Sometimes a bad movie is worth the effort for a single scene. The fifties film “Strategic Air Command” is a sappy recruiting movie for SAC, but the scene showing B-36 aircraft at altitude is awesome.
On the other hand a good movie may have a single scene that persists as the memorable part. For me an example is the barn raising scene in “Witness”.
So, what single scenes stand out for you and how do you rate the films that present them?
Carrie…Piper Laurie makes crazy seem believable.
In the original “Blues Brother” movie the Cap Calloway Minnie the Moocher scene alone was worth the price of admission. Everything else was gravy.
Patton Opening scene
Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame
The whole movie seems to be a weird, misguided mess. I can’t fault the actors, and I think the animated gargoyles are a hoot (and naming two of them “Victor” and Hugo" was brilliant). And they did a great job of making Quasimodo sympathetic. But Claude Frollo’s lechery and Esmeralda’s pole dance seemed way out of line for a family flick.
But that scene where Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda, swinging down from the cathedral roof, was such superb animation, making use of the best blend of traditional animation and a computer-generated crowd scene that it brought tears to my eyes. Truly a gorgeous movie scene.
Similarly the first five minutes of the computer-generated (not Pixar) Disney film Dinosaur from 2000 remains a transfixing piece of CGI, with its naturalistic (for the most part) depictions of dinosaurs, the camera swooping and diving as it follows the iguanadon egg. The rest of the film, with talking dinosaurs and the unlikely highly-developed protosimians, was much harder to take than the non-anthropomorphic opening. They released those first five minutes as a trailer for the film, and I had to stop and watch it whenever I saw it.
The Victors
How war and brutalization rationalizes murder
[quote=“madsircool, post:2, topic:852982”]
Carrie…Piper Laurie makes crazy seem believable.
[/QUOTE]She was also great in the Hustler with Paul Newman. The scene where she tells Fast Eddie that he is not a loser but a true winner is the point of the whole movie that Paul Newman doesn’t understand or appreciate until the final scene.
One more from The Victors…an execution scene of an apparent American deserter carried out to Christmas music. This is the best and most brutal war movie I have seen.
The Day of the Triffids is a terrific book that was made into an awful movie because they thought they could improve the script.
But the scene in the airplane is pure brilliance.
Most everyone has been blinded by a mysterious sky display. They show the cockpit of a plane, with the pilots radio the tower desperately, while telling the passengers to remain calm. They are, until a young boy asks, “Is the pilot blind?” Panic ensues.
I haven’t seen the remake, which had to be better, but I hope they kept that in.
True Grit, the original, “Fill your hands you son of a bitch!”.
That’s not only a great scene in a great movie, it was as if John Wayne’s career as a legendary western hero, from his portrayal of the Ringo Kid in Stagecoach until this film 30 years later, was all planned to culminate in that one great scene. To have Robert Duvall goad him on, “I call that bold talk from a one eyed fat man!” just makes it all sweeter.
They’ve done two remakes for television. The 1981 BBC TV serial is superb (it doesn’t try to “improve” on the book). It’s been a while since I saw it, but I don’t recall a scene in the airplane as in the 1962 film.
I haven’t seen the 2009 TV version, which I understand is awful.
The “plane porn” is the only reason I watch that movie when it comes on. The long take-off scene is a plus, but my favorite scene is about 30 seconds long. Jimmy Stewart, still a ball player, is on the field and the deep buzzing rumble is heard, to reveal a B-36 fly-over, with an awesome doppler effect of sound as it passes. Extra credit for seeing “Colonel Potter” as a flight engineer.
The domestic scenes with Stewart and June Allyson would make even a rom-com fan throw up in their mouth.
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Woody Allen from Bananas. Uncomfortable then, uncomfortable now.
There are a lot of great scenes in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but the one that I love every time is after Tuco has been left in the desert, he finds a small town, goes to the gun store, puts together a pistol out of parts, and then robs the store with it.
Eli Wallach is so damn good in that movie.
I saw *The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly for the very first time a few months ago, along with the other Eastwod “spaghetti westerns”. It was great. Afterwards, I looked up information about the film.
Apparently, Eli Wallach didn’t know anything at all about guns, so that whole scene was not only improvised, it was improvised by someone without a clue. They were all wondering what the hell he was going to do. What he came up with was bizarrely brilliant.
For me, it’s,“Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I READ YOUR BOOK”.
I’ve probably watched Saving Private Ryan all the way through twice.
I’ve seen the Normandy Beach scene from the movie probably a couple dozen times.
Oh Yeah!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye-jktX2FjsA couple of Coen Brothers ones:
From O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Ku Klux Klan meeting (with call-backs to the Wizard of Oz).
While Barton Fink is not my favorite Coen Brothers movie, John Goodman’s finale is very memorable (it’s a spoiler if you haven’t seen it).