Greatest Film Moments and Scenes

GREAT MOMENTS and SCENES FROM THE GREATEST FILMS

An extensive collection of the most famous, distinguished, unforgettable or memorable images, scenes, sequences or performances, many from the greatest films of all time

Part 13

E (continued)
Elmer Gantry (1960)	The opening speech by charmer Elmer Gantry (Oscar-winning Burt Lancaster) in a bar ("...Jesus had love in both fists! And what is love? Love is the mornin' and the evenin' star"); his charismatic hell-fire and brimstone performances in Bible-Belt revivalist scenes - including his dramatic slide up to the stage during a tent meeting, his sweating preaching ("Sin. Sin, Sin. You're all sinners. You're all doomed to perdition. You're all goin' to the painful, stinkin', scaldin', everlastin' tortures of a fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless, unless, unless you repent") and his memorable sermon against booze ("As long as I got a foot, I'll kick booze. And, as long as I got a fist, I'll punch it. And, as long as I got a tooth, I'll bite it. And, when I'm old and gray and toothless and bootless, I'll gum it till I go to heaven and booze goes to hell"); Sister Falconer's (Jean Simmons) naive but admirable faith, the scenes of Gantry's growing love and attraction for her; also the vengeful scene in which one of his old girlfriends - minister's daughter-turned-prostitute Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones) sets him up and frames him with photographs taken in a compromising situation to ruin his reputation, and the climactic blazing tent fire tragedy that takes the life of Sister Falconer, in director Richard Brooks' religious drama
Elvira Madigan (1967, Sw.)	The lovely and sensuous scenes in the tragic, 19th century, idyllic Swedish elopement-romance between two star-crossed lovers: 16 year old circus-tightrope walker Hedvig 'Elvira' Madigan (Pia Degermark) and army lieutenant officer Sixten Sparre (Thommy Berggren) who deserted his post; the memorable soundtrack of Mozart's Piano Concerto, and the final freeze-frame with shots heard off-screen as the two lovers committed suicide together, in director Bo Widerberg's romantic melodrama
Star Wars: Episode V— The Empire Strikes Back (1980)	The surprise attack and battle on the ice planet Hoth between AT-ATs (giant mechanized walkers) and small Rebel Alliance speeders, Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) difficult training to be a Jedi knight at the hands of the wise and dimunitive Yoda (voice of Frank Oz), including his failed test in which he "battles" Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice of James Earl Jones) and his own face is revealed in Vader's severed helmet; the Millenium Falcon's outmaneuvering of the pursuit by Tie Fighters in a thrilling near-suicidal flight through a dense asteroid field; the scene of the Falcon almost being ingested by a giant space worm and snapped at as it escaped from its cavernous innards; the panoramic floating, gas-mining colony of Cloud City; the exciting light-saber duel/showdown between Darth Vader and Luke when he loses his hand, and the startling and stunning moment of revelation when Darth Vader emotionessly admits a surprise relationship: "No, Luke, I am your father" (with Luke's horrified reaction: "NOOOOO!") and his urging Luke to join him: "Together we'll rule the galaxy as father and son!"; also Han Solo's (Harrison Ford) test encasement in carbonite and his romantic goodbye to Leia (Carrie Fisher): (Leia: "I love you." Han: "I know"); and the final, evocative shot of Luke, Leia, C-3PO (voice of Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 in a sick bay watching Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) departing with Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) in the Falcon in their quest to rescue Han, in Irwin Kershner's second film in the six-film epic series
The Endless Summer (1966)	The incredible surfing footage around the world (Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii and California) while searching for "the perfect wave" (finally found at Cape St. Francis in S. Africa), especially the scenes of surfing in Australia with sharks, in Bruce Brown's ultimate documentary
The English Patient (1996)	The caring ministrations of nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) to the disfigured 'English patient' after a plane crash - cartographer Count Laszlo Almasy (Ralph Fiennes) in a bombed-out Tuscan monastery; the Count's many fragmented flashbacks about his life and romance with adulterous married lover Katharine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas) - including the Count's loving bath scene (in which she shampooed his hair and then joined him) and love-making sequence; and the scene of Almasy caring for his severely-wounded love in a cave/shelter after a plane crash and his promise to her: (Katherine: "Promise me you'll come back for me" Almasy: "I promise - I'll come back for you. I promise - I'll never leave you") - and later his return to the cave after she has tragically died - when he carries her body out of the cave; also the romantic scenes between Hana and Sikh British Army officer/bomb expert Kip (Naveen Andrews), in Anthony Minghella's Best Picture-winning WWII epic
