I was torn between that scene and this one. The aching love that Steve and Laurie share comes across beautifully. George Lucas did a great job of casting young and relatively unknown actors, many of whom were destined for great things in the future.
The haircut scene at the beginning of My Name Is Nobody…and the followup at the end of the movie. 
My #3 would be Stand up, Miss Jean Louise. Your father’s passing.
Another excellent choice. Loved the whole movie.
Great book. Great movie.
The final scene in Godfather 1. Michael allows Kay to ask just once about the family business, and then lies to her. Kay looks back to see the henchmen paying their respects to Michael, and then an aide shuts the door to his office.
Love this one. Loretta meets Ronny from Moonstruck.
There are so many wonderful scenes in that movie, I don’t think I could pick just one, but that one was right at the top.
OK, it’s no Schindler’s List, or Casablanca, but when I saw this scene for the first time, in a theatre full of high school students, the laughter was so loud and went on for so long that I missed a whole bunch of dialog:
Yes, and also Yvonne’s tearful love for her country. It reminded her of who she was after she cozied up to the Germans. The scene revealed Victor’s courage, and why the Germans considered him so dangerous.
The carriage rolling down the stairs was an homage to Battleship Potemkin.
To me, it’s the Marsellaise scene in Casablanca. Here are some others I love:
- The closing shot in The Third Man, when Anna walks past Holly without even acknowledging his existence
- The scene in M when Hans Beckert has finally been caught, and is taken into a basement, where he turns around and sees a gallery of angry, glowering criminals who all want to kill him
- In Children of Men, when the soldiers see the first baby born in 18 years and halt their fighting to give Kee, the baby, and Theo safe passage
- The gas station scene in No Country for Old Men
Wow this is fantastic news !! Big fan of the channel here.
Coming back to the topic I would have to agree with the Marseillaise scene in Casablanca too. Not just because it is a masterful piece of cinema but for everything it symbolizes; it was made in 1942 when the war was still uncertain and the cast featured many European refugees for whom the story was very personal.
Humphrey Bogart’s character changes the moment he signals it’s okay for the band to play the Marseillaise. We know he’s not out to please the Nazis any more, and the whole story takes a dramatic turn.
@blondebear mentioned the opening sequence in Contact (1997), but later in the movie there’s a scene that left me asking, how did they film that? It’s when the young girl (the Jodie Foster character in her youth) finds her father on the floor with a heart attack, and she runs up the stairs to get his medicine but it’s too late to save him.
Here’s the scene:
38 second video ➜ https://youtu.be/ZD0_5HFMPIg ⇦
I don’t think it’s my very favorite scene, and it’s not necessarily a great movie scene, but it stood out to me. How did they do this? The cinematographer explains it here:
6 minute video ➜ https://youtu.be/HQRu9cz5L9E ⇦
Lot of my favorites already mentioned! A few others:
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The interrogation scene in Menace II Society. Bill Duke is a police detective who has plllllenty of time to watch punks like Tyrin Turner shed bricks. “So you definitely. bought. the bottle. of beer. at eleven-thirty?..Boy, you done f&cked up! You know that, don’t you. Know you done f&cked up.”
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Alec Baldwin as The Man From Downtown in Glengarry Glen Ross. “A set of steak knives. Third prize, you’re fired. Oh, have I got your attention now?”
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The opening scene in Full Metal Jacket. No dialogue; “Hello Vietnam” on the soundtrack as the recruits get their heads shaved. Curly brown, straight blond, Afro, ginger, it all goes. Now they all look the same: blank slates. You get the message before Gunnery Sgt. Hartman even shows up.
In the Hello Vietnam scene, it looked to me, half way through some of the haircuts, like monastic tonsures. Pretty apt I thought.
The final scene in Crocodile Dundee, when he walks across the top of the crowd on the subway platform like he was walking across a herd of cattle. Perfect because: with the swelling music, it’s a sweepingly romantic scene, and also because it brings full circle the story of someone from the rural outback adapting his ways to the big city.
“Tears in rain” speech in Blade Runner in second place.
“We’ll always have Paris” speech in Casablanca in first.
Was it that old brick theater in Seattle? I saw it opening week there and with the reverb, people were cowering in their seats looking at the ceiling as the Star Destroyer passed over.