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 22

K (continued)
The King and I (1956)	The series of vignettes and confrontations between prim Victorian, widowed teacher/governess Anna (Deborah Kerr) and the autocratic King of Siam (Yul Brynner), the iconic, joyous dance with Anna and the barefooted monarch for "Shall We Dance", the other two famous songs "Getting to Know You" and "Something Wonderful", and the emotional deathbed scene of the King, in director Walter Lang's film version of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's 1951 Broadway hit musical
King Kong (1933)	Director/explorer Carl Denham's (Robert Armstrong) shipboard training of blonde starlet Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) to scream realistically in a sexy off-the-shoulder "Beauty and Beast costume", the tremendous special effects and stop-motion animation, the first view of Kong as he crashes through the jungle to arrive at the gates - accompanied by native chanting and music, Ann's screams as she is made a tied-down bridal sacrifice and her scenes with Kong bristling with fear, wonder, and sexual overtones - including when the curious Kong peels off her dress (and sniffs at the garment); Kong's lifting of a huge log and shaking sailors free of it, Kong's battles with the Tyrannosaurus and other prehistoric creatures including the pterodactyl; the monster's display on stage in New York as the 8th Wonder of the World - chained to a giant steel platform; the sequence of Kong's rampage through New York City's streets, and Kong's memorable death scene on top of the Empire State Building while wearily swatting at WWI bi-planes with his beauty Ann in his giant paw - and his fall from the building after being shot down; also Denham's last line at the street-level: "It wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast", in Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's classic monster film -- also the scene of a topless Ann (Jessica Lange) held in the giant paw of the Beast in the inferior remake King Kong (1976), as well as Peter Jackson's incarnation of the giant Beast in his own remake King Kong (2005)
The King of Comedy (1983)	Pushy, would-be, slimeball comic Rupert Pupkin's (Robert De Niro) hostile arguments with his off-screen mother (Catherine Scorsese) and his fantasies of being a popular guest on a late night talk show hosted by his idol Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) - a Johnny Carson-like talk-show host; the uninvited arrival of Rupert and reluctant bartender/girlfriend and beauty queen Rita (Diahnne Abbot) at Jerry's country retreat home; the kidnapping of Jerry - and the love-struck, desperately-scary stalker-fan Masha's (Sandra Bernhard) sexual writhing on a table in front of an immobile, duct-tape bound and gagged Langford in her candlelit apartment; and the montage finale in which the delusional and obsessed Rupert (now famous) performs an opening monologue on Jerry's show, culminating with being on stage and the host of his own talk show (with the announcer saying: "Rupert Pupkin, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s hear it for Rupert Pupkin. Wonderful. Rupert Pupkin, ladies and gentlemen") and the final shot of Rupert staring into the camera, in Martin Scorsese's shocking black comedy about the cult of celebrity
King of Hearts (1966, Fr.) (aka Le Roi de Cœur)	The character of Scottish soldier Private Charles Plumpick (Alan Bates) who masquerades in a French town as the coronated 'King of Hearts' among other inhabitants (all insane and crackpot asylum inmates) who have assumed 'normal' roles in the town for a short while during an emergency evacuation, and the film's final famous shot of a naked Charles who has deserted - he is holding a birdcage (with his carrier pigeon) in front of the asylum's iron gates - where he is ready to ring the bell and rejoin his asylum inmate friends in their own world that seems more sane than the real world of his own military regiment, in director Philippe De Broca's cult classic about the insanity of war
King Solomon's Mines (1950)	The realistic footage of the Watusi dance of African natives, in director Robert Stevenson's version of H. Rider Haggard's adventure novel
Kings Row (1942)	The melodramatic scene of Cassandra "Cassie" Tower (Betty Field) kissing Parris Mitchell (Robert Cummings) while her strict, protective father Dr. Alexander Tower (Claude Rains) is away - as a lightning storm strikes outside - and shortly later her frantic request to go with him ("...let me go away with you") when he is leaving to study abroad; also the scene of playboy Drake McHugh (Ronald Reagan) waking up, calling to Randy Monoghan (Ann Sheridan) and looking toward the foot of his bed to discover that both his legs have been amputated by a vindictive doctor following a railroad accident ("Where's the rest of me?"); the embrace between legless Drake and Parris while Randy repeats over and over again at the door: "Mary, Blessed Mother of God," and the final scene of Parris running off to meet his new love Elise Sandor (Kaaren Verne) as Erich Wolfgang Korngold's music swells at the end, in director Sam Wood's romantic melodrama
