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Your Favourite Scene From a Film -- and why

Started by An tSaoi, April 06, 2010, 05:01:07 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Retinend

"I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE"

Network (1976)

A breathtaking scene. Peter Finch is utterly possessed in his performance. Knowing that the 3 other main characters (Diana, Max and the Audience) are all experiencing very different reactions to his nervous breakdowns makes it even more rewarding than simply as a piece of rebellious imagery. You initial feelings of 'fuck yeah - tell it as it is!' make you feel foolish once you see how you're just another of the magpie horde. I can hardly describe how much I love this bit of film.

Serge

Quote from: Phil_A on April 07, 2010, 03:33:22 AM
Singing In The Rain - Make 'Em Laugh!

Make them laugh

Youtube can't possibly do this justice. Absolutely one of the greatest physical comedy performances in the whole of cinema, from the tragically overlooked Donald O'Connor. Even more incredible when you realise O'Connor did the whole thing in a single take, and was subsequently bedridden for three days as he'd bashed himself around so much on the hard concrete floor. And then the film got damaged so he had to it all over again! What a guy.

Oh yes. Definitely in my top ten.  Though I didn't know that story behind it. I really should get around to watching some of the extras on my DVD.....

Subtle Mocking

As a huge Wes Anderson fan I've always loved this:
by way of the green line bus

Such a great combination of video/audio, there's just something inexplicably special about the scene that always stuck with me

jaydee81

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on April 06, 2010, 06:44:56 PM
I have quite a number of favourite scenes. The opening scene from Once Upon a Time in the West is a masterwork of tension building and the use of diegetic sound. However, for it is the final scene with the
Spoiler alert
identity of Bronson's character revealed via backstory and the hanging of Fonda
[close]
that really sets my balls alight. This was Leone at the peak of his powers. The cutting and the music make it extraordinary.

Yes yes yes yes yes! I would say this is equally placed with the first 10 minutes of the film (from the train station up to when the kid runs round the corner and Henry Fonda is stood there with his BLUE BLUE evil fucking eyes) in my top cinema moments.
I like a good cheesy 'will they won't they, of course they will its a goodtime cheesy film' punching the air sequence in a film. I can only think of two, both from fairly average films.

The bit in Serenity where you think the girl has run out to her death, and then it cuts to her beating up zombies in slow motion

The bit in Midnight Sting where you think James Woods' friend is going to lose the deciding fight, and then it all ends well.

Ginyard

WARNING: Superlatives ahead

The Requiem scene  -  Amadeus

F Murray Abraham rolls up his sleeves and, together with Tom Hulce, reminds us
what great acting's all about. Its one of the crowning moments of cinema, and certainly one of the best bits of editing.

The only way I can justify its place is by describing it and hoping my enthusiasm for this dramatic masterpiece carries the message clearly enough. Sorry if I go on a bit but I love it too much not to!



Mozart's dying. Here's a guy who's been gradually torn apart his liver with booze and some dodgy, mercury-laden pre-night nurse medicine, putting his art before his health as always. He's heavily jaundiced, yellow, looks like he's been smoked in a rizla and pissed himself. And what's he doing? Writing his own catholic requiem mass. And who's transcribing it? Salieri, the guy who's hastened Mozart's drunken stagger to the grave by dressing up like a rococo Darth Vader and scaring the shit out of him, convincing him that he's being judged for his sins by the ghost of his own father!

Salieri's a jealous swine who wants Mozart dead for being so much greater than him, but he's keen to get a glimpse as to how a real genius gets the job done. A mixture of fascination, fury and envy encourages Salieri to urge the desperately ill and exhausted Mozart to work through the night, offering to do the donkey work by writing it down for him. He wants the mass for himself, he's a greedy bastard who wants to stick his finger up at God and plans to pass the work off as his own just as soon as Mozart's signed on the stave and snuffed it. Its his writing on the manuscript now to boot. SCORE!

I don't know if he was planning to go Manson on Mozart with a quill afterwards but I'm guessing he had some dastardly plan to knock him off. Or did he? Maybe he'd realised the error of his ways and had seen the light (cue daylight in the film). Ambiguity, always a friend to fine drama.

Anyway, the best thing to this scene? We get a bedside seat, hearing how part of the Requiem's put together and transcribed, the film teasing us by revealing each layer piece by piece. In reality, Mozart's commands are rather too indirect to lead to the music we hear. Christ, half the time he's singing out-of-tune, so that would have any musician scratching their heads before we'd even begin to suss out where everything's supposed to be placed. But, in dramatic terms, its absolutely perfect. Its narrative music and at the same time it is the narrative at this point. It weaves from foreground to background effortlessly, underpinning the tension, highlighting the emotional potency of the scene and it reveals the characters just as the characters reveal it to us. I can't think of a better scene in any film where the music is so sophisticatedly integrated.

