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Greatest Movie Entrances of All-Time Part 3 |
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Greatest Movie Entrances of All-Time Part 3 |
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The following illustrated list in the next few web pages, in unranked chronological order, presents a solid collection of the most classic movie entrances or bows of film characters in cinematic history. These include film scenes from the silent era, the classic film period, and modern-day. Greatest Movie Entrances of All Time |
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Movie Title and Film Character |
Brief Scene Description | Example |
Witness for the Prosecution (1957) Christine Vole/Helm
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Christine Vole/Helm (Marlene Dietrich) made a dramatic entrance - appearing suddenly in the doorway as barrister Sir Wilfred (Charles Laughton) discussed her | 
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Hank Quinlan
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Corrupt Texas cop Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) was a fanatical, redneck, unshaven, obscene monstrous character with no redeeming value. He was obese and whale-like at almost 300 lbs -- first viewed below eye level as he struggled to pull himself out of the back seat of a car that had pulled up. He was there to conduct the investigation of the car bombing in his jurisdiction. Appearing with a vast paunch and slovenly dressed in a massive gray raincoat and wide-brimmed hat, he was chomping on a cigar as he began to speak |
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Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton
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The revelation scene of Madeleine (Kim Novak) in Ernie's restaurant in San Francisco was integral to the twisting plot -- Gavin Elster (Tom Helmore) was joined at a table with the lovely, elegant, and beautiful blonde Madeleine wearing a dark, nakedly-backless evening dress with green trim. While the camera moved toward their table, Madeleine's back was kept toward the camera. As she left the restaurant, Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), half in profile, had his nervous, "ghostly" first encounter with the woman. His first view of the beautiful female was incredibly transcendental - she was half-seen in a close-up profile as she deliberately paused behind him, to display herself to him, and awaited Elster, with the radiant light reflecting off her hair |  
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Sugar Kane Kowalczyk
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Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopaters, an all-girl jazz band, was traveling to Miami, Florida by train. Dressed in drag and joining the band were two hapless musicians Jerry/Daphne (Jack Lemmon) and Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis), to escape execution by mobsters after witnessing the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The band's ukelele-playing, voluptuous singer, hip-swinging 24 year-old blonde Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe) moving down the train platform, was squirted by hot steam. Sugar's introductory appearance objectified her sexuality as the camera focused on her legs and swiveling rear - also filmed from behind when she passed. Jerry marveled at Sugar's wiggly walk in a memorable line: "Look at that! Look how she moves. That's just like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motors. I tell you, it's a whole different sex!" |  
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"Mrs. Bates"
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While an unsuspecting Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) showered in her Bates Motel room, a shadowy, grey tall figure entered the bathroom. Just as the shower curtain completely filled the screen - with the camera positioned just inside the tub, the silhouetted, opaque-outlined figure whipped aside (or tears open) the curtain barrier. The outline of the figure's dark face, the whites of its eyes, and tight hair bun were all that was visible - "Mrs. Bates" wielded a menacing, phallic-like butcher knife high in the air - at first, it appeared to be stab, stab, stab us - the victimized viewer! The piercing, shrieking, and screaming of the violin strings of Bernard Herrmann's shrill music played a large part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene - they started 'screaming' before Marion's own shrieks. Marion turned, screamed (her wide-open, contorted mouth in gigantic close-up), and vainly resisted as she shielded her breasts, while the large knife repeatedly rose and fell in a machine-like fashion. After "Mother" had disposed of Marion, she turned abruptly and left her to die on the floor of the bath tub | 
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James Bond
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The build-up to the introduction
of the famous secret agent James Bond (Sean Connery) in the fancy gambling
casino, Le Cercle (Les Ambassadeurs, London) Club, was established with
over a dozen different camera angles before Bond's face was actually seen.
He was playing cards at one of the chemin de fer gaming tables
against a beautiful, wealthy and sexy brunette who was losing named Sylvia
Trench (Eunice Gayson). He introduced himself: Bond (offscreen): "I
admire your courage, Miss...?" Sylvia: "Trench, Sylvia Trench.
I admire your luck. Mr...?" Bond (while casually lighting his cigarette):
"Bond - James Bond" In the film's most unforgettable sequence, Bond awakened to the sound of a girl's voice singing "Underneath the Mango Tree." And then on the beach rising Venus-like from the water with giant seashells, Bond had his first view of Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), an innocent, voluptuous island girl/diver wearing a sexy, white bikini and hunting knife |
 
