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 18

G (continued)
The Great Ziegfeld (1936)	The celebrated, moving telephone scene in which Anna Held (Oscar-winning Luise Rainer), the first of impresario Ziegfeld's wives, congratulates her ex-husband Flo on his forthcoming marriage, and the famous scene of the lavish, gargantuan production number "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" with a gigantic revolving white staircase, in director Robert Z. Leonard's lengthy musical biography
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)	The character of makeup-wearing clown Buttons (James Stewart) with a secret to hide, and the spectacular circus train wreck, the film's highlight, in producer/director Cecil B. DeMille's undeserving, star-filled Technicolored Best Picture winning epic
Greed (1924)	The portrayal of a crazed, avarice-affected couple, especially Trina's (ZaSu Pitts) obsession with gold coins; and earlier, the self-taught dentist McTeague's (Gibson Gowland) lustful look as he bends over and shamefully kisses the ether-anesthetized, helpless Trina in his dental chair; their wedding scene with a funeral procession outside the window; the scene of his biting her fingers and eventually murdering his wife Trina, who has been sleeping with the gold coins in her bed; and the classic finale of a deadly confrontation in the parched, scorching Death Valley desert with McTeague discovering that he has no water and is handcuffed to his murdered former friend Marcus Schouler (Jean Hersholt) - the money that caused all the trouble scatters about on the cracked earth/sand, ending with the final extreme long shot of the two of them in the desert wasteland, in Erich von Stroheim's severely-edited classic masterpiece
The Green Mile (1999)	The flashbacked scenes in which illiterate, mystical child/giant and faith healer - black condemned convict John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan) - resurrected Mr. Jingles - the small brown mouse (by blowing life into it in his hands), healed Louisiana death row prison guard Paul Edgecomb's (Tom Hanks) urinary infection and the brain tumor of Warden Hal Moores' (James Cromwell) wife Melinda (Patricia Clarkson); the scene of the botched execution of Eduard Delacroix (Michael Jeter) - and the execution of the doomed and noble Coffey by the electric chair (for an alleged crime he didn't commit), and the moment he shared his gifted power with Paul as he was being electrocuted -- and sang "Heaven, I'm in heaven... heaven... heaven..." - from the movie Top Hat; and the bittersweet ending in which Edgecomb, now a 108 year-old man (Dabbs Greer) in a retirement home (after being bestowed with the 'gift of life' - with his speech about outliving all of his friends and families, regarded as his punishment for making "a Miracle of God ride the lightning"), where every day he still fed a piece of toast to gray-haired Jingles, in director Frank Darabont's fantasy drama/prison film
Gremlins (1984)	The first appearance in a Christmas-gift box of a Chinatown (NY) pet known as a mogwai in the American suburb of Kingston Falls: the elfin-eared, wide-eyed, tune-trilling, four-toed, fuzzy, brown and white fur-ball named Gizmo (voice of Howie Mandel); the three important rules that the Chinese shop owner (Keye Luke) warns - never get it wet, never feed it after midnight, and never expose it to bright light; the film's last half - the mogwai morphing into hateful green beasties that raise hell in the town (the snowplow, the death of dog-hating spinster Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holliday) by jet propulsion from her gremlin-modified stairlift up her bannister, through the skylight, and headfirst into snow, etc.); the tragic story that Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates) tells her boyfriend bank clerk Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) of how she found out that there was no Santa Claus; the raucous and destructive group of theater-attending Gremlins during a showing of the animated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs; and the narrator's warning in the last lines of the film ("...you can never tell, there just might be a gremlin in your house"), in Joe Dante's mischievous fantasy comedy produced by Steven Spielberg
The Grifters (1990)	Small-time, nickel-and-dime crook Roy Dillon's (John Cusack) bar scam (ordering a drink with a neatly-folded $20 and then paying with a neatly-folded $10 bill), the scene of race-track hustler Lilly Dillon's (Anjelica Huston) visit to her Baltimore-based bookie boss Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle) who demonstrates his punishment for disloyalty - an 'oranges-in-a-towel' beating and a burning cigar applied to her hand, and sexy vixen Myra Langtry's (Annette Bening) naked seduction of Roy in a hallway, and Lilly's last deadly confrontation with her estranged son Roy, in Stephen Frears' modern crime neo-noir based upon Jim Thompson's novel
