| “Mildred!” | Mildred Pierce (1945) |
| “Deep among the lonely sun-baked hills of Texas, the great and weatherbeaten stone still stands. The Comanches called it Squaw's Head Rock. Time cannot change its impassive face, nor dim the legend of the wild young lovers who found Heaven and Hell in the shadows of the rock...” | Duel in the Sun (1946) |
| “To me a dollar was a dollar in any language.” | Gilda (1946) |
| "This is the universe. Big, isn't it?" | A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (1946) |
| “Manhattan, New York, USA. In any discussion of contemporary America and how its people live, we must inevitably start with Manhattan, New York City, USA. Manhattan, glistening modern giant of concrete and steel reaching to the heavens and cradling in its arms seven million, seven million happy beneficiaries of the advantages and comforts this great metropolis has to offer. Its fine, wide boulevards facilitate the New Yorkers' carefree, orderly existence.” | Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) |
| “I never knew the old Vienna before the war, with its Strauss music, its glamour and easy charm - Constantinople suited me better. I really got to know it in the classic period of the Black Market. We'd run anything, if people wanted it enough and had the money to pay...” | The Third Man (1949) |
| “Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. It's about five o'clock in the morning. That's the Homicide Squad - complete with detectives and newspapermen. A murder has been reported from one of those great big houses in the ten thousand block. You'll read about it in the late editions, I'm sure...” | Sunset Boulevard (1950) |
| “This is the Appian Way. The most famous road that leads to Rome, as all roads lead to Rome.” | Quo Vadis? (1951) |
| “I beg your pardon, but aren't you Guy Haines?” | Strangers on a Train (1951) |
| “Somebody's comin', Pa.” “Well, let him come.” |
Shane (1953) |
| “I don't know about you, but it always makes me sore when I see those war pictures. All about flying leathernecks and submarine patrols and frogmen and guerrillas in the Philippines. What gets me is that there never was a movie about POWs - about prisoners of war.” | Stalag 17 (1953) |
| “Joey, Joey Doyle!...Hey, I got one of your birds.” | On the Waterfront (1954) |
| "It started - for me, it started - last Thursday, in response to an urgent message from my nurse, I hurried home from a medical convention I'd been attending. At first glance, everything looked the same. It wasn't. Something evil had taken possession of the town." (original theatrical version before studio intervention) | Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) |
| “Gelsomina!....Gelsomina!” | La Strada (1956, It.) |
| “Call me Ishmael.” | Moby Dick (1956) |
| “Who are you?” “I am Death.” |
The Seventh Seal (1956, Sw.) |
| “Have you ever heard of multiple personality?” | The Three Faces of Eve (1957) |
| "Greetings, my friends! We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friends; future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable; that is why you are here. And now for the first time we are bringing to you the full story of what happened on that faithful day. We are giving you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimonies of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places, my friends, we can not keep this a secret any longer; let us punish the guilty, let us reward the innocent. My friends, can your heart stand the shocking facts about the grave robbers from outer space?" | Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) |
| “You never did eat your lunch, did you?” “I'd better get back to the office. These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid.” |
Psycho (1960) |
Greatest
Opening Film Lines and Quotes