Then, at last, the resulting fiery Confutatis is played, allowing us to hear how the seperate parts sound combined as the composer's wife takes a nocturnal journey back to Vienna. The music underlines her anguish and guilt, further exposes Mozart's genius, and drives death right to his front door.

The last part is like a grim penultimate act straight from one of Mozart's own Opera Buffa. After a very brief reunion in which Constanze takes the score and locks it away, leaving Salieri empty handed, Mozart dies. He's looking up at the ceiling with a face that for some reason always reminds me of David Baddiel pretending to be Bez. The horror of the moment sweeps through the room and we cut to a grey, rainy day where the forever pathetique and beautiful Lacrimosa accompanies Mozart to his pauper's grave somewhere outside the city.

Tragic and desperately sad....in fact, so many things (except jolly, of course). A real creative inspiration for me when I was a kid studying and it remains the same to this day, so its got to go in as my number one favourite scene.



Runner-up:

The Ewok Dance  -  Star Wars


Only joking.



Abortion scene  -  Alfie

Yeah, full of happy choices, me. This is a quite horrific part of one of my favourite films. Denholm Eliot steals the show as usual and creeps the flesh as the hideous, uncaring backstreet doctor. You get the feeling he's going to invest that blood soaked money he's so eager and nervous to obtain straight back on the dogs, or clear a loan shark debt. We don't see that, of course, and that's the beauty of a film of this calibre; they don't spell out every little thing. Inference is quite enough to paint a decent picture in the active mind.

So, possibly the most selfish, uncaring male to ever grace a cinema screen forces himself to look at the murdered consequence of his actions. I say murdered because I think that's almost how Alfie sees it, except in true Alfie style, he projects it back and cries for himself first and foremost. He sees regrets, wasted opportunities and ruined relationships; the dead body of something he created and destroyed lying there as a lifeless and terrible trophy to his failures on the top tier of the cabinet. Its a frightening but fascinating moment in which everything is told by the pain and horror etched on Caine's face.

Reminded me not to forget my condoms when I was younger, I can tell you!

Michael Caine acts his cockney chops off. I've never drawn a final conclusion as to what his best work is. The Ipcress file's always been a big favourite; Get Carter, of course. Jaws: The Revenge? ;)  I'm not sure I'll ever reach a conclusion here.


And now I can think of about a dozen other scenes I love. Ah well....

Quote from: Retinend on April 07, 2010, 10:19:02 AM
"I'M AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE"

I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this misquoting anymore!

Rowlands

Argh, people have stolen my Network and War of the Worlds suggestions, you cunts. By the way, Speilberg's WOTW was terrific, I've no idea why so many people lambast it. Roger Ebert was a right cunt about it in his review.


Cambrian Times

The final scene from "Withnail and I"

It's just so sad. It's also probably the only time Withnail will give a public performance of Hamlet and his audience are a bunch of savage wolves.

There is a metaphor in there somewhere.

Catalogue Trousers

To be precise...

"I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE THIS ANY MORE!!!"

Network - I'm As Mad As Hell!

Agreed. Marvellous.

Santa's Boyfriend

I watched it just a couple of months ago, and it is truly amazing even today.  Its power hasn't really lessened, if anything it's got stronger.  Today it feels like a parody of Fox News.

Catalogue Trousers

#40
This is pretty damn good until 2:15, and then...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACLA3KERCko

...just ruddy marvellous.

Also: only Gilliam could have the sheer chutzpah to do something so simple, so obvious...and so brilliant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWgmhodcess

Ollie is superb, as well!

kittens

#41
The scene in Aguirre, Wrath of God when Aguirre forces Don Fernando to become their new leader. The way it's staged with pretty much every main character in shot is ace. And they all know that from then on they're all doomed and it comes across so perfectly and it's just so good.

It's just ace.

Also, the scene in Festen when
Spoiler alert
Michael beats up Helge.
[close]
I can't watch that without crying.

EDIT: Oh, bloody hell, and this scene from Synecdoche, New York is just amazing. Just watch it, it's incredible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0

And finally, the scene from Bergman's The Seventh Seal that I currently have as my avatar. Not the whole entire scene mind, just the series of shots of the faces of the main characters looking on to the plague victims. It's one of those bits in a film that makes you say 'Fucking wow!' out loud and instantly fall in love with it, like that shot from 'Aguirre' up there.