Groundhog Day (1993)	The fascinating, existentialist premise of the film: "What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same and nothing you did mattered?", the innumerable times that Pittsburgh weather forecaster Phil Connors (Bill Murray) awakens on the morning of February 2nd at 6 am in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania (for the annual Groundhog Day festival) to the tune of his clock radio playing Sonny and Cher's I Got You, Babe; the scenes of his annoyance, boredom, exhilaration, and self-destructive despair over the repetitive day; the 4th waking in which Connors again meets Ned Ryerson - known as "Needlenose Ned" or "Ned the Head" (Stephen Tobolowsky) on the street - and this time punches him to the ground; Phil's many repetitive daily chores (catching a boy falling out of a tree, saving the mayor from choking during dinner, and rescuing a homeless bum during a cold night), his successful suicides and self-destructive behavior (driving off a cliff, electrocution with a toaster, stepping in front of a moving truck, jumping off a building, stuffing his face with food, robbing a bank's cash delivery, etc.) -- and his reawakening at 6:00 AM after each of them (Phil's reaction: "Aw, nuts"); Phil's line: "I'm a God. I'm not the God, I don't think...," and his wooing-seducing of his film producer Rita (Andie MacDowell) after learning her likes (19th century French poetry and a sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist) and dislikes to become her ideal man after repeated dates -- and her emphatic rejection of him when she realizes he's rehearsed every part of the date; Phil's reformation and acceptance of his situation and becoming a better person, telling her: "No matter what happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, I'm happy NOW, because I love you", and his awakening with her on the morning of February 3rd, sobbing happily: "You know what today is? Today is tomorrow! It happened!" and his response to her asking: "Oh, Phil, why weren't you like this last night? You just fell asleep." - "It was the end of a very long day!", and his final words to Rita: "It's so beautiful! Let's live here... we'll rent to start", in writer Danny Rubin and director Harold Ramis' science fiction/romantic comedy
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)	The driveway scene in which Christina Drayton (Katharine Hepburn) dismisses the derogatory, bigoted comments of ex-friend Hilary St. George (Virginia Christine) and gives directions for her firing - ending with "It's not that I don't want to know you - although I don't - it's just that I'm afraid we're not really the sort of people that you can afford to be associated with. Don't speak Hilary, just -- go" - after the high-society woman has met John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) - the black fiancee of her daughter Joey (Katharine Houghton); also the scene of John Prentice honestly telling his future in-laws: "Joanna is very close to both of you. If, by marrying me, she damaged her relationship with either of you, the pain of it would be too much for her. I wouldn't know how to deal with that kind of situation"; and crusading publisher Matt Drayton's (Spencer Tracy in his final screen appearance) blessing of their future marriage, by citing his love for his own wife Christina ("...I know exactly how he feels about her and there is nothing, absolutely nothing that your son feels for my daughter that I didn't feel for Christina. Old - yes. Burned -out - certainly, but I can tell you the memories are still there - clear, intact, indestructible, and they'll be there if I live to be 110..."), in Stanley Kramer's family drama
Gun Crazy (1949) (aka Deadly is the Female)	The opening scene of 14 year-old Bart Tare (Rusty Tamblyn) stealing a pearl-handled gun from a hardware store display window and then falling down in a mud puddle at the feet of the local sheriff; the entrance of blonde sharpshooter Annie Laurie Starr (Peggy Cummins) at Packet's sideshow Carnival, and the contest/duel between gun-fixated Bart Tare (John Dall) and the markswoman - after they first sized each other up like dogs in heat, and then each one shoots at matches stuck in a crown worn on the other's head; and the unedited, virtuoso, single-shot uninterrupted robbery scene of a Hampton bank filmed from the back-seat of the robbery car (a stolen Cadillac) from the time of their drive into town and up to the bank, Laurie's distraction of a cop during the robbery, their next robbery's getaway as they are pursued by a siren-screaming police car giving chase and his lie to her about killing the driver; the blackmailing scene of Annie Laurie seductively tempting Bart to pursue more crime with her; and the final pursuit in the swamps before their demise, in director Joseph H. Lewis' supercharged film-noir
Gunga Din (1939)	The scene of Sgt. Cutter (Cary Grant) dangling a man out a window as he is commanded: "Take your hands off that man," the image and character of loyal, spindly-legged Indian water carrier Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe), and the memorable scene of Gunga Din's bugle warning that causes him to be killed, and the posthumous reading of a tribute to him (the last stanza of Rudyard Kipling's classic poem), in director George Stevens' adventure film
The Guns of Navarone (1961)	The climactic destruction of the two German guns (of the Mediterranean Greek island of Navarone) in a lofty impenetrable fortress cave, in J. Lee Thompson's old-fashioned WWII action/adventure blockbuster film
