The one scene that sullies an otherwise good film

[Rough_Draft]

@psychonaut

I think this is the scene in question (though it’s the Mad Hatter repairing the White Rabbit’s watch, not the March Hare repairing the Mad Hatter’s). All I have to say is: Wow—that single second of black-and-white animation singlehandedly ruined the whole film for you?

I don’t know about ruining the movie, but those black-and-white frames are quite an oddity. I wonder if it was intentional (for who-knows-what reason) or an overlooked mistake during production?

[BlankSlate]

@Capn_Carl

When Pulp Fiction was made, most cabs were probably made by Checker, which produced essentially the same car unchanged from 1959 to 1982.

I don’t know if it’s a Checker, but that would go well with the black and white movie playing on the green screen. This no doubt homage to whatever, and like most everything Tarantino does, it’s too clever by half.

[Marlonius]

@LLCoolL

Agreed. It’s almost as bad as the “Tell me I’ve led a good life” scene in Saving Private Ryan. Ugh. Spielberg just can’t help himself.

Thirded. Spielberg doesn’t seem to trust his audience and has to lay on the sentiment with a backhoe.

The real Schindler quietly walked away and gave no exposition of his thoughts. I find that reality would have made a more satisfying movie end.

[KneadToKnow]

Any scene in Shane in which the little boy speaks, but most especially the ending. It’s beyond grating and is the reason I do not own this movie despite my great fondness for it.

[psychonaut]

@Rough_Draft

I don’t know about ruining the movie, but those black-and-white frames are quite an oddity. I wonder if it was intentional (for who-knows-what reason) or an overlooked mistake during production?

An oddity in a nonsense scene of a nonsense film featuring nonsense characters? Say it isn’t so!

Seriously, though, I think the effect suits the moment perfectly. It comes at the very climax of the scene and signals the fact that the watch is now truly and irreparably broken.

[LLCoolL]

@Reindeer_Flotilla

I’ll nominate the Liam Neeson remorse scene near the end of Schindler’s List. I get that people may like the scene and/or feel it was a necessary release of Schindler’s angst building through the film, but to me it stops the movie in its tracks at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.

It’s completely against Schindler’s character as portrayed throughout the story and it’s unnecessarily maudlin when so much effort had been put into the story to communicate the horror at a more personal level. The movie had just spent 2 brilliant hours appealing to the audience’s intelligence to show the Holocaust’s impact in a visceral way I’ve never before experienced, and suddenly everything stops so we can have something explained to us that we had just learned in case we didn’t get it. I found it jarring and it pulled me out of the story right at its culmination.

IMHO, of course. Admittedly it doesn’t help that the movie set a high enough bar that any scene less than perfect is going to stand out!

There’s a recent Cafe Society thread out there along the lines, “Something you’d missed which you finally realized after consuming {pop culture item} a zillion times”. Well, I’ve finally realized that the Seinfeld episode “The Raincoats” - with Judge Reinhold as Elaine’s close-talking boyfriend, and Jerry making out with his girlfriend during “Schindler’s List” - contains a parody of Schindler’s List. Reinhold’s character spends days showing Jerry’s visiting parents a good time in NYC. When Morty and Helen leave for home, Reinhold is overcome with regret: “I could have done more!” It’s a spoof of the Liam Neeson regret scene! :smack: According to Wikipedia, “Jerry Seinfeld commented that the references to Schindler’s List were included after learning that Steven Spielberg got so depressed while filming the movie that he would watch tapes of Seinfeld episodes to cheer himself up.”

Well, it’s good to know we’re not the only ones disappointed by that scene.