The Night of the Iguana (1964)

Deborah Kerr: Hannah Jelkes

Photos 

Quotes 

• Hannah Jelkes : Who wouldn't like to atone for the sins of themselves, and the world, if it could be done in a hammock with ropes, instead of on a Cross, with nails? On a green hilltop, instead of Golgotha, the Place of the Skulls? Isn't that a comparatively comfortable, almost voluptuous Crucifixion to suffer for the sins of the world, Mr. Shannon?

• Hannah Jelkes : Some people take a drink. Some people take a pill. I just take a few deep breaths.

• Hannah Jelkes : Nothing human disgusts me, Mr. Shannon, unless it's unkind, violent.

• T. Lawrence Shannon : You can't go on all alone. Think of how it will feel after so many years.

  Hannah Jelkes : I shall know how it feels when I feel it.

• Hannah Jelkes : I'm a human being. And when one of that unique species builds its nest in the heart of another, the questions of permanence and propagation aren't the first or even the last things to be considered. What is important - is that one is never alone.

• T. Lawrence Shannon : I'm panicking!

  Hannah Jelkes : I know that.

  T. Lawrence Shannon : A man can die of panic!

  Hannah Jelkes : Not when he enjoys it as much as you do, Dr. Shannon.

• Hannah Jelkes : I can't stand for a person I respect to behave like a small, cruel boy.

  T. Lawrence Shannon : And what do you respect in me, Miss Thin Standing-up Female Buddha?

• Hannah Jelkes : When I was 16, every Saturday I would go to the Saturday Matinee at the Nantucket Movie Theater. That was soon after my parents were killed in an automobile accident and I was very alone. Well, one day a young man sat down beside me and pushed his knee against mine. I moved over; but, he moved over too and continued the pressure. I jumped up and screamed - and he was arrested for molesting a minor.

  T. Lawrence Shannon : Is he still in the Nantucket jail?

  Hannah Jelkes : No. No, I got him out. I told the police it was a Garbo picture. It was a Garbo picture and that I was just overexcited.

• Hannah Jelkes : There are worse things than chastity, Mr. Shannon.

  T. Lawrence Shannon : Yes: lunacy and death.

• Maxine Faulk : [with admiration]  Miss Jelkes, honey, you're a hustler! A fantastic, cool hustler! You're completely broke, huh?

  Hannah Jelkes : Yes, we are. Completely.

• Maxine Faulk : All right, honey, calm down.

  Hannah Jelkes : I am perfectly calm, Mrs. Faulk.

  Maxine Faulk : Well, I'm not! That's the trouble. The trouble is Shannon. I caught the vibrations between you two.

  Hannah Jelkes : Mrs. Faulk, I'm a New England spinster who is pushing 40.

  Maxine Faulk : Well, who the hell isn't!

• Hannah Jelkes : We make a home for each other, my grandfather and I. Oh, I don't mean a regular home; because, I don't regard a home as a - place, a building, bricks, wood, stone. I think of a home - as something two people have between them. In which each can - nest, rest, live in - emotionally speaking.

• Hannah Jelkes : Mr. Shannon, cut him loose!

  T. Lawrence Shannon : All right. We'll play God tonight, like kids play houses with old broken crates and boxes. We'll cut the damn lizard loose so he can go back to his bushes, cause God won't do it and we are playing God here tonight.

• Hannah Jelkes : Just rest for a few moments Nonno.

  Nonno : How calmly does the olive branch, Observe the sky begin to blanch, Without a cry, without a prayer, With no betrayal of despair...

• Maxine Faulk : I know what you're up to, honey. You want to make yourself useful so I'll let you and old Gramps stay on here free.

  Hannah Jelkes : Oh, I wouldn't do anything so obvious - not with a woman of your practicality.

• Maxine Faulk : I loved old Fred. Wouldn't anybody guess the way I carried on; except, Fred. He knew. You see, he was 28 years older than me and we hadn't slept together in I don't know when. Fred used to say - I guess he was impotent. But, if you ask me, honey, he just plain lost interest.

  Hannah Jelkes : What - other interests did he have, Mrs. Faulk.

  Maxine Faulk : Only fishing. He'd catch 'em and throw 'em back in. Unless he swallowed the hook and then we'd have 'em for supper. Fred lived and let lived.