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Sherif Ali
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At a desolate Harith well at Masruh (belonging to a rival Bedouin tribe), Tafas drew up water at the start of one of the longest, most memorable screen entrances in film history. A dust cloud and then a tiny ghostly speck appeared through shimmering, mirage-like heat waves on the desert horizon - Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) feared it was "Turks." The ominous image, more mirage than real, steadily enlarged and grew into a human being as it came closer and closer. Tafas, Lawrence's escort, was shot down in cold-blood by the black-robed Bedouin for drinking at the well owned by a rival tribe. Through this ugly, ferocious act of ancient Bedouin tribal warfare, a fearless Lawrence was introduced to black-clad Sheik Sherif Ali Ibn el Kharish (Omar Sharif) on camel-back. Their conversation was brief: Sherif: "He is dead." Lawrence: "Yes. WHY?" Sherif: "This is my well." |
  
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Dolores 'Lolita' Haze
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Middle-aged Professor Humbert Humbert's (James Mason) first look at Lolita's (Sue Lyon) youthful figure was impossible for him to forget - she wore a two-piece skimpy, flower-patterned bikini, and she sported heart-shaped sunglasses and a broad-brimmed, feathered straw hat while sunning herself on a blanket laid on the lawn. Her mother Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters) continued babbling on, oblivious to Humbert's smitten, bedazzled look and immediate infatuation: "My yellow roses. My - daughter....I could offer you a comfortable home, a sunny garden, a congenial atmosphere, my cherry pies." Humbert quickly reconsidered her offer to rent a room for "something nominal, let's say, uh, two hundred a month...including meals, and uh, late snacks, etcetera...uh, you couldn't find better value in West Ramsdale." Charlotte was curious about what clinched the deal for him to move into the house: "What was the decisive factor? Uh, my garden?" Avoiding the truth, Humbert replied, tongue-in-cheek with a clever double entendre: "I think it was your cherry pies!" The scene ended on another long stare from Lolita |
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Dr Strangelove Or: How... (1964) Dr. Strangelove
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President Muffley (Peter Sellers) consulted with Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers in his third role), a wheelchair-bound German (ex-Nazi) nuclear scientist and U.S. weapons strategist/director of weapons research and development, about the Doomsday Machine. Strangelove whined with a German accent: "A moment please, Mr. President" as his dark shape was wheeled into view. With thick dark sunglasses, Strangelove also had a black-gloved mechanical, robotic right hand which shakily held his cigarette |
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Maria
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In the much-heralded, breathtaking opening sequence of this film, after sweeping aerial views of the snow-covered mountains and valleys, the camera moved over the European landscape and village until it discovered an open, green area nestled between the peaks. It moved closer and zoomed into the green field, where it suddenly found a happy and joyous Maria (Julie Andrews), a novice Salzburg Austrian nun, walking across the wide expanse of land. With open-armed appreciation of the beauty of the surrounding majestic peaks and vistas of the Austrian Alps, she twirled and sang the title song: "The Hills Are Alive With the Sound of Music" |
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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1967) All three characters
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The film's opening title sequence included a 20 minute introduction to: Tuco "the Ugly" (Eli Wallach), Setenza "the Bad" (Lee Van Cleef), and Joe "the Good" or "Blondie" (Clint Eastwood) |
  
