Of course, Rocky’s run up the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the most iconic scenes in the film.
The ascent of the Stairs of Cirith Ungol by Frodo, Sam, and Gollum is an important scene in The Two Towers. There are a bunch of other significant staircase scenes in the trilogy.
For atmospheric stairs, how about thestaircase where Dracula first introduces himself.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, made into a number of TV and film adaptations has an important sequence involving stairs. I remember seeing one on the telly when I was young(sometime in the 60s), which made a vivid impression. The young hero, staying at his wicked uncle’s half built half derelict, house has been coerced into going upstairs in a disused part of the building. Just in time for him lightening reveals the stairs ahead are broken. Our TV at the time was black and white so I don’t even know if this was originally in colour or b and w and can’t remember whether it was a film or made for TV so I doubt I can find out which version this was.
Also parodied/paid homage to in The Untouchables and The Naked Gun 33 1/3.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – battle on the Stairs of Khazad-dum (best version I could find)
Not a key plot point but a nice touch: In the movie Room, after Brie Larson and her son escape, the kid needs to be taught how stairs work.
The Sound of Music. I’d link but you know what I mean.
Mystery Men has a cliche-busting fight on a staircase and balcony, with a truly hilarious punchline.
Moulin Rouge has one of its most powerful dramatic moments when Nicole Kidman’s character slowly descends the stage steps, in an elaborate costume, to submit to the Duke’s demands.
Harry Potter, also known as The Boy Who Lived Under the Stairs.
Who could forget John Belushi falling down the stairs while stuck in a little kiddee desk in The Blues Brothers?
The swordfight in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
In Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder, the key is hidden under the carpet on the staircase.
A hokey David Niven film called A Matter of Life and Death featured an escalator between this world and the afterlife. The movie was sold in the US as Stairway to Heaven.
He wasn’t the only one. There was a so-so horror film from the 90’s called The People Under the Stairs
Also, Olivia de Havilland dispatches Agnes Moorehead in “Hush, Hush…Sweet Charlotte” by shoving her down the stairs.
Jimmy Stewart (again) has a bit of bother with the newel post in It’s a Wonderful Life
The major trouble in The Money Pit started with a bad tread.
So did Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation
There are a lot of stairs in GWTW. Scarlett slapping Prissy, Scarlett falling down the stairs and having a miscarriage, Scarlett coming down the stairs after the Yankee deserter tries to steal from them, the scene where Mammy tells Melanie why Rhett won’t let them have Bonnie’s funeral was filmed as they were walking up the stairs, etc.
40 years on there are still hundreds of tourists a day who reinact that scene.
Or the guy with the guitar on the stairs in Animal House.
Yes!
And Kirk saving Edith Keeler from falling down a flight of stairs in ST:TOS “City on the Edge of Forever”… even though he knows he shouldn’t.
Great stuff.
Death Becomes Her, Meryl Streep falls down the stairs and breaks her neck… don’t know if that is prominent enough!
Odd that I can’t find it on YouTube, but the staircase from The Little Mermaid. It’s notable not for its role in the story, but because it was one of the first major uses of computer animation in a movie.
Yeah, I think that was a segment from the Carol Burnett Show.
Is that what I saw? I thought Carol Burnett was too young to star in a movie from 1939.