What is the Most Famous Movie Scene?

[lynn cates]

right

Hello Steadmund. Bing, bing, bing. Answer correct.

Cheers.
LC

[sleekviper]

What was the other film to scare you Lynn?

[lynn cates]

Bava

Hello Viper. It was Mario Bava's first film, "Caltiki, the Immortal Monster." The scene when Max gets absorbed by the monster--a bit gruesome, even by today's standards.

Cheers.
LC

[lynn cates]

YouTube

Hello Viper. Well, it seems the whole movie is on YouTube. Here is the part to which i referred. It begins at about 6:08 and lasts until about 6:36.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe87W9Aq1WA&feature=related

Rather disgusting now.

Cheers.
LC

[sleekviper]

He needed to be lunch, he shot a dreamboat, of all the things to do. Thanks Lynn!

[mariab]

I've tried watching Casablanca, but I have to confess I fell asleep. And I confess that the same happens to me each time I try to watch Clockwork Orange: This film is unwatchable, in the sense that it puts me to sleep like a baby. I've never even managed to watch the alleged rape scenes in the beginning, I was out cold before that.
OK, let's make a list of visually powerful film scenes that have defined my “formative years“ (;-)) (or possibly, the formative years of my entire generation), organized by genre.
Oldies:
- Vivien Leigh digging the ground with her hands, munching vegetable roots, throwing up, then uttering her famous monologue “I may steal and kill, but I'll never be hungry again“, while the camera backs off to a crane shot of her shadow by a huge tree and the Tara sunset, accompanied by the famous Gone with the wind music.
- The other famous receding crane shot in Gone with the wind, slowly revealing the space in front of the Atlanta hospital filled with injured soldiers, while (very cleverly) military music on the pipe and drums starts playing gently.
- Steve Mc Queen jumping wire fences on his motorcycle, chased by the Nazis in The great escape. (I tried to imitate this with my bike at age 10. Ended up all beige, covered in mudd, then all red under the shower, covered in blood. Good times.)
- The scene in 2001 Odyssey in space where the ape just discovered the use of weapons and utensils, throws the bone in the air in slow motion, and the scene switches via match cut to an orbital satellit (and to the black obelisk) 4.000 years later.
- Ursula Andress (un-dress?) exiting the ocean holding shells in a 1950s bikini in – whichever James Bond movie is that? (The deep reason for my rich collection of bikinis in 1950s style!)
- The scene by the redwood tree or any scene with Jimmy Stewart following Kim Novak by car or feet around San Fransisco to an “obsessive“, rich music score by B. Hermann in Vertigo.(Very stupidly ripped off in Basic instinct!)
- Ray Milland's close up checking his watch over smoke from cigars, switching to a cut to the automatic telephone dialing in Dial “M“ for murder.
- Grace Kelly's close up entering the scene in Rear window, while a “neighbor“ (nicely) vocalises in high pitch.
- Woody Allen running through Manhattan in black and white to get back Mariel Hemingway in the last minute, accompanied by Gershwin's Rhapsody in blue. (This scene was ripped off in When Harry met Sally, which is a very mediocre movie.)

Horror:
I'm afraid I've never seen the entire Psycho, just bits and pieces from TV reruns, so no reference.
- The Exorcist makes me laugh. Rosemary's baby's much better (without being scary), but then, it's Polanski. The only scary (sad) scene in The Exorcist is Linda Blair at the hospital. And Jason Miller is majorly cute as the priest agonizing about having lost his faith.
- The only horror movie that's ever scared me (as a young adult) is Don't look now.
- Jaws: A classic. The most powerful scenes for me is when they find the corpse of the girl (but very cleverly don't show it all), or the (often cut) scene with the old guy's foot going off. Because EVERY surfer worth his salt has extensive thoughts about the aftermaths of a shark attack.
- The scene with the old guy fishing with his legs in the water having said legs disintegrate within minutes in Piranhas.
- The sheesh kebab scene in Happy birthday to me. (I went inside to see this movie alone when in school, as my friends were scared and abandoned me in front of the movie theater.)
- Any scenes with Nastasja Kinski and Malcolm McDowell in Cat people (the remake). I still own the LP from that movie (somewhere at my mom's).