• Maxine Faulk : I remember one time, he came down here out of season, like now. And I went on the make for him. But, Shannon wasn't having any, on account of his friendship with Fred.

  Hannah Jelkes : [referring to fish she is preparing]  Well, they're all ready for steaming.

  Maxine Faulk : So was I, Miss Jelkes. So was I! But I couldn't tell him that Fred didn't give a damn. It didn't seem fair to Fred.

  Hannah Jelkes : You know I think you're quite a remarkable person too, Mrs... Faulk.

  Maxine Faulk : Don't you try to con me, honey. I understand men. But, I still got my biological urges.

• Hannah Jelkes : What is this, Mr. Shannon?

  T. Lawrence Shannon : Hell and damnation.

• Hannah Jelkes : Why did they lock you out?

  T. Lawrence Shannon : For fornication and conduct unbecoming a man of the cloth.

  Hannah Jelkes : What were the, eh, circumstances of the first offense?

  T. Lawrence Shannon : Fornication? A very young Sunday School Teacher asked to see me privately in my study and - well, she - she declared herself to me - widely.

  Hannah Jelkes : A declaration of love?

  T. Lawrence Shannon : Don't make fun of me Miss, Miss Jelkes.

  Hannah Jelkes : I wasn't.

• Hannah Jelkes : Will Mr. Shannon be all right, do you think?

  Maxine Faulk : All right? Honey, I don't know. He cracks up like this so regular, you could sell a calendar by it. About, twice a year. He's done it twice down here! Fred used to say it had something to do with the moon. I sure wish old Fred was here right now.

• Hannah Jelkes : Oh God, please can't we stop now?

• Hannah Jelkes : My grandfather is the oldest living and practicing poet *and* he gives recitations. I - paint - watercolors and I'm a quick sketch artist. We travel together and we pay our way as we go, by my grandfather's recitations and by the sale of quick character sketches in charcoal and pastel.

• T. Lawrence Shannon : They're chasing an iguana.

  Hannah Jelkes : What will they do with it?

  Maxine Faulk : Tie 'em up, fatten 'em up, and eat 'em up.

• T. Lawrence Shannon : Shannon has been collecting evidence.

  Hannah Jelkes : Evidence of what?

  T. Lawrence Shannon : Man's inhumanity to God.

  Hannah Jelkes : What do you mean by that?

  T. Lawrence Shannon : The pain we cause him. We've poisoned his atmosphere. We've slaughtered his creatures of the wild. We've polluted his rivers. We've even taken God's noblest creation, Man, and - and brainwashed him into becoming our own product, not God's.

• Nonno : "Love's an old remembered song, A drunken fiddler plays, Stumbling crazily along, Crooked alleyways - "

  Hannah Jelkes : Not now, Nonno.

  Nonno : "When his heart is mad with music, He will play the - "

  Hannah Jelkes : Nonno, please.

  [Nonno sits down] 

  Hannah Jelkes : He thinks someone called for a recitation of one of his poems.

  Maxine Faulk : Sure, Hann. In this crowd, old Gramps is the life of the party.

• Hannah Jelkes : Listen to him. Saying them over and over. The lines of his new poem. Like a blind man climbing a staircase that leads nowhere.

• Hannah Jelkes : Drink isn't your problem, Mr. Shannon.

  T. Lawrence Shannon : And what is my problem, Miss Jelkes?

  Hannah Jelkes : The oldest one in the world. The need to believe in someone - or something, almost anyone, almost anything.

• Hannah Jelkes : Grandfather went up to bed and I went out in the sampan with the Aussie underwear salesman.

• Hannah Jelkes : I'll leave Nonno in here and I'll take that room.

  T. Lawrence Shannon : I think that's the one with the leaky roof which you won't find out about until it rains and then it'll be too late to do anything about it except to swim out of it.

• Maxine Faulk : I'm good at catchin' vibrations. And there were vibrations between you, and mutual vibrations, the minute you got here! And just that, believe me, just that is enough to put me in a lather. And don't ask me why. Look at him! Broke, spooked, and good as fired.

  Hannah Jelkes : Those are only his circumstances, Mrs. Faulk. Not the man himself.

  Maxine Faulk : Ah, any how, forget what I said. I wasn't sore at you. I was sore at Shannon.