Jean Gabin: Albert Quentin

Un singe en hiver

Albert Quentin

Albert Quentin: Look, Suzanne, you're a model wife. Yes, you have great qualities. And your figure has stayed as I'd have wished. You're happiness stored in a box! If I had to do it all over again, I'd marry you again. But you're a pain.
Suzanne Quentin: Albert.
Albert Quentin: In a nice way, affectionately and with love, but a right royal pain - in - the arse!

Suzanne Quentin: It's an odd time to arrive, especially in this weather.
Albert Quentin: That's what travelers do: travel. The weather doesn't come into it.

Gabriel Fouquet: At least I didn't offend you.
Albert Quentin: Oh, you have to get up very early to offend me. Or go to bed much later.

Albert Quentin: I'll die drunk, but on my feet. I don't care about gossip! History will be the judge.

Albert Quentin: [singing] It's a long way to Tipperary, It's a long way to go. It's a long way to Tipperary...

Suzanne Quentin: Albert, don't get angry.
Albert Quentin: "Don't get angry"? Bloody hell! I give you tricolor rivers, mountains of flowers, and holy temples, and you turn it into a knocking shop! You plonk your Normandy Babylon in the China Sea!

Albert Quentin: The Yangtze Kiang is not a river, it's an avenue, a 5,000-km avenue, tumbling from Tibet down to the Yellow Sea, with junks and sampans floating by on either side. In the middle there are whirlpools and floating islands, with orchids as tall as trees. The Yangtze Kiang, Comrade, is millions of cubic meters of gold flowing towards Nanking, with, all along, floating villages where you can buy anything you want: rice alcohol, religions, slatterns and opium. I can confirm, Madame, that the marines were for along time a permanent fixture of the tea houses. In those days we knew how to have fun.

Albert Quentin: Hey, native girl show some manners! We know all about your "customers". Those Wehrmacht lechers and that fornicating Feldwebe!

Suzanne Quentin: I heard that the Germans will blow everything up before they leave.
Albert Quentin: It's their right. A soldier in retreat is allowed certain recreational compensations.

Gabriel Fouquet: I think I missed the Madrid train.
Albert Quentin: When one has the dreams that you have, one doesn't fret over a missed train. Know what you remind me of? One of those monkeys that wander around lost when winter comes in China.

Albert Quentin: A prince of the tipple! A lord! The kind you once drank with, but whose spirit you never shared. Such lords scorn you and your befuddled customers. They're a thousand drinks away, up there with the angels.

Gabriel Fouquet: I've never been a nasty drunk. More an affectionate one. Grotesquely so. My charm was in being unexpected.
Albert Quentin: Oh-la-la. That's where you've got it all wrong. They like certainty. They hate it when you're different from their expectations. Especially as it's rarely a nice surprise.

Albert Quentin: What could happen to me? I have a wife taking care of me, a job that keeps me busy, and bon-bons to distract me. I might give up the bon-bons, though.
Suzanne Quentin: Why? If it's not a bad habit?
Albert Quentin: There are no good habits. A habit is a sort of slow death.

Albert Quentin: I'm not buried yet, but it's coming. You don't seem to realize. I haven't had my share of the unexpected. I want more. Do you hear? More!

Gabriel Fouquet: Tell me, Monsieur Quentin, since we're being indiscreet, in China, did you smoke opium?
Albert Quentin: Oh, nothing indiscreet about that. On occasion, yes. In Shanghai, Hong Kong. All it did was make one daydream.
Gabriel Fouquet: Don't you like dreams?
Albert Quentin: It depends on their quality. These were the dreams of a Marine. Admiral Guépratte kissing my ear, the tea tasting of aniseed. Intoxicating fancies, nothing more.
Gabriel Fouquet: And now?
Albert Quentin: Now I dream of smoking opium.