Gypsy (1962)	This screen version of the 1959 Broadway musical play (starring Ethel Merman) by Warners -- with a Jule Styne-Stephen Sondheim score -- was suggested by the lives of ecdysiast-actress Gypsy Rose Lee (Natalie Wood), her sister June Hovick (Suzanne Cupito/Morgan Brittany as younger 'Baby' June, and Ann Jillian as older 'Dainty' June), and their bullying and domineering mother known as Mama Rose (Rosalind Russell, singing voice of Lisa Kirk) - who tormented the seemingly-less talented and less coordinated daughter Louise (Natalie Wood): "This time, I'm gonna make you a star!" before belting out "Everything's Coming Up Roses"; also the funny "You Gotta Have A Gimmick" song by Minsky's burlesque house strippers (Roxanne Arlen, Betty Bruce and Faith Dane) to Louise on how to be a stripper; and the confrontational scene of Gypsy's telling off of her brutal mother: "Well, Mama, look at me now! I'm a STAR! Look! Look how I live! Look at my friends! Look where I'm going! I'm not staying in burlesque! I'm moving! Maybe up, maybe down! But wherever it is, I'm enjoying it! I'm having the time of my life, because for the first time, it IS my life! And I LOVE it! I love every second of it, and I'll be DAMNED if you're gonna take it away from me!" -- and her debut as "Gypsy Rose Lee" in an elegant blue evening gown, using Mama's vaudeville trademarks (the singing of "Let Me Entertain You" with a deeply sensual subtext and asking the audience: "Hello everybody, my name is Gypsy! What's YOURS?") and teasingly offering: "We'll have a real good time", in director Mervyn LeRoy's musical biographical drama
H
Halloween (1978)	The opening sequence of six year-old Halloween-masked killer Michael Myers stabbing his sister after she had sex with her boyfriend; the subjective point-of-view camera angles in the stalking of teenaged babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), especially the ones in which the psycho-killer appears and then disappears; the scene of the impaling of Lynda's (P. J. Soles) boyfriend Bob (John Michael Graham) against a wall with a large butcher knife and then - while wearing a white sheet draped over himself and with Bob's glasses perched on his face - strangling Lynda with a phone cord while she's on the phone, making her death screams sound like she's having an orgasm; the innumerable times that maniacal Michael Myers comes alive again; and shrink Dr. Loomis' (Donald Pleasence) horrifying discovery that the killer ("boogeyman") has vanished from the ground below - and hasn't succumbed after being stabbed three times, shot six times by Loomis and falling from a two-story balcony, in John Carpenter's low-budget, quintessential slasher film
Hamlet (1948)	The two famous soliloquies of Prince of Denmark Hamlet (Oscar-winning Laurence Olivier) - "To be or not to be...", and the gravedigger scene in which Hamlet comes upon the skull of an old jester Yorick: ("Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy"), and Hamlet's death after a swordfight and slash from a poisoned blade, in actor/director/producer Laurence Olivier's Best Picture-winning Shakespearean tragi-drama
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)	Elliot's (Michael Caine) opening monologue about his lustful infatuation ("God, she's beautiful...") with his successful stage actress wife Hannah's (Mia Farrow) sexy sister Lee (Barbara Hershey), and the moment that he grabs Lee and kisses her - and her shocked reaction, and then later his wide-eyed, childlike delight at discovering she is attracted to him as well ("I have my answer! I have my answer! I'm walking on air!"); hypochondriac Mickey's obsession about death ("Look at all these people, trying to stave off the inevitable decay of their bodies") and the scenes of his doctor's visits when he fancifully believes he has a brain tumor; the bitter and reclusive artist Frederick (Max Von Sydow) ("You are, you are my only connection to the world") and the stark, aching breakup scene with Lee for having an affair - shot with a continuous single, eight minute shot; neurotic, flighty, coke-head, struggling actress-caterer sister Holly's (Diane Weist) disastrous dates with Mickey ("Don't you just love songs about extra-terrestrials?" "Not when they're sung by extra-terrestrials!"); and the restaurant lunch scene with the three sisters in which (1) Hannah discusses with Lee about how she fears that her husband Elliot may be having an affair, and (2) Holly has discovered that her catering partner April has taken away her architect boyfriend, and (3) Holly explains her idea to be a screenwriter - and after listening to Hannah's discouraging advice to be realistic and more productive, lambasts her with: ("You never have any faith in my plans. You always undercut my enthusiasm"); and Mickey's later epiphany about life and death ("And I started to feel how can you even think of killing yourself? I mean, isn't it so stupid?...") after watching the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), and newly-married Holly's last line to husband Mickey: "I'm pregnant", in director/writer Woody Allen's ensemble masterpiece