Enter the Dragon (1973)	The battle between right-hand man Oharra (Bob Wall) and undercover agent Lee (the inimitable Bruce Lee in his last film before his death) who displays acrobatic fight skills, flip kicks and lightning fast punches, and the climactic confrontational kung-fu fight in a hall of mirrors between Lee and Asian crime and drug-lord Han (Shieh Kien) who wears serrated knife blades in place of his detachable clawed iron hand, ending in the defeat of Han, in Robert Clouse's kung-fu masterpiece
Eraserhead (1977)	The characters of "Beautiful Girl Across the Hall" (Judith Anna Roberts) and the pockmarked "Man in the Planet" (Jack Fisk); the dinner scene of factory worker Henry Spencer's (John Nance) visit to girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) with her unusual parents (Allen Joseph and Jeanne Bates) and grandmother (Jean Lange); the stark views of the couple's deformed, bleating and whining chicken-like mutant baby in their industrial-type tenement; and the dream scene of Henry's head being severed, rolling on the ground and then turning into a pencil-top eraser, and the lady in Henry's bedroom radiator (Laurel Near) singing: "In heaven everything is fine", in director David Lynch's feature debut film - a surrealistic, expressionistic, nightmarish 'midnight movie' cult and comic-horror film
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)	The scene of Jim Carrey (as meek Joel Barrish) trying to erase the memories of his relationship with uninhibited, multi-colored-hair ex-girlfriend Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet), especially the ineptness of the memory erasure firm Lacuna with its two technicians (Mark Ruffalo and Kirsten Dunst) who get stoned and have sex in his bedroom during the process; the image of the couple in bed on a beach, and the imaginative recollections of Joel that are recessed deeply in his brain (including those of his childhood) and his pleadings of "Please let me keep this memory", in Michel Gondry's innovative romantic comedy (based upon Charlie Kaufman's script)
Everyone Says I Love You (1996)	Divorced couple Joe (Woody Allen) and Steffi's (Goldie Hawn) graceful, gravity-defying (in the air), romantic dance next to the Seine (with homage to Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in An American in Paris (1951)) after she wistfully sings I'm Thru With Love on a starry Parisian night, in Woody Allen's first musical
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972)	Seven witty comedy segments based on Dr. Reuben's notorious, best-selling sex manual: the "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?" episode, with Woody Allen as a court jester seducing a Queen (Lynn Redgrave) with a love potion - although he is obstructed by her chastity belt; the love-making sketch ("What is Sodomy?") with Dr. Doug Ross (Gene Wilder) interested in a sheep named Daisy; a Casanova '70 (1965) spoof in which an upper-class Italian newlywed Gina (Louise Lasser) can only orgasm with her husband Fabrizio (Woody Allen) in public places; the horror/monster movie spoof ("Are the Findings of Doctors and Clinics Who Do Sexual Research and Experiments Accurate?") in which a mad, unorthodox sex scientist Dr. Bernardo (John Carradine) lets loose a giant killer breast that must be captured by an enormous bra, and the last vignette ("What Happens During Ejaculation?") in which a white-clad, neurotic sperm (Woody Allen) is in a panic with fears that he will be ejaculated - actually parachuted - into enemy territory from Sidney's body during a hot petting session with a date in a parked car ("I'm not going out there! I'm not going to get shot out of that thing! What if he's masturbating?") - and the last line by The Operator (Tony Randall) in the brain control-room about a new attempt: "We're going for seconds! Attention, gonads, we're going for a record!", in Woody Allen's sex comedy
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)	Ash Williams' (Bruce Campbell) fight against his own possessed hand, and then the chainsawing off of his evil hand while hysterically exclaiming to his disembodied body part: "Who's laughing now? Who's laughing now?" (notice that the top-most book Ash places on the bucket when covering up his decapitated hand is A Farewell to Arms), but the severed hand re-attacks, in Sam Raimi's gruesomely funny horror film sequel