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: biggytitbo on April 06, 2010, 07:40:51 PM
Car attack scene from Children of Men
One of the most stunning pieces of camera work ever commited to film, its a close run thing between this and the later warzone scene but this just wins for its brutal, unexpected horror:
url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en16i8BY4hI#]Children of Men tracking shot[/url]

I have to say that this is a remarkably well orchestrated scene. I assume that is acheived through a mix of great actor control, fantastic camera-work and some CGI. Is it CGI? Surely it has to be? If it is, then it acheives brilliance through technology that a thousand Lord of the Rings army fights could never even get close to.

I would also add that the scene where they are escaping by rolling the car down the hill to get the engine going is one of the most tense chase scenes I have ever witnessed, mainly because it is so incredibly slow. It makes my legs itchy. Despite these two amazing scenes, I thought the film overall was quite so-so.

Regarding chase scenes - I would also like to add Robert Carlisle in 28 Weeks Later. From the moment at the beginning when he is attacked in his house by the boy, to the point where is running from the infected hoard, I was completely gripped. Partly I love the way that it is a sidewards chase - it gives it an odd and very visual drama. Of course the way that he chooses to leave his wife in the house is also excellent - you can see him make this dreadful choice in front of your eyes without the need for dialogue.
Again a so-so film that doesn't live up to its opening, much like 28 Days Later, which I enjoyed even less than its sequel. I do have a huge problem with Danny Boyle films, in that I find little to enjoy about them.


JPA

That Children of Men sequence is indeed fantastic.

I preferred 28 Days to 28 Weeks, but I agree about the chase sequence in the latter being rather good. I really like 28 Days Later though, if I had to pick a sequence from that then it has to be when he wakes up and emerges into an utterly deserted London.

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: JPA on April 08, 2010, 12:37:51 PM
That Children of Men sequence is indeed fantastic.

I preferred 28 Days to 28 Weeks, but I agree about the chase sequence in the latter being rather good. I really like 28 Days Later though, if I had to pick a sequence from that then it has to be when he wakes up and emerges into an utterly deserted London.

The first trailer for 28 Days Later that hit the cinema featured the London scene with that music. Part of me imagined that it was going to be one of the greatest British films ever made, and possibly the best post-apocalyptic film ever made. I was very disapppointed by the final film, but again this was in large part due to what I consider to be some dreadful acting. I can't think of one Danny Boyle film that I like, never mind love, but I can think of many that I detest.

boxofslice

There's a scene in David Lynch's marvellous The Straight Story that I love.  Alvin has embarked on his cross state trek to see his ailing brother, who he hasn't spoken to in 30 years, on his lawnmower as he no longer has a driving license due to ill health.  As you expect the travelling is almost pedestrian and in one scene the camera follows Alvin along the road and then slowly pans up to the blue sky, holds for a few moments and then gently pans back down again to reveal that Alvin has only travelled a few yards.   What's great about the scene is that in any other film this pan away would then be cut to another scene to indicate a vast passage of time but here Lynch inverts it to show how arduous Alvin's journey is.

Stunning and if you haven't seen the film, I recommend you do.  One of only a few films than can genuinely bring me to tears.

EDIT:  Here it is
Laurens Walking - The Straight Story

Space ghost

Quote from: Ginyard on April 07, 2010, 07:05:57 PM




Abortion scene  -  Alfie

fantastic write up



Somewhat surprisingly I read your post on this last night and then switched on my tv to be confronted by exactly that scene. Film4 were showing Alfie last night between 23:30 and 01:45, y'see.

Finished reading your post, clicked on the tv only to see Alfie opening the door to Denholm, sat there mesmerized. V strange.



Emma Raducanu

Quote from: boxofslice on April 08, 2010, 01:00:34 PM
There's a scene in David Lynch's marvellous The Straight Story that I love.

I think I'm in love with 146 minutes of this 147 minute film. My favourite quote has to be Look up at the sky Rose, the sky sure is full of stars tonight" but then I'm a sucker for any peaceful depiction of a night sky.

Scene most likely to bring a tear to my eye - Rose imagining her son playing with a ball under Angelo Badalamenti's music, with tears in her eyes, rendered all the more poignant by a later scene.

Favourite scene is probably with the run-away pregnant teen. Seeing the collection of sticks she left him in the morning is wonderful and shows Alvin has helped her make the right decision. Though someone once said it was a facist symbol.

Ginyard

Quote from: Space ghost on April 08, 2010, 01:25:04 PM
Finished reading your post, clicked on the tv only to see Alfie opening the door to Denholm, sat there mesmerized. V strange.

