Cockney Caine’s pay-off the job for movie fans

AN immortal comment from Michael Caine in The Italian Job has been named the greatest one-liner in cinema history.

Movie fans said the acting legend’s pay-off: “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off,” was the top screen utterance.

Runner-up in the poll was Rhett Butler’s (Clark Gable) put-down from Gone With The Wind: “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

Caine’s classic comes after a fellow crook, played by Michael Standing, obliterates a van by exploding it.

The comic caper is one of the best loved screen hits of the 60s as a gang robs gold bullion from a bank vault in Turin. The movie is being remade with a largely US cast, headed by Planet Of The Apes star Mark Wahlberg.

Cult hit Withnail And I came in third place for the line: “We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now,” delivered by Richard E Grant (who plays boozy Withnail).

Kenneth Williams’s dying speech: “Infamy, infamy, they’ve all got it in for me,” as Julius Caesar in Carry On Cleo is at number nine.

The survey was carried out by communications firm Orange to mark a series of talks at the British Library called the Orange Word Screenwriters season featuring movie writers such as Chris Columbus, Hanif Kureishi, Mike Leigh and Withnail creator Bruce Robinson.

Listeners to BBC London radio station also took part in the poll, which also identified the duffest lines on screen. Andie MacDowell’s cringeworthy: “Is it raining? I hadn’t

noticed,” from Four Weddings and a Funeral was voted the worst line.