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Mrs. Robinson
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Young and alienated recent college grad Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) stared into his fish tank's glass in his upstairs bedroom - away from celebratory party-goers for his own graduation party - when a black-clad Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father's business partner, opened his bedroom door in the frame; they both appeared behind the pane of glass - she had followed him there (first viewed in the living room eyeing him), explaining that she was looking for the bathroom, but her interest in him belied her excuse. Looking upset, Ben admitted he was "disturbed about things" in general and would rather be alone. She insisted that he drive her home because her husband had already left with their car - this was the start of her memorable seduction of him |
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Barbarella (1968) Barbarella
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In the opening credits sequence of this erotic science-fiction fantasy, an inflight and weightless, 41st century Barbarella (Jane Fonda) wearing a protective dark spacesuit began a slow striptease while floating in mid-air, first removing her gloves (to reveal beautifully-manicured fingers and hands) and then her leggings; her face appeared after a tinted shield over her helmet slowly lowered; when her helmet was removed and she shook her full head of hair, white letters were let loose to spell her name; further letters for the credits were released as more coverings were freed from her body; by the end of the credits when the screen read: "DIRECTED BY ROGER VADIM", she was completely naked with the letters often strategically dancing around or coalescing to try and mask her private parts |   
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Night of the Living Dead (1968) The first zombie
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In this zombie film's opening, Johnny (Russell Streiner) had just taken his slightly neurotic and edgy sister Barbara (Judith O'Dea) to visit their mother's grave in a remote cemetery. When Barbara nervously continued to admit a phobia of cemeteries and the dead, and they placed flowers on the grave, Johnny playfully taunted her in a creepy voice: "They're coming to get you, Barbara!... They're coming for you, Barbara!... They're coming for you!" He then pointed to what looked like a drunk vagrant shambling among the headstones, and gleefully teased: "Look, there comes one of them now!" Suddenly, without warning, the "vagrant" who had appeared out of nowhere attacked the pair, trying to eat them. Johnny was killed when he tripped and hit his head hard against the headstone, and Barbara fled to the car with the reanimated, slow-moving living corpse shambling after her |
 
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Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, It.) Harmonica Frank
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This Italian western had one of the most memorable opening sequences of all time -- at an isolated and deserted train station (with a pesky fly, dripping ceiling, creaky windmill, and noisy telegraph machine) in Flagstone, Arizona, three unnamed gunman (Jack Elam as Snaky, Woody Strode as Stony, and Al Mulock as Knuckles) sent by cold-blooded, blue-eyed killer Frank (Henry Fonda in a cast-against-type role) awaited the late arrival of a train; finally, a mysterious stoic man with no name playing a harmonica (Charles Bronson) was let off the late-arriving train. He fatefully mentioned that the trio of gunmen "brought two too many" horses. After a shootout, all three gunmen were killed Afterwards, power-hungry and ruthless Frank made a second grand entrance with an icy closeup (after a long build-up), after his posse of men wearing yellow duster topcoats casually slaughtered in cold-blood landowner Brett McBain (Frank Wolff) and his entire family at their remote "Sweetwater" farm -- on the day of a welcoming feast for his arriving wife Jill (Claudia Cardinale) from New Orleans -- the dead were the patriarch and his three children, including the innocent youngest son - because one of the gunmen happened to call Frank "by name" |
   
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Alex de Large
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The opening memorable image was an intimate closeup (known as the Kubrick stare) of the blue staring eyes and smirking face of ebullient young punker Alex de Large (Malcolm McDowell), wearing a bowler hat and with one false eyelash (upper and lower) adorning his right eye. As the camera zoom pulled back, accompanied by Walter Carlos' synthesized rendition of Purcell's Elegy on the Death of Queen Mary, the anti-hero character with the malevolent, cold stare was shown sitting amidst his kingly court of teenaged gang of "droogs". Alex narrated in voice-over: "There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening" |
 
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Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) Willy Wonka
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Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) made
his entrance when he exited his gated factory, limping and heavily relying
on his cane, as if he were a decrepit old man. As he approached the outer
gate, he stopped unsteadily, teetered and then suddenly collapsed -- eliciting
a gasp from the gathered crowd -- but then he performed a neat somersault
with a spry flair - eliciting the crowd's applause -- foreshadowing his
mischievous, cunning and secretive nature |
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One of the
most striking elements in any film is the sudden or memorable appearance
of one of the main characters or stars. Often, film entrances are not
very extraordinary, but now and again, there are some that are very
spectacular and skillfully executed. Although it would be impossible
to compile a list of every single memorable movie entrance ever screened,
this collection moves toward that goal. 