For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

Katina Paxinou: Pilar

Photos 

Quotes 

• Pilar : Look I am ugly. Yet one can have a feeling here

  [points to her heart] 

  Pilar : that blinds a man while he loves you. He thinks you are beautiful. And one day for no reason at all he sees you ugly as you really are. And he is not blind anymore. Then you see yourself as ugly as he sees you - and you lose your man and your feeling. Then one day the feeling, that idiotic feeling that you are beautiful, grows inside you again and another man sees you and thinks you are beautiful and it's all to do over again. Now I'm past it. But it still might come again.

• Pilar : What are you saying now? You lazy, unspeakable son of an unmentionable gypsy. Answer me, gypsy!

  Rafael : I - I was telling this comrade what a *kind* woman you are, Pilar.

  Pilar : Liar!

• Pilar : Don't try to frighten us, coward!

  Pablo : Coward? Is it cowardly to know what's foolish? Or am I a leader for nothing? Haven't I brought you all alive through a year of this war? This foreigner comes here to do a thing for the good of the *foreigners*. And for this good, you want to sacrifice us! I'm for the good and safety of all.

  Pilar : Safety! Huh! There is no such thing as safety! Did I spend nine years with the worst paid matadors in the world not to learn about fear and about safety? Huh! Speak to me of anything but safety! Look at him. How I believed in him once, and look what he's now. From one year of war you've become lazy, a drunkard, and a coward.

  Pablo : Woman! You have no right to speak in that way.

• Pilar : Ugly. All of its ugly.

• Pablo : Here I command!

  Pilar : Here *I* command. Haven't you heard them? Here no one commands but me now.

  Pablo : I should shoot you and the foreigner both.

  Pilar : Try it and see what happens. Listen to me, drunkard! You understand now who commands?

  Pablo : Why, I command!

  Pilar : No! Listen! Take the wax from your ears. Listen well. I command.

  Pablo : All right. All right. You command.

• Pilar : This one is a gift to any man - if she could cook a little better.

• Pilar : Life is very curious. I would have made a good man. But, I'm all woman - and all ugly. Yet, many men have loved me. Is that strange?

• Pilar : What about me? Do I have to kiss you, too, to get a horse? It's been years since I kissed a bullfighter. Hold this, Ingles, till I get a good kiss at him. Hah! Look at him! He's afraid of a kiss as he was afraid of the bulls.

  Joaquin : You don't need to make a joke of it.

  Pilar : When I kiss, it won't be as a sister!

• Maria : Dry your feet well.

  Robert Jordan : You can't dry them with your hair?

  Pilar : What a swine! Hit him with a chunk of wood, Maria.

  Robert Jordan : I'm joking because I'm happy.

  Maria : You are happy?

  Robert Jordan : Yes. I think everything goes well.

• Pilar : Even here one man can make a bureaucracy with his mouth!

• Pilar : What ever you will, I'm for it now.

• Pilar : Act like men! Don't you think you'll die soon enough?

  Agustín : Swallow your tongue, woman, and choke yourself!

  Pilar : Silence! What use is courage if you have no head?

• Pablo : You don't understand me, woman. We understand each other.

  Pilar : Nobody understands you. Neither God nor your mother. Nor I. Nor you, either.

• Pilar : I suppose when a man has something once, always something remains.