oldie French:
- Louis de Fynès as a gendarme chasing extra-terrestres.
- Catherine Deneuve in Les parapluies de Cherburg or in Belle de jour.

oldie Italian:
- Anita Ekberg with a kitten on her head in a fountain in La dolce Vita.
- Dirk Bogarde on a Venice vaporetto or watching Bjorn Andresen from afar over Mahler's Adagietto from the 5th symphony in Death in Venice.
- Giulietta Massina's incredibly vulnerable eyes in La strada.

oldie Swedish:
- Any close-up of Liv Ulman or Max von Sydow (the latter in black and white).

generational:
- In addition to the already mentioned scenes from Taxi Driver, Jodie Foster having French toasts with Robert de Niro and dropping the entire sugar jar on them.
- Brook Shields in The blue Lagoon. (Most embarrassingly, the reason I decided to wear my hair long as a teen!)
- Foxes: The girls all dressed up to go out (to an Angel concert), a bunch of guys shouting “dykes!“ to them, the girls kiss each other and collectivelly shake their ass. Cherie Currie and Jodie Foster heat up a dorky guy at the supermarket. Scott Baio skates under a truck in a chasing scene. Jodie Foster and Scott Baio walking a wasted Cherie Currie, while her legs drag on the ground. Cherie Currie spitting blood inside of her oxygen mask before dying.
- Christy McNichols lighting up behind a clothesline, then kicking a guy in the balls in Little Darlings. (I used to recreate that scene when I was 13. The kicking was a piece of cake, but I couldn't inhale smoke at that age.)
- Kristianne F. bringing birthday cake to her crush at school. (Another scene I've recreated, I'm such a pathetic copycat.)
- Christopher Reeves as Superman.
- Mariel Hemingway and Patrice Donnelly running up a sand dune in super slow motion, coached by Scott Glenn in Personal Best.

comedy:
- Whoopey Goldberg in her pink dress and hat and her antics at the bank in Ghost.
- Sharon Stone repeatedly on Michael Douglas in Basic instinct.
- Rick Moranis playing with his dolls and sipping coffee through his Darth Vader helm in Spaceballs.

[Autolycus]

Morning All,

How about:

The scene in 12 Angry Men where Lee J Cobb has his moment of self-realisation?

The scene in Bambi where he's running through the snow calling for his mother, (after we've all heard the shot.)

Regards,
Autolycus.

[mariab]

Bambi in a movie theater was my first childhood trauma when I was about 3. Not the death of his mother, but the hunting dogs. I don't recall Bambi too well, but I recall that even as a 3 year old I thought that Feline (Bambi's girlfriend) was a lame character.

[Rubyretro]

glad to see that you're not under much work pressure today, Maria !!

OK, let's make a list of visually powerful film scenes that have defined my “formative years“

-rather bizarrely, Mia Farrow in Woody Allen's film 'Alice', where she goes to a chinese 'doctor' and gets hypnotised ; I don't know whether it was the 'chicken or the egg' now, that I regularly practise 'self-hypnotism' (meditation by another name), or whether that film had a an influence over me at that point in my life.
-

The scene in 2001 Odyssey in space where the ape just discovered the use of weapons and utensils, throws the bone in the air in slow motion

, I love the scene in 'Zoolander, where the two 'male models' discover a computer and parody this scene. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m_PncKuDao

Ursula Andress (un-dress?) exiting the ocean holding shells in a 1950s bikini in – whichever James Bond movie is that? (The deep reason for my rich collection of bikinis in 1950s style!:

-Was it Dr No ?? (Undress as Honey Rider ?) I've got a fixation with vintage 'bathing suits' too (all that S-bend scaffolding ).
-

Woody Allen running through Manhattan in black and white to get back Mariel Hemingway in the last minute, accompanied by Gershwin's Rhapsody in blue. (This scene was ripped off in When Harry met Sally, which is a very mediocre movie.)

[U] ..And 'Something About Mary' -where 'Mary' chases after Ben Stiller, for the Grand finale to announce, breathless"....you forgot your keys"..