I've had that before here, reading something someone's written and then it appearing moments later on tv. Almost as if we are interlinked like The Borg....

HB-88

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on April 08, 2010, 11:25:23 AM
I have to say that this is a remarkably well orchestrated scene. I assume that is acheived through a mix of great actor control, fantastic camera-work and some CGI. Is it CGI? Surely it has to be? If it is, then it acheives brilliance through technology that a thousand Lord of the Rings army fights could never even get close to.
Children of Men - Making Of

biggytitbo

Aye I was about to say, it was done using a special camera mount that provided 360 degree coverage inside the car. I think the other bravura sequence in that film, the long unbroken take where he rescues the baby from the warzone cheats slighty in that there is a hidden cut in there ala Rope.

Speaking of 28 weeks later, the opening sequence is incredible. But I'd say the scene where Robert Carlyle goes feral after kissing his wife and kills her is one of the most horrifying I've ever seen in any film. Really quite hard to watch.

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: HB-88 on April 08, 2010, 07:08:34 PM
Children of Men - Making Of

Well fuck me sideways. I think it looks so unlike anything I have seen in any other film I just assumed it was very, very good CGI, or at least extremely clever editing. With all those variables, such as having to duck down out of the way of the camera, it should have been a dog's dinner of a scene, but somehow he pulled it off.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Lost Highway: The Mystery Man makes himself known
[noembed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLQW2qr5Hs[/noembed]
There are few, if any, straght up horror directors who can match Lynch for pure, nightmarish dread. The unease begins to rise from the moment we catch sight of the man (played by fomer child actor and future murder suspect Robert Blake) across the crowded room. Deathly pale, unblinking and almost always smiling (not to mention lacking eyebrows, which is always a good method of making someone look otherworldly), his is the sort of face that makes you afraid to look out the window at night. With his unwavering tone of voice - calm but bristling with submerged menace - it's hard to doubt him when he reveals that he's somehow simultaneously in the protagonist's house and yet he still insists on providing a telephone demonstration of his omnipresense, which provides fresh heights of freakiness when both incarnations give a bone chilling cackle.

#53
Bugsy Malone - Loony Begonzi in the woods

I've spoken at length about this before, I'm sure. Fat Sam arranges a meeting with Dandy Dan in some out-of-town woodland. He fully intends to set him up by bringing on board 'a professional, not some mug'. He hires 'mad-as-a-hatter, off his trollley' Loony Begonzi, 'best man in Chicago'. Dandy Dan ain't no dumb-bum himself so makes sure that Charlie, Yonkers, Laughing Boy and Benny Lee are already in position when he rolls up to Sam. The tense banter between the two becomes increasingly taut with Dan being outright disrespectful as the fading Sam tries to reach a compromise. He blows his top, 'Ok, Loony, let him have it!' and Loony, hiding behind the car stands up, a pie in each hand. "Charlie, Yonkers, it's a double-cross!" says Dan. The contrasting fortunes of the two businessmen is laid bare. Having seen the impossible odds, we know this can only end one way. The coolest, mad-eyed, stone-cold motherfucker I've seen in cinema thinks differently.

"Okay, youse guys. Freeze."

The incongruity would almost be funny if it weren't for the sincerity of the delivery. Even better, when the trigger fingers keep pumping that splurge all over him, he doesn't even flinch. Bugsy, Sam's 'driver', legs it, panicking, 'Loony, what's the matter with you?!! Get outta here!' In an incredible display of self-annihilation, Loony throws the pies over his shoulder and stands firm, taunting death.

I still don't understand the characterisation on a conscious level yet it touches some base instinct that few things have ever made me feel. The sheer FUCK OFF in the face of imminent death makes me feel joyously, eternally alive. When I do finally take my leave, I'll be flicking the V's.

HappyTree

I really love the scene in Dr. Strangelove when the insane commander and Mandrake are being shot at in the office. The commander is loving every minute of it, excited at being at the centre of a real fight and barking out praise to the soldiers who are shooting at him. Mandrake is less than happy to be in a real fight and Peter Sellers's clipped, English accent is hilariously as he explains that he can't come to the window to help feed the machine gun because the "string" in his leg has gone.

But for me the greatest scene of all filmmaking is the very ending of Woody Allen's Manhattan. We've seen Woody with his young girlfriend, then with the pretentious girlfriend who came after. We've watched as he hummed and hawed about who he preferred. Then we watched as he lay on the couch musing into a tape recorder about all the most beautiful things he has ever experienced. And "Tracy"s face" is the most beautiful thing he can think of.

