| Film Title |
Description |
Example |
Kiss of Death (1947)
|
The notorious scene of psychopathic, wild-eyed,
giggling killer Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark in his memorable screen
debut) asking a crippled, wheelchair-bound woman (Mildred Dunnock)
about her squealer son Rizzo - whom Tommy thought ratted him out:
"I'm askin' you: where's that squealin' son of yours?"
- and then his cruel response - tying her up in her wheelchair
with an electrical cord, and then pushing her down a long flight
of stairs to her death as she screamed - he giggled maniacally
the whole time |
|
The Lady From Shanghai
(1948)
|
The Magic Mirror Maze funhouse hall-of-mirrors
deadly shootout at the film's conclusion between cruel pimp husband Arthur Bannister (Everett
Sloane) and blonde femme fatale wife Elsa (Rita Hayworth); they self-destructively drew their guns and shot at multiple
likenesses of each other, as the screen erupted into a wild kaleidoscope of smashed
glass, cracked and chipped pieces of mirror, and shattering bits of their
false images; their aim was confused by the contradictory mirror images that
broke into splinters during the wild shooting as one fake image splintered
and another replaced it. Witnessing the double murders as he stepped back and
watched them destroy each other, Michael (Orson Welles) was horrified by the shattering of
glass as the deceptive facades of their evil images were reflected and then
blown away - and all that was left in the violent shoot-out was their guilt,
greedy hunger, pain and misery. They finally were able to break through all
their surfaces until they mortally wounded each other. At its climax after the
panes had been blasted away, both Bannister and Elsa were dying and faced each
other across a scene of shattered glass. Still in character, Bannister remarked with his last words:
"You know, for a smart girl, you make a lot of mistakes. You should have let me live. You're gonna need a good lawyer." |
|
The Lady From Shanghai
(1948)
|
As Bannister died after the shoot-out, Elsa (Rita Hayworth) stumbled with Michael (Orson Welles) into another room. The camera filmed
at ground level down next to Elsa on the floor, as she agonized over her death.
While she was dying, she had one last exchange with Michael. He recalled their
conversation in the streets of Acapulco about the badness of the world, and
his fishing tale about blood-thirsty sharks. After she admitted her own "original
nature" that delved into corruptness and evil and surrendered to "badness,"
her pleading failed to gain his sympathy, even after an appeal to his sentimentality:
Elsa: (gasping) He and George, and now me!
Michael: Like the sharks, mad with their own blood. Chewing away at their
own selves.
Elsa: It's true. I made a lot of mistakes.
Michael: You said the world's bad and we can't run away from the badness. And
you're right there. But you said we can't fight it. We must deal with the
badness, make terms. And then the badness'll deal with you, and make its own
terms, in the end, surely.
Elsa: You can fight, but what good is it? Goodbye.
Michael: You mean we can't win?
Elsa: No, we can't win. (poetically) Give my love to the sunrise.
Michael: We can't lose, either. Only if we quit.
Elsa: And you're not going to?
Michael: Not again!
Elsa: Oh Michael, I'm afraid. (He strolled away.) Michael? Come back here.
Michael! Please! I don't want to die! I DON'T WANT TO DIE!
Unhooked from her charming and fatal attraction, Michael abandoned her to
die alone.
