What makes a great movie great is the drama, the tension in a "scene" created by the interaction of actor, lines, lens, lighting, music, and so on, that create the magic-- recognition of something beautiful about the human condition, revelation about character, or life itself. These a few of the highs for me, the moments I sucked in my breath realized something new. Not in any particular order.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of
Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the
Tannhauser gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like
tears in
rain.
Time to
die."
Roy Batty, a "replicant" in "Blade Runner", at the moment he realizes he is about to expire. All the more poignant because of his earlier, violent demand for more life, from the head of the company that manufactured him.
It was thought at one time that Rutger Hauer, the actor playing Batty, improvised these lines. The principals have flipped back and forth on the issue but every one, including the direcctor, Ridley Scott, and writer, David Peoples, seems to have settled on giving the credit for the final formulation of the lines to the actor, Rutger Hauer, who thought the original scripted version was too wordy.
I do not know if the words were in the original story by Philip K. Dick. I don't remember them being there, but it's been a while. I suspect they were not.
Isabelle Adjani stretches her neck, an utterly hypnotic, erotic gesture, catching the interest of vampyre Klaus Kinski who was in a hurry to get back to his coffin as the morning light advanced, in "Nosferatu". He, fatally, can't resist just one more little snack.
Anne Hathaway on the phone in "Brokeback Mountain" realizing or reckoning with Ennis, after Jack died. Jack wanted his ashes scattered over some place called Brokeback Mountain and Ennis has just told her that that's where he and Jack used to go camp together.
Anna Schmidt walks by Holly Martins after Lime's funeral in "The Third Man". All of our expectations are that she will stop at the earnest but naive American, Holly Martins, standing there waiting for her, and then they will walk off together, arm in arm. Instead, she doesn't even look at him. She never raises her head. She never acknowledges his existence. Just walks right by him, in one of the bleakest moments in film. Earlier in the story, when asked why she loved Harry Lime, she told Martins that he made her laugh, and you had the feeling that, in the grim reality of that time, this was an infinitely precious gift.
Peter Falk says "I can't see you but I know you're there" in "Wings of Desire". Discussion. I don't know why, but at that moment in the film, in that context-- as the "angels" closely observe his embrace of smoke and tobacco and art-- it gave me chills.
In "Junebug", George, attending a church dinner with his sophisticated cosmopolitan girlfriend Madeleine, on a rare visit to his home in North Carolina , is asked by the pastor to sing a gospel song. To Madeleine's astonishment, he does so, beautifully. Madeleine's expression as she watches him is evocative of whole range of details about their relationship, all of which ring truer than you would have imagined.
In "Late Spring", in post-war Japan, Professor Shukichi lives contentedly with his daughter, Noriko. She takes care of him, doing his laundry and cooking, and every night, preparing for bed, he peels two apples for them to enjoy together in the living room. But Shukichi's sister insists that it is time for Noriko to marry and leave home. It is shameful, she says, for him to allow his adult daughter to continue to look after him
Shukichi's sister doesn't understand that Noriko doesn't really want to get married-- she is content to live with her father. She is relatively free, and content with his companionship. But Noriko's friends also put pressure on her, saying that her father surely wishes she would marry and move out but is too polite to tell her. Her father, convinced that Noriko has sacraficed her own happiness to stay with him, conducts an elaborate deception. He convinces Noriko that he has met another woman and plans to remarry, and that she would be in the way. He makes it clear that he won't be happy until he knows that she is also happily married. She reluctantly, dutifully agrees, but she is clearly despondent A man has been courting her and she agrees to the relationship but she is not in love with him, nor happy to leave her father.
Shukichi has no real intention of remarrying. After his daughter's wedding, Shukichi returns to his home, sits down in the living room, and silently peels one apple, for himself, and the full weight of his solitude descends on him. It is one of the most crushingly devastating scenes I've ever watched.
The flower girl realizes that the shabby little tramp she just gave a coin to is her benefactor who paid for her operation to restore her eyesight (City Lights).
In Haneke's "The White Ribbon", a young couple daringly arrange a carriage ride together. When the young man suggests they divert off the main road and have a picnic near a river, the girl is distressed, fearful of scandal. She begs him not to insist. Then she quietly touches his hand and says, "bitte"-- "please"-- and he relents and turns the carriage around. He is a descent man, after all, but this is not Disney: he clearly hoped for she would agree to it and only reluctantly gives in.
"You were not." Amy Adams incredulous, after Embeth Davidtz informs her that she was born in Japan, in "Junebug".
Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) and Elaine (Katharine Ross) in "The Graduate" flee the church where Elaine was about to marry, race across the lawns and suburban streets, and, absurdly, hop onto a bus. The camera stays on them at the back of the bus, and stays, and stays, as people stare and the bus rambles down the street, and they both suddenly become awkward with each other. Instead of a romantic, happy ending, you realize that their whole lives lie ahead of them, and there will be long-term consequences of their decision. It's a stunning reversal of the fairy-tale, Hollywood ending: nothing is "ever after".
Hoffman and Ross--neither of whom were big stars at the time-- later explained that they were terrified that it had been a lousy take and director Nichols was about to yell at them, as, apparently, he often did.
In "The Seventh Seal", Block studies the face of a "witch" to see if she continues to believe herself to be Satan's bride as the flames begin to lick her feet-- he thinks that if she does, he might believe in God, because if there is a Satan, there must be a God.
Alas.. her confidence evaporates.
Yes, the brilliant "failure to communicate" sequence from "Cool Hand Luke", one of the best movies on heroism ever made;
The concubines of the dead King check out the imposter in Akira Kurosawa's "Kagemusha". And it is clear that their interests lie in perpetuating the illusion that the the former bum is the King and they are prepared to go along with the scheme. They enthusiastically, unanimously declare that this is, indeed, the real king.
"He'd kill us if he had the chance." Harry Caul realizes he misheard the original statement in "The Conversation".
The phone call to Dimitri, the Russian Premiere, in "Dr. Strangelove", in which Muffley tries to explain how one of the U.S. generals went a little "funny in the head" and launched an unauthorized nuclear attack; and the brilliant ending: Colonel Kong riding the bomb to its target like a rodeo cowboy.
There are well-known, widely accepted brilliant moments in film-- "Rosebud", for example-- not all of which deserve the honorific. On this page, I'm mainly interested in over-looked gems.
Favorite comic moment: Peter Sellers as President Muffley on the phone with Russian Premier Kissov after explaining that a deranged general has initiated full-scale nuclear war.
"Dimitri. I'm very sorry. Alright! You're sorrier than I am! But I am sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are, Dimitri. Don't say that you are more sorry than I am, because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we're both sorry, alright? Alright.
It's more than funny. It hammers home the point that men of small minds and smaller perspectives now sit on the capabability of ending all life as we know it on earth.