If you like Hitchcock Maria -how could you leave out 'North by North west' ??!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_EwXv6zV9A

[c.d.]

Glad to see so many responses. Thanks everyone for participating.

How about the stateroom scene with the Marx Brothers as stowaways in "A Night at the Opera?"

The hitchhiking scene in "It Happened One Night" where Claudette Colbert pulls up her skirt to show her leg.

The kiss on the beach between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in "From Here to Eternity."

c.d.

P.S. Thanks to Tom Wescott for correctly pointing out that we are talking about scenes not lines.

P.P.S. Tom, you HAVE TO see Casablanca!!!

[c.d.]

Just as an aside, I watched "A Place in the Sun" with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift the other night. Good movie. It really hit me that as a young woman Elizabeth Taylor was stunningly beautiful.

c.d.

[c.d.]

Marilyn Monroe standing on the air vent with her skirt blowing up in "The Seven Year Itch."

c.d.

[mariab]

Morning Ruby,
(and ouch! apologies for my too long posts lately!)
Thankfully, not any too soon impending deadlines right now, which makes me unabashedly lazy, I'm afraid. There's a Don Carlos Met matinee (streamed live) at a movie theater to attend later today, for which I feel almost like passing.
I'm afraid I didn't like Alice by Woody Allen too much (I thought the main character was such a pathetic rich lady). The only scene I recall is that some friends of Alice were rendered invisible by the Chinese witch doctor you've mentioned and there was a supermodel complaining about heavy breathing in the changing room at the mall.
My favorites by Woody Allen are Husbands and wives (hilariously spot on), Zelig (a homage to François Truffaut), The purple rose of Cairo, maybe Crimes and misdemeanors too. Oh yeah, and definitely Radio days.
I should really watch Zoolander one of these days, all of my friends keep saying I've missed out.
I thought the most famous scene in There's something about Mary was the hair gel scene (which I thought was kinda dumb.) The scenes that crack me up in There's something about Mary is the one where Matt Dillon watching Mary with binoculars gets the wrong window and the old blond lady, and the scene with the fella with the crutches. I LOVE politically incorrect humour, but it has to be funny.
North by Northwest I'm afraid I haven't seen. Is it the one with a propeller plane chasing Jimmy Stewart?
By the by, I recently noticed that there's a Tippi Hedren barbie doll spotting Tippi's hairdo and pale green suit (tailleur in French), with black birds hanging from her! If I were 12 years old I'd die to get this barbie!
Rubyretro wrote:
Was it Dr No ?? (Undress as Honey Rider?) I've got a fixation with vintage 'bathing suits' too (all that S-bend scaffolding).
I like all kinds of bikinis, but the vintage-like ones totally remind me of this scene from Dr. No. (The “scaffolding“ I take out, though. Especially when surfing.) What's funny is these oldie-bikinis often spot a belt too, strictly decorative, but for some reason the belt adds up to the allure. A couple years ago in Hossegor some Aussie chaps chat me up at the bar saying “You were the chick surfing in the red bikini with a belt.“ and I was like “Huh? Guys are capable of real attention to detail when it matters.“
But still, I have no clue how they could spot the tiny belt from yards away, in the water. I think bikini designers are real pervs, but in a good way...

[mariab]

Hi C.D., thanks for a great idea for a (pub) thread.
C.D. wrote:
How about the stateroom scene with the Marx Brothers as stowaways in "A Night at the Opera?"
I love the scene in A night at the opera where they hang from the ceiling and keep changing the staging and Azucena (the gypsy mother) from Il Trovatore ends up as a fruit vendor.
C.D. wrote:
The kiss on the beach between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in "From Here to Eternity."
It's probably generational, but I'm aware of this scene only as a parody – in Airplane.
C.D. wrote:
Tom, you HAVE TO see Casablanca!!!
Don't bother with Casablanca, Tom,!

[mariab]

C.D. wrote:
Marilyn Monroe standing on the air vent with her skirt blowing up in "The Seven Year Itch."
Definitely. Although, again, for my generation, known exclusively as a poster. I don't know anyone who's ever seen The 7 years itch.
Clint Eastwood walking through residing dust and taking off his protective metal plate as the man with no name in For a handful of $.