Mandingo (1975)

Brenda Sykes: Ellen

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Quotes 

• Hammond Maxwell : Raise your head. Raise your head. Now you're lookin' away from me. I can't see ya. Put your eyes on me. Look at me straight. Into my eyes.

  Ellen : I can't, Master.

  Hammond Maxwell : I craves you to do it, Ellen.

  Ellen : Niggers don't...

  Hammond Maxwell : Don't what? Look a white man in the eyes? If'n you're told to do it. If asked to do it, you can do it. Ellen. Don't you be a-feared. If you don't like me, you don't have to stay.

  Ellen : I like you, Sir. I want to please you.

• Ellen : Lucrezia Borgia say I knocked. She say I been missin' my time a month.

  Hammond Maxwell : Hell, what she know?

  Ellen : She got 24 suckers.

• Ellen : Maybe you be no wantin' me no more. You be sellin' me or given me to one of...

  Hammond Maxwell : Oh, Ellen, honey, now, I ain't ever gonna be sellin' you. You're mine.

• Ellen : Is you gonna sell our sucker?

  Hammond Maxwell : No, I ain't. No, I won't do that either, Ellen.

  Ellen : Is you gonna sell Dite's sucker?

  Hammond Maxwell : Well, now, that's different. Our sucker, we keep him right here at Falconhurst. That make you glad? Good.

• Ellen : When our sucker growed up, can he go free? Can you give him his freedom?

  Hammond Maxwell : You craves to be free? Does you craves to be free?

  Ellen : No.

  Hammond Maxwell : Well, then what for you want the sucker to go free?

  Ellen : Cause, for a Buck, for a boy child, a lot of misery don't happen to him. He don't get whupped when the Master wants to whup him. He don't get pinned on a patch a land like a pig. He can't never go no where or do nothin'. He can't learn to read or write, unlessin' he get beat or killed.