The Exorcist (1973)	The scene at ancient temple ruins in Northern Iraq when elderly Jesuit priest Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) confronts the demonic statue of Pazuzu, the film's intense special effects and violent horrors of devil possession, including twelve year-old Regan MacNeill's (Linda Blair) monstrous appearance, self-abusive masturbation (or stabbing) of her crotch with a bloody crucifix, levitation, spewing of pea-soup throw-up, levitation and 360-degree spinning head, and her demonic tortured and vulgar voice (supplied by veteran character actress Mercedes McCambridge) - (i.e., "Your mother sucks cocks in Hell, Karras, you faithless slime"), the silhouetted image of the arrival of the elderly Jesuit priest on a dark and foggy night under a lamp-post outside the Georgetown house of the MacNeill's, and the terrifying exorcism ceremony and demise of Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) when he dares the devil to enter his body ("Take me. Come into me. God damn you. Take me. Take me") - and he throws himself through Regan's bedroom window to his death in the street below, in William Friedkin's blockbuster horror film about demonic possession
Eyes Wide Shut (1999, UK)	The opening full length shot of the backside of a woman (Nicole Kidman) in high heels who slides off her black dress and reveals her slender nude body, the highly sensationalized love-making scene before a mirror between Dr. William Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman); the confessional-disclosure scene between the couple about Alice's recurrent imagined lustful fantasies of infidelity with a naval officer; and the superbly-choreographed and directed orgy scene with male members wearing black cloaks and extravagant masks and females nothing but high heels, black thongs, and masks (with the eerie organ score "Masked Ball" by Jocelyn Pook) - although various images were digitally-edited/obscured in some versions, in Stanley Kubrick's final film about marriage and sexual jealousy
F
The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)	The New Year's Eve show scene in which high-heeled, sensuous ex-hooker/escort Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer), wearing a high-slit, slinky red dress, sings "Makin' Whoopee" as she slinks and slithers atop a slippery piano top (similar to Jessica Rabbit's sexy performance of "Why Don't You Do Right?" in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)) as piano lounge singer Jack Baker (Jeff Bridges) accompanies her and the camera executes a 360-degree pan, in Steve Kloves' directorial debut film
A Face in the Crowd (1957)	The early scenes in which radio reporter/producer Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) discovers and promotes the musical talent of smiling, cornpone-spouting Arkansas hobo Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes (Andy Griffith in his film debut) from down-and-out drunkenness and obscurity to fame, Rhodes' infatuation with a teenaged baton twirler Betty Lou Fleckum (Lee Remick in her screen debut), and the shocking scene in which the fraudulent megalomaniac and demagogue celebrity concludes his national TV show, thinking that his microphone is off, by expressing his utter contempt for his mass audience (called "morons" - "I can make 'em eat dog food and they'll think it's steak. Sure, I got 'em like this! You know what the public's like - a cage full of guinea pigs. Good night, you stupid idiots..."), and Marcia's scream of desperate hurt on the telephone at Rhodes: "Jump! Get out of my life! Get out of everybody's life—jump!", in Elia Kazan's powerful political film
Faces (1968)	The entire stark and grainy look of this amateurish-looking, ragged film (made with a hand-held camera in 16mm) about infidelity was told as an improvisational character study and "film within a film" -- the highly-influential, low-budget independent cinema verite film had a highly individualistic style (with unscripted and often inaudible dialogue), and cast writer/director John Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands as one of the lead characters - a high-class prostitute named Jeannie Rapp engaged in an affair with married, middle-aged and drunken Richard "Dickie" Forst (John Marley), with all of its resultant, tragic repercussions
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)	Memorable images include Bush's continued reading of the children's book My Pet Goat in a Florida elementary school after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center (filmmaker Michael Moore narrates: "When informed of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, where terrorists had struck just eight years prior, Mr. Bush decided to go ahead with his photo opportunity..."), the many self-incriminating Bush clips (such as when he demonstrates his golf swing - "Now watch this drive!" - immediately after calling on nations to stop terrorist killers, his stumbling through speeches and delivering such damning lines as: "What an impressive crowd: the haves, and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite, I call you my base"); the documentarian's questioning of Democratic and Republican politicians about enrolling their sons for military duty; the mall scenes in which Marine recruiters targeted minority teenagers for enrollment - and more, in Michael Moore's scathing documentary to indict President George W. Bush's failure to take immediate action, his inept handling of the terrorist crisis and his agenda to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq
