Manderlay

[first lines]

Narrator:
It was in the year of 1933, when Grace and her father were heading southward with their army of gangsters.

[last lines]

Narrator:
America had proffered its hand, discreetly perhaps, if anybody refused to see a helping hand he really only had himself to blame.

Mam:
I beg you, one woman to another.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Woman to woman, makes no difference to me. The sins of the past are sins I cannot and do not wish to help you erase.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
There's nothing to be afraid of. We've taken all of the family's weapons.

Wilhelm:
No. I'm afraid of what will happen now. I feel we ain't ready - for a completely new way of life. At Manderlay we slaves took supper at seven. When do people take supper when they're free? We don't know these things.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Listen, Mr. Hector, let me just say that I have never met a man who I've instantly despised so wholeheartedly, both for his personality and his occupation.

Dr. Hector:
Does that mean you're turning down my offer?

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Dammit Wilhelm, they're not free. That's what matters.

Wilhelm:
I'd call that a philosophical argument.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
You think the Negroes wanted to leave their homes in Africa, wasn't it us who brought them to America? We have done them a great wrong. It's our abuses which made them what they are.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
[confused after a womans cry for help] What are you talking about? Who are they gonna whip?

Flora:
Timothy!

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Why?

Flora:
That's how they do us slaves.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Slaves?

Flora:
Yes ma'am, surely you have heard of slaves? That's what we is at Manderlay, this godforsaken place.

Wilhelm:
Just as you thought the notion of community would be good for us, you were so sure that you've permitted yourself to use force to convince us. I'd be sorry if we have to do likewise.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
What do you mean? Do you intend to keep me prisoner?

Wilhelm:
Only until you understand what you wanted us to understand. The gate has been repaired and is closed. The fences are in good shape, but of course they aint particularly high. Those fences... come on. Two men with a rusty shot gun and a toy pistol. How dumb do you really think we are?

Timothy:
You are forgetting one thing.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
What's that?

Timothy:
You made us.

Narrator:
Grace and her father resumed their legendary discord, even as they pulled out of Dogville. And although Grace had been employing the technique of letting things go in one ear and out the other for a pretty long time now, she was, to be frank, somewhat weary of her overweening daddy, who still believed any nagging woman could be pacified with the good old bouquet of carnations.

Narrator:
Her actions would comprise an unconditional enrichment of these people's lives, there was no doubt about that. Or was there?

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
You were a bastard to mother, but when you promised her something, she got it...

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Should the cotton have already been planted?

Bingo:
I'm not the sort of fellow to pass on information unless I'm damn sure, 'less the facts of the matter are 100 percent. [as if parroting] In other words, the facts need be *beyond* *dispute*.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Do you know when to plant?

Bingo:
No.

Mark:
[on Grace's confusing Jack for Jim] As a matter of fact I've never been able to tell them apart either. They're both colored, and they both got curly hair.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
You play for money...

Dr. Hector:
Oh, but I do more than play. I cheat.

Narrator:
Indignation is a rare emotion for a gangster.

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
Why should a proudy n*gger have less to eat an eye-pleasing one? [looking around the room]

Grace Margaret Mulligan:
How can the way your head seems to be arranged have anything to do whatsoever with the amount people are given to eat?

Narrator:
What Grace had felt at the bathhouse was undignified, shameful.

Narrator:
Joseph, a legal expert, with the ability to interpret the most incomprehensible texts, had met his match in the 1923 Ford Owner's Manual.

Wilhelm:
I think you could enjoy being the guardian for a kind of menagerie of creatures who have no chance in the wild.

Narrator:
There were still 10 minutes until her slavishly punctual father would arrive outside to wait for his 15-minutes-and-not-a-second-longer.

Grace's Father:
[in his letter] I hope we meet up some day so you can tell what you actually meant by, new times at Manderly. Love, your dumb old dad.