Starman.
At the end, when Starman is going up to the ship and they are shooting down at Karen Allen…the look of love and sadness on her face just tugs at my heartstrings.
The scene in “Gone With the Wind” where Scarlett goes looking for Dr. Meade at the Atlanta railroad depot, which has been turned into an open-air hospital. There are thousands of wounded and dead Confederate soldiers laid out on the ground. The camera pulls back to show more and more wounded, and finally stops on a tattered Confederate flag waving over the thousands of bodies. An unbelievably powerful scene.
I’m not sure I am getting the question right
for non-plot, non-acting reasons? So, for the beauty of the scene regardless of what its place is in the film? I’m not sure how to separate that.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (we can do books right? and it will be a movie and this scene had better be in it!), the battle at the end when Molly Weasley
[spoiler] kills Bellatrix
“NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!”[/spoiler]
partly because of my feelings about my own mother, my feelings as a mother, and what I’ve read about J.K. Rowlings and her mother. If I ever need to conjure crocodile tears, this is how I’ll do it. I can’t even think of this scene without tearing up, I’m tearing up now <sniffle>
Easily the greatest action scene ever filmed. Despite several viewings it never loses any of its tension or drama.
I’m kind of partial to courageous last stands, even if they don’t turn out to be that way.
[ul]
[li]The whole Helm’s Deep battle, especially when the Elves show.[/li][li]The final attack on the Alamo[/li][li]The part in Zulu when the seriously outnumbered Brits start singing “Men of Harlech” to reply to the Zulu war chants.[/li][/ul]
I used to think about that scene when going to sleep. It made me so happy
/tagging for later; haven’t seen Kurosawa since college, and I think I have much to catch up on!
Oh god yes, that was great. And then, after the battle…when you’re thinking they’ve fended them off, they’ve won…and they do the roll call.
Same movie, different scene: Jenny’s reaction when Notscott resurrects the deer.
Another fave:
Fisher King- when Parry/Henry comes out of his catatonia – “Can I miss her now?”
.
Pretty much so. I realised after I wrote my OP that it’s not that easy. What I wasn’t looking for was moments like “You had me at hello” or “Don’t make me choose!”, perhaps because they could be just as dramatically re-created on stage with no props. The examples people have given have been pretty good though I haven’t seen most of the films. My favourite is La Marseillaise in Casablanca, though like you say it’s not completely separate from the plot or the acting.
I am curious about your selection, why did this scene affect you so much?
The end of Little Miss Sunshine, when the family is driving back home at the end of the day.
Don’t ask me why. I cannot explain it.
I’ll second (or third) some of the moments already mentioned.
- I agree that the chariot race in Ben-Hur is the greatest action sequence ever filmed.
- Both charges of the Rohirrim. The arrival of Eomer and Gandalf at Helm’s Deep, and the thunderous assault against the besieging army at the Pellenor Fields.
- The battle of the anthems in Casablanca.
And one of my own.
- Non nobis domine from Henry V.
plot-related, but the long, lonely death of Fry’s dog in Futurama. 
The launch in Apollo 13 gets me - the music, the visuals, just beautiful.
The congressmen stepping up to sign the Declaration of Independence at the end of 1776.
Any scene from The Grapes of Wrath. Or another depression-era unknown gem, Wild Boys of the Road. Gut-wrenchingly sad stuff.
I’ve only seen it once, on the big screen, and would like to see it again now that I have a bigger TV: the end of Immortal Beloved with the sky and the water and Ode to Joy. Oh my goodness. It partly hinges on the plot in that they’re telling you Beethoven’s inspiration, but it stands on its own as a visual/auditory beauty.
The ski jump off the cliff at the start of The Spy Who Loved Me. The moment when he finally unfurls his parachute after that heartstoppingly long fall always brings a lump to my throat for reasons I can never quite explain. Possibly just for the sheer joy in imagining the triumph of the whole stunt working so perfectly.