Fantasia (1940)	Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite including the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" and six red-topped mushrooms in "Chinese Dance," Paul Dukas' classical The Sorcerer's Apprentice with apprentice Mickey Mouse in his master's wizard hat and the march of the relentless brooms carrying endless buckets of water - and his conducting of the stars in the sky, Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring depicting the beginnings of the cosmos, solar system, and the planet Earth and then life itself - with the Age of the Dinosaurs, Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony with its censored nymphs, Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours with hippos in tutus, Moussorgsky's dramatic Night on Bald Mountain - a celebration of evil during the night of the Witches' Sabbath, and the final dawn of light segment of Schubert's Ave Maria, and the many other animated sequences beautifully integrating classical music and abstract images, in Disney's experimental film
Fantastic Voyage (1966)	The sci-fi classic of a miniatured team of specialists (four males and a female) on a microscopic mission in the miniaturized nuclear-powered submarine USS Proteus inside nearly-dead defecting Communist scientist Dr. Jan Benes' (Jean Del Val) body - to prevent a blood clot in his brain from killing him, including the memorable scene of antibodies or giant white corpuscles attacking technical assistant Cora Peterson (Raquel Welch) ("They're tightening - I can't breathe"), in Richard Fleischer's science-fiction adventure film (the most expensive of its time)
A Farewell to Arms (1932)	The doomed romance of World War I officer and ambulance driver Lt. Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper) and British nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes), who fell in love and produced a love child (while he was wounded and under her care in Milan) - with an impressive subjective camera close-up shot of her kissing him when he first arrived in the hospital; later, correspondence to the front (the news of the child) was circumvented by Henry's jealous friend Major Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou) - leading to the film's dramatic conclusion in which Catherine died in her hospital bed in a maternity ward in Switzerland after her baby died -- with Frederic by her side; her tearjerking death occurred in his arms as he professed his undying love and she told him she wasn't afraid - the moment of her passing coincided with the declaration of the Armistice - after she died, he carried her in his arms to the window and affirmed: "Peace, peace" - as white doves flew into the air and the screen faded to black, in director Frank Borzage's romantic war melodrama
Far From Heaven (2002)	The scene of late 50s 'perfect world' Connecticut suburban housewife Cathy Whitaker (Julianne Moore) discovering her ad exec husband Frank's (Dennis Quaid) homosexual relationship; and her subsequent socially-taboo consolation found with her handsome, well-educated black gardener Raymond Deagan (Dennis Haysbert) - especially their very awkward drink-lunch/dance date at a 'colored' diner/restaurant, and the very poignant scene of her inevitable goodbye to Raymond with her last words: "You're so beautiful", in Todd Haynes' emotional romantic melodrama with stunning cinematography - filmed in homage to Douglas Sirk's 50's melodramas (i.e., All That Heaven Allows)
Fargo (1996)	The opening credits sequence with images (beautifully filmed by Roger Deakins) of a frozen, snow-blanketed North Dakota and a car (with another car in tow) emerging in the white-out conditions and making its way along the deserted highway; the scene in which pregnant, Minnesota police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) bends over with "morning sickness" and almost barfs at the scene of a roadside triple murder, Marge's interrogation of two dim-witted hookers to learn about one "funny looking" uncircumcised suspect and her questioning of smarmy car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) in his autosales office; the violent money-drop scene when Carl is shot in the cheek by a dying Wade Gustafson (Harve Presnell); the infamous wood chipper scene in which Marge slowly edges her way around a lakeside cabin to discover a mad Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) supplying his wood chipper with the leg of his kidnapping accomplice Carl (Steve Buscemi); Marge's chastisement to the captured criminal: ("There's more to life than a little money, ya know...And it's a beautiful day"), and the satisfying epilogue between Marge and her loving husband Norm (John Carroll Lynch) anticipating a hopeful future ("We're doing pretty good...Two more months..."), in the Coen Brothers' masterpiece

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