Hannibal (2001)	The excruciating dinner scene in which Paul Krendler's (Ray Liotta) brain is neatly sliced open and exposed - and served by Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) for the gourmet meal, in Ridley Scott's sequel to the original The Silence of the Lambs
Happiness (1998)	The character of unlikeable suburban dad and psychiatrist - Dr. Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker), a predatory pedophile, whose aberrant behavior is exhibited in the scene at his adolescent son Billy's (Rufus Read) little league baseball game, and during sleepovers when he molests (off-camera) his son's teammate (drugged with a tuna sandwich); also the scene of the honest conversation between father and son, about the father being a molester, in controversial film-maker Todd Solondz's infamous and subversive unrated film about pedophilia - a black satire on middle-class suburban dysfunctionality
Happy Feet (2006)	The many song-and-dance numbers in this CGI-animated tale, including the opening courting duet songs between two Emperor Penguins in Antarctica: Elvis Presley-like Memphis (voice of Hugh Jackman) to Heartbreak Hotel and breathy Marilyn Monroe-like Norma Jean (voice of Nicole Kidman) to Prince's Kiss; the birth of their penguin chick Mambo (nicknamed "Mumble") (voice of Elijah Wood) - a young fuzzball without the gift of song but who has a unique talent as a tap dancer (noted dancer Savion Glover motion-captured to supply the dancing movements); the brilliant Spanish-lingo version of Frank Sinatra's My Way by rambunctious Latino penguin Ramon (voice of Robin Williams) who supplies funny commentary, including his reaction to Mumble's screeching singing ("I heard an animal do that once, but then they rolled him over and he was dead"); Mumble's successful courting of Gloria (voice of Brittany Murphy) by tap dancing to her singing of a fully orchestrated rendition of Boogie Wonderland; the two exciting deadly chase sequences: one with a hungry sea lion and later in the film with two killer whales; also, the brave trek of the exiled Mumble to discover the "aliens" who were responsible for a severe fish shortage, as he fights through blizzards and finally dives off a high cliff to pursue an "alien" fishing ship - as penguin holy man-charlatan Lovelace (also Williams) calls after him: "I'm gonna be telling your story, Happy Feet, long after you're dead and gone!"; and the heart-wrenching scene when a captured Mumble, now living a nightmarish life in a big-city aquarium, performs a soft-shoe routine for a little girl (a biped "alien") on the other side of the display glass, draws a crowd's attention and is set free - with the human scientist aliens following him back to his habitat where they witness the penguins' mass dancing - resulting in the creatures being saved from starvation and hunting by a United Nations decree, in director George Miller's rollicking, poignant song-and-dance CGI animated musical
Hard-Boiled (1992, HK)	The two major shootout set-pieces featuring Inspector "Tequila" Yuen (Chow Yun-Fat), one set in a tea house and the climactic scene in a burning hospital, in director John Woo's influential, star-making action film
A Hard Day's Night (1964)	The opening montage scene of the Beatles being besieged by a stampede of frenzied schoolgirl fans, their retreat to a train station, and their encounter with an unimpressed, middle-aged gentleman (Richard Vernon) on a London-bound train in the first-class cabin who complains about their loud radio with Lennon's coo-ed line to him as he leans over: "Give us a kiss!", and the man's assertion: "I fought the war for your sort"; also the group's dry, dismissive one-liners when interviewed by the press: ("Has success changed your life?" "Yes"; "Are you a mod or a rocker?" "Uhm, no, I'm a mocker"; "What do you call that collar?" "A collar"; and George's answer when asked the name of his hairstyle: "Arthur"), Ringo's solitary wanderings around London, and the back-to-back, music-video style hits songs played in various locations - such as an open field ("Can't Buy Me Love"), in Richard Lester's kinetic music-video documentary
Harold and Maude (1971)	Cat Stevens' musical score (especially "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out"), the dark humor of many elaborately-faked or staged suicides (hanging, cut wrists and throat, immolation, shooting, stabbing, drowning, etc.) by wealthy, 20 year old introvert Harold (Bud Cort) to shock his domineering mother Mrs. Chasen (Vivian Pickles), Harold's unlikely love affair with 79 year old funeral-loving Maude (Ruth Gordon) - a concentration-camp survivor; the seagull and daisy field scenes; the funny scene in which Harold's mother fills out his computer dating service questionnaire for him; and the incredible scene when Harold performs harakiri in front of his drama student date Sunshine Doré (Ellen Geer) who also unwittingly acts out the tragic scene from Romeo and Juliet; and Maude's dying advice to Harold: "Go and love some more" - the film's last line, in Hal Ashby's cult classic black comedy/romance
