Well, it’s one of the best movie endings out there.
I’ve written about this in a few threads, but it is a great little story and bears repeating.
There’s a scene in Rosemary’s Baby where Ruth Gordon has excused herself and gone into Rosemary and Guy’s bedroom to use the telephone. Roman Polanski was ready to shoot the scene and when he got to the set the cinematographer had set up the scene so that you are looking through the open doorway and you see Gordon setting on the bed using the telephone. Polanski had the shoot reset so that the door is partly closed and all you see is Gordon’s legs and a portion of her upper body. You never hear what she’s saying, just snippets about “her…baby…suspect…”. The cinematographer complained that you couldn’t see anything and Polanksi told him “I know what I’m doing.”
During the first screening of the movie Polanksi and the cinematographer are standing in the back of the theater and when the scene came on everyone in the seats leaned over as if to try and see around the door on screen. Polanksi turned to the cinematographer and said, “I told you I knew what I was doing.”
By the end of the Godfather, Michael tells Kay that he didn’t lie. She believes him, and walks out. Then she sees some mafia people approaching Michael, calling him godfather. And right there, she realised that he was lying, and he actually had ordered the murder of all those people.
There’s also a story when Rosemary calls blind actor Donald Baumgart to see how Guy got one of his belongings. When Mia Farrow starts talking to him, she looks really puzzled. Tony Curtis, a good friend of Mia’s, had dropped by the set but she hadn’t seen him. Polanski asked him to do the phone voice, so Mia would hear but not see him. Mia was totally puzzled trying to figure out who was on the other end and why did he sounded so familiar.
If you look at the party scene, there’s a shot of a balding gray haired guy who later shows up driving the car that takes the group back to the Bramford when Mia tries unsucessfuly to escape.
Oh! I’ve got one. In Waking Ned Devine, the little smile on Maggie’s face when the camera pans past her during the meeting of the whole town at Jackie’s house. The full meaning isn’t revealed until the end of the movie.
Really? I had that down as the most unsubtle bit in the whole film. Then again, I’d read the book first, and hated the potrayal of Boromir in the movie (loved the rest of it mind you - I’m not “bitter fan”)
The following may spoil “Fight Club”. It’s been a long time since it was released, but if you don’t want it (possibly) spoiled then skip the rest of this post.
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In one scene, Tyler is driving a car and Jack is in the passenger seat. Tyler lets go of the wheel and they veer off the road. The car crashes. We then see Tyler pull Jack from the driver’s seat.
Oh, one of my own: If series are permitted, I was a bit floored by one of the later episodes of Rome, where
Vorenus enters the room where Pullo is lying on the floor, having starved himself for days and lost all will to live, because his wife has died. Vorenus talks him out of it, and gets him back to the world. This is a perfect echo of the first episode in the season, where Pullo does the exact same thing for Vorenus, for the same reason.
Something similar happens in the next episode, where
Pullo strangles the dying woman he has been living with for years, because she admits to poisoning his pregnant wife Irenni (sp?) so she could have him for herself. Her dying words are something to the effect of “I did it all for love of you”. I’m not sure if this is is lost on Pullo or not, but her actions mirror his - he killed Irennis lover.
We’ve done this before, under different titles, so I’ll mention what I had before
1.) I only caught this a few months ago – in What’s Up, Doc?, the Peter Bogdanovich/Ryan O’Neal/ Barbara Streisand screwball comedy, Streisand and O’Neal’s characters first mweet in a hotel gift shop, and she lies to the cashier to make him think that O’neal’s character is buying a radio. It’s good for a quick gag.
Later in the movie, Madeline Kahn, playing O’Neal’s fiancee (and the rival of Streisand’s character) is tricked into going to a gangster hideout by Streisand’s character. When she gets there she finds O’Neal’s luggage. And in the backgriound is the radio from the hotel gift store! He ended up buying the stupid thing. It’s a really obscure throw=away gag that I missed for years.
2.) Pepper Mill caught this one. It’s in the 1939 The Wizard of Oz. As Frank Morgan as The Wizard is presenting one of the gifts – I don’t recall if it’s the Diploma or the Testimonial or which – there is a sudden flash of light that has no excuse for being there. It’s the flash of light from a flashbulb (or even a flash pan) as a photographer snaps a photo of the guy getting his award. Even though there’s no photographer in the room – just the Wizard and Dorothy and her companions.
Speaking of Polanski, in Chinatown, there’s a scene about 2/3 of the way through the movie where Faye Dunaway rescues Jack Nicholson from a thug while they are asking questions at a nursing home. As she is driving away with Nicholson in the passenger seat, the thug looses a couple shots after them. Dunaway raises her hand and briefly brushes at her eye, the one she is later shot through as she’s driving away at the end of the film.
There’s a scene in “Chinatown” where Jack Nicholson and Fay Dunaway are talking in her parked car. She’s behind the wheel. Nicholson is essentially interrogating her, and she slumps forward and hits the horn button with her forehead.
At the very end of the movie,
[spoiler] as Dunaway is speeding away in her car, the police fire shots. The car skids to a stop with the horn blaring. Before you see that she’s dead, you know Dunaway is slumped over the wheel with her forehead on the horn.
I bet I’d seen “Chinatown” four times before I noticed that little bit of foreshadowing! [/spoiler]
In the Blues Brothers Elwood makes toast in his room, orders toast at the Diner and eats the bread in the fancy restaurant.
Apparently Elwood Blues’s diet is pretty much bread and the liquid bread that is beer, with a few shrimp tossed in.
Wow - simulpost about the same movie. And it pretty much renders my spoiler completely unnecessary!
Also from What’s Up, Doc? : The last scene is between Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand on the airplane. The dialogue includes Ryan O’Neal apologizing to Streisand who responds “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” and batting her eyelashes. The line is obviously from “Love Story,” which had starred O’Neal and Ali McGraw. O’Neals response to Steisand is “Tha’t the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
Right when Duke says “Mother of God, there I am!” It’s not really that subtle - they’re trying to draw your attention to it, it’s just that not that many people can recognize Hunter S. Thompson that fast. 
When the film came out, that was about as “subtle” as a kick in the teeth. Even if you hadn’t seen Love Story, you knew that saccharine line. Maybe today this would qualify as “subtle”, though.
In Kill Bill Vol.1 Kiddo and Copperhead have stopped fighting momentarily so Copperhead can pour some cereal for her daughter before Kiddo finishes her off.
Copperhead however keeps a gun hidden inside the cereal box, sticks her had in the box and shoots out the bottom of the box trying to kill Kiddo.
On second viewing once you know there’s a gun in the box and what’s about to happen you get the significance of the brand of cereal: Ka-Boom!
In Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Indy suprises everyone and shows up with the bazooka/Panzerfaust, all the Germans react and draw their guns or take cover and such, except for Thot. He just sort of sits down, sighs heavily and start to fan himself.
That was my point - I don’t know very many people today who have even seen “Love Story” (or will at least admit to it).
In the original **The Wicker Man ** [1973], the oil painting of a wicker man hanging high on a wall in plain sight (albeit in a darkened corner) in Lord Summerisle’s manor, and visible over Christopher Lee’s shoulder, when he’s being questioned by Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward). The sergeant suspects that the missing girl was killed, or will be killed, under circumstances of pagan barbarity which he can scarcely believe to still exist in the 20th century – but the proof of that particular ritual is on display right there, should he only look that way!