|
|
The Red Shoes (1948)
|
The melodramatic tragic
death scene when ballerina dancer Victoria (Vicky) Page (Moira Shearer)
fell to her death just before an encore concert presentation of The Red Shoes ballet - the controlling red shoes willfully
took her to a balcony overlook and forcefully pulled her off (into
the path of an oncoming train below), followed by a closeup of her
bloody legs (and tights) and feet wearing the shoes; when she requested
that Julian Craster (Marius Goring) remove her red ballet shoes,
she died |
|
All the King's Men (1949)
|
In the final memorable scene set at the state capital building, Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) had just finished beating an impeachment rap, and he emerged to deliver a boisterous victory speech to the crowd: "Your will is my strength, and your need is my justice, and I shall live
in your right and your will. And if any man tries to stop me from fulfilling
that right and that will, I'll break him. I'll break him with my bare hands,
for I have the strength of many"; as he walked away, he was gunned down
with two shots at close-range by an assassin - the embittered and vengeful
young Dr. Adam Stanton (Shepperd Strudwick), the nephew of the judge (Raymond Greenleaf) whose career
Willie had ruined; mortally wounded and dying on the steps, a dismayed Stark delivered
his final words to newspaperman Jack Burden (John Ireland), Sugar Boy (Walter Burke), political aide Sadie Burke (Mercedes McCambridge), and city boss Tiny Duffy (Ralph Dumke) - in close-up: "Could have been whole world - Willie Stark. The whole world - Willie
Stark. Why does he do it to me - Willie Stark? Why?" |
|
Colorado Territory (1949)
|
The exciting last-stand
deaths in rocky mountain outcroppings of wounded, sought-after outlaw
Wes McQueen (Joel McCrea) and mixed-race, El Paso dance-hall partner
Colorado Carson (Virginia Mayo) - she heroically stood next to him
with guns ablazing toward the authorities but they were outnumbered
and shot down; at the moment of their fateful deaths, they poignantly
clasped their hands together |
|
Gun Crazy (1949 or 1950)
|
In this amour fou crime spree tale, the criminal, gun-wielding couple were hunted in a marshy and foggy swamp where they were surrounded - Bart Tare (John Dall) shot blonde sharpshooter/lover Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) after giving her one final kiss; he was compelled to shoot his insane, aggressive lover as a mercy killing - the only murder he committed in the entire film, in an act that adopted her own violent modus operandi; mistakenly believing that Bart had fired on them, a barrage of police gunfire abruptly cut Bart down and his body fell next to hers |
|
 The Third Man (1949)
|
Wounded black marketeer Harry Lime's (Orson Welles)
stretching out of his hands to reach above himself to vainly push out the heavy Viennese sewer grating above him in order to flee into the street - as his friend Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) shot him from below; Lime's quivering fingers (actually the fingers of director Carol Reed)
were visible through the grating (from street level) as he was shot and killed |
|
White Heat (1949)
# 10 
|
The death of mother-fixated
gangster Arthur 'Cody' Jarrett (James Cagney) before blowing himself
up by pumping bullets into a giant, round, holding gas tank, as
he screamed: "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" |
|
The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
|
The final scene of a bleeding
and dying Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden) after a failed heist, stumbling from his car into
Hickory Wood Farm - a sunny, Kentucky horse pasture |
|
D.O.A. (1950)
|
At the end of the film, fatally poisoned accountant/notary
public Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) collapsed after solving the case; the film concluded with an exchange between the deputy
and the homicide captain in the police station: ("How shall
I make out the report on him, Captain?" "Better make it...
'dead on arrival.'")
|
|
Sunset Boulevard (1950)
|
The opening scene's view of
a body floating face down in a pool - then startingly, the corpse started to narrate
the story ("Yes, this is Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California.
It's about five o'clock in the morning. That's the Homicide Squad
- complete with detectives and newspapermen") and provided the
reason why he was killed |
|
Ace in the Hole (1951) (aka The Big Carnival)
|
The final low-angled shot of bleeding, defeated journalist Charles "Chuck" Tatum (Kirk Douglas) collapsing at the feet of his newspaper editor Mr. Boot (Porter Hall): ("How'd you like to make yourself a thousand dollars a day, Mr. Boot? I'm a thousand-dollar-a-day newspaperman. You can have me for nothing") |
|
A Place in the Sun (1951)
|
The dramatic, mysterious
drowning/murder? of George Eastman's (Montgomery Clift) pregnant
girlfriend Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) at Loon Lake, as they were rowboating and she stood up and capsized the boat |
|
Strangers on a Train (1951)
|
The
view of Miriam's (Laura Elliot) strangulation murder scene reflected
in her thick-lensed glasses that had fallen to the grass, while
in the distant background the merry-go-round ironically played "Strawberry
Blonde" |
|
The Marrying Kind (1952)
|
The tragic family picnic scene in which Joey (Christopher Olsen), the six-year-old son of bickering couple Florrie (Judy Holliday) and Chet (Aldo Ray), accidentally drowned in a park pond while an oblivious Florence was singing "How I Love the Kisses of Dolores" on a ukelele to her husband |
|
Introduction: Deaths in film scenes can be either cool, teary, metaphoric, grisly,
scary, bloody, amusing, violent, transcendental, unforgettable, spectacular,
frightening, funny, or shocking. The victim's death may be well-deserved,
accidental, expected, sudden, or intentional. Some effective death scenes
even occur off-screen. Other
areas of this website have death scenes also, such as 