The Haunting (1963)	The frightening scenes of terror in the New England mansion Hill House - especially when Eleanor Vance (Julie Harris) mistakenly believes she is holding the hand of Theodora (Claire Bloom) in the adjacent bed for comfort from strange sounds surrounding their dark room, and the moment she realizes their beds are separated and she exclaims: "Whose hand was I holding?"; the 'breathing' doorframes and spooky sounds; and the scenes involving the spiral staircase, in Robert Wise's effective haunted-house film
Heat (1995)	The scene of the bank heist in downtown Los Angeles, and the first wary, face-off meeting between LAPD top cop Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) and criminal bank robber Neil McCauley (Robert DeNiro) over a cup of coffee in a coffee-shop/diner when they talk - "like a couple of regular fellows" - about their respective lives and duties [this was DeNiro's and Pacino's first appearance together on-screen], in Michael Mann's cop thriller
Heavenly Creatures (1994)	In this true-life tale of two emotionally unstable and murderous schoolgirls in 1950s New Zealand: 15-year-old Pauline Rieper (Melanie Lynskey) and 17-year-old Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), the scene of the two smashing in the skull of Rieper's mother with a brick in a stocking; and the scenes of the deluded and "unwholesome" and inseparable girls retreating to their imaginary "Fourth World" with life-size versions of clay models they sculpted, and their frenzied dancing in the woods together to the tune of their favorite tenor Mario Lanza's "Be My Love", in director Peter Jackson's crime story
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)	The contrasting personalities of the two major lead characters both shipwrecked on a Pacific island during WWII and finding survival in a cave: rough Marine Corporal Allison (Robert Mitchum) and Catholic nun Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr) only a month away from taking her final novitiate vows, including his questioning of her religious vows and her denial of physical love: (Allison: "Suppose a nun changed her mind, you know, she didn't want to be a nun anymore. What could she do about it?" Sister: "Our vows are not taken lightly, Mr. Allison" Allison: "You mean no nun ever got out?" and "Whatcha gotta be a nun for? That's my luck. That's ol' Allison's luck. If ya gotta be a nun, why ain't ya old and ugly? Why do ya gotta have big blue eyes... and a beautiful smile... and freckles?", and in John Huston's action-adventure drama
Heaven's Gate (1980)	The opening set-piece of the swirling couples dancing Strauss' Blue Danube waltz on the Harvard College lawn following graduation in 1870 - especially the couple of Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson) and a beautiful admirer; the gorgeous cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond of the panoramic Wyoming frontier landscapes - including the scene of the train bringing Eastern European immigrants to the West; the scene in which poor immigrant Kovach (Aivars Smits) was brutally killed as a suspected rustler and illegal butcherer of cattle - leaving a round shotgun blast hole in a sheet - with the first view of killer Nathan Champion (Christopher Walken); the roller-skating dance scene in the Heaven's Gate dance hall with a young skating fiddler boy stirring up the audience; the tension in the love triangle between Sheriff Averill, Champion, and young bordello madam Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert); the hunting of immigrants by a posse of hired mercenaries of the Association led by black-garbed and evil Frank Canton (Sam Waterston), including the shocking scene of the rape of Ella (she was on the 'death list' because she would ask for "cash or cattle" as payment for her prostitutes); the sequence of the final two-day bloody showdown between the immigrants and the mercenaries hired by the cattlemen's Association (including the use of a Roman offense) - interrupted by the arrival of the US Army after the slaughter was over; and the fiery death scene of Champion, and the surprising shock ambush killings of both Ella and John L. Bridges (Jeff Bridges); also the final almost wordless, despairing coda or epilogue scene of Averill - now appearing miserable and unemotional about ten years later, quietly lost and adrift in his recollections as a rich yacht captain off Newport, Rhode Island in 1903 with his wife (his waltz partner in the opening scene, and the woman in the framed picture he kept with him), in Michael Cimino's expensive 'boondoggle' film and revisionistic western that bankrupted the studio United Artists
The Heiress (1949)	The scene in which the plain and gawky heiress Catherine (Olivia de Havilland) is awakened to love at a ball by the seductive, piano-playing charm of young Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), the agonizing scene on the night of their elopement as she waits hour after hour in the drawing room, and the image of a revenge-purged Catherine carrying a lamp upstairs as she listens to the returning suitor Morris frantically banging on the outside of the barred door, in director William Wyler's great romantic drama based on Henry James' 1881 novella Washington Square

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Created in 1996-2008 © by Tim Dirks. All rights reserved.

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