At this point Woody can contain himself no longer. We see the point at which he gathers up his courage and runs through the streets to see Tracy and ask her not to leave to go to London, but to stay with him. He's finally worked out what is really important to him, but he's insanely worried that she'll go off and meet someone else in London.

All the paranoia and euphoria of love relationships is there. So he rushes all though town to see her and pleads with her to stay. The final scene is him looking ta her sweetly, trying to persuade her to stay with him.

And then it ends.

Best ending ever. In my mind he got the girl, of course. I SO want him to get the girl, because I want to get the girl too. And, like the film, I still don't know if I ever will!

HappyTree


Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: The Boston Crab on April 09, 2010, 04:44:45 AM
Bugsy Malone - Loony Begonzi in the woods
I've spoken at length about this before, I'm sure. Fat Sam arranges a meeting...

Bravo to that post.

My 9-year-old-self never imagined that a better film could ever get made. I was wrong, but only a little bit.

Milo

Inigo Montoya vs The Six Fingered Man always does it for me;

Princess Bride - My Name Is...

An apparently mortally-wounded Inigo gathers his strength and skill to finally exact revenge on the man who killed his father. I can never get over the pure joy of seeing him finally achieve his life's goal and put to rest something that has haunted him from his childhood. The delivery of the coup de grace, "Promise me riches. Promise me power. Promise me anything I want!" "Yes, yes, anything!" "I want my father back you son of a bitch." Glorious, just glorious.

The version in the book is equally joyful,
Spoiler alert
with Inigo using four precision strokes to cut out the heart of the six-fingered man to match the figurative tearing out of his own heart.
[close]

bennett

Hmm - a few that I would have mentioned are already in here, not  least the superb Eli Wallach graveyard scene from The Good the Bad and The Ugly - that is truly epic. 

Likewise both the opening scene at the train station from Once Upon A time In The West and later the scene at the family homestead when the crickets stop chirruping.  Both of those still send shivers up my spine.

The Shining is also an alltime favourite - mainly for the one murder scene.  It's so shocking it's brilliant.

As for Indiana Jones - surely the best scene is the introduction to Raiders Of the Lost Ark.  From the beginning until the plane takes off is one of the most brilliantly paced openings to ever. The whole film is great, but the beginning just stands out.

Inigo Montoya is likewise great.  It's the repetition of the line as he regains his strength that does it, such a powerful mantra.   

It's another massive cliche and will probably get me ridiculed, but I can't help but get excited every time I watch the Millennium Falcon swoop out of the sun and rescue Luke from Vader as he's on the final trench run on the Death Star in Episode IV.  I can remember jumping round the room screaming with delight as a kid and it's just stuck.   

I love the scene in Mike Leigh's Naked where Johnny goes mental at the security guard in silhouette.  That scene really made me think a lot when I was younger.  It's the 'we're not fucking important' line.  Ooh, it's on youtube:

Naked - The Future

What I believed before I could easily search the internet to prove it's a myth.

But, my favourite scene from a film; the one I can watch over and over again, has to be the end of The Long Good Friday.

I won't give it away -
Spoiler alert
but all the way from when Harold Shand gives his speech to the Mafia to the end of the film is beautifully done - especially for Hoskin's facial expressions.  Just mesmerising.
[close]
-  don't watch it if you haven't watched the film.  It will ruin it.

"The mafia? I've shit 'em!" - Long Good Friday final scene






Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: bennett on April 09, 2010, 02:57:02 PM
I love the scene in Mike Leigh's Naked where Johnny goes mental at the security guard in silhouette.  That scene really made me think a lot when I was younger.  It's the 'we're not fucking important' line.  Ooh, it's on youtube:
Naked - The Future

One of my favourite films of all time, and certainly my favourite Mike Leigh film. When I was on my masters degree each of us had to choose a film to screen and discuss. I passed over Stalker and Once Upon a Time in the West for Naked mainly because I knew the students I most disliked on the course would hate it. I was right.
I think the best scenes, other than the one you post, are towards the end. The
Spoiler alert
reveal scene
[close]
certainly brings a tear to my eye everytime I see it. However, this scene has its own appeal.

Johnny and Archie (and Maggie)

Apparently Thewlis was told to stand on a street corner at 2am. He had to wait a whole hour until Bremner turned up, and as there were so many real nutters around, it took him a short while to realise it was part of the scene. That could be folklore though.

A film that falls short of perfection due to some dreadful acting/improvising by Katrin Cartlidge and Greg Cruttwell. I just wish they weren't in the film so much. Their presence actually prevents me from confidently recommending the film to anyone.