Kinsey (2004)	The final interview scene in which older lesbian subject (Lynn Redgrave in a cameo), after having read Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey’s (Liam Neeson) Sexual Behavior in the Human Female expresses how she was freed from guilt ("You saved my life"), and the final credits sequence of actual film footage shot by Kinsey's group - of animals copulating (to the tune of Cole Porter's "Let's Do It") - with the porcupine segment the most intriguing, in director/writer Bill Condon's biopic about the famous pioneering sex researcher
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)	Inventive camera angles depicting violence and murders, the strangely-presented opening credits, the character of violent, self-serving, mean and misogynistic gumshoe Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker); the startling opening sequence of Hammer's pickup of hitchhiker Christina Bailey (Cloris Leachman) running barefooted on a darkened stretch of road; their drive in his sportscar and her words of warning 'Remember me,' the scene of her screaming torture/murder -- with only her twitching legs dangling off a table, the image of Lily (Gaby Rodgers) with closely-cropped blonde hair and sitting up in bed with her gun pointed at Hammer's crotch; and the final apocalyptic scenes in which Lily wounds Hammer after asking him to "Kiss me" - and the after-effects of Lily opening the leather-strapped, metal-lined box and burning to death - the nuclear conflagration of the beach house in the brutal finale, in Robert Aldrich's film noir based on Mickey Spillane's hard-boiled novel
Kiss of Death (1947)	The characterization of maniacal, cold-blooded, chuckling killer Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark in an impressive debut performance) with a nervous hyena-like giggle, and the frightening scene when Udo ties up an old woman (Mildred Dunnock) (the wheelchair-bound mother of an alleged informant) in her wheelchair with an electrical cord and laughingly shoves her down a long flight of stairs - and then sadistically chuckles to himself, in Henry Hathaway's definitive crime noir
Kitty Foyle (1940)	The last scene of hard-working and self-reliant Philadelphia woman Kitty Foyle (Best Actress-winning Ginger Rogers in a non-stereotypical role) making her final decision before her mirror-reflection 'conscience' ("You're no longer a little girl, you're a grown woman now") with a snowglobe in her hand -- whether to meet upper-crust (Main Line family) philanderer and ex-husband Wyn Strafford VI (Dennis Morgan) on the docks to sail for South America, or to marry struggling and idealistic Dr. Mark Eisen (James Craig) (told in flashback) -- and her leaving a note with the doorman regarding her choice of life's path ("...I'm going to be married tonight -- (to taxi driver: "St. Timothy's Hospital")) - and the astonished doorman's last line: "Well, Judas Priest", in director Sam Wood's romantic melodrama and RKO's biggest hit of the year
Klute (1971)	The telling scene in which high-priced New York call girl Bree Daniel (Oscar-winning Jane Fonda - Klute is the name of a small-town detective played by Donald Sutherland) is servicing a client - and looks boringly at her watch, in Alan Pakula's stalker-thriller character study
Koyaanisqatsi (1983)	The visually striking images and shots of every-day objects with time-lapse photography, including clouds rolling over landscapes (Grand Canyon, Monument Valley); the most famous part of the experimental film, "The Grid", in which a massive rising moon disappears behind a tower, the sped-up tail-lights of cars on a highway making the roads appear like blood-filled arteries, views of riders on subway escalators, landing jetliners, the creation of American icons like hot dogs, Twinkies, televisions and cars, all accompanied by a pulsating electronic score, and the exhausted, pensive reflection after the "The Grid" hits its feverish climax; and the finale, an explosion of a V2 rocket and its flaming module falling back to earth in slow-motion, and its dissolve into Hopi cave art -- then the only English narrative of the film -- the translation of the chanted Hopi prophecies and the definition of the title ("1. crazy life, 2. life in turmoil, 3. life out of balance, 4. life disintegrating, 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living", all set to Philip Glass' mesmerizing minimalist score in Godfrey Reggio's experimental film
Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)	Manhattan adman and separated/divorced husband Ted's (Oscar-winning Dustin Hoffman) attempt to make a breakfast of french toast for young son Billy (Oscar-nominated Justin Henry) shortly after wife Joanna (Oscar-winning Meryl Streep) leaves, and his tearjerking reading of Joanna's letter as "Mommy" to Billy: "I will always be your mommy and I will always love you. I just won't be your mommy in the house, but I'll be your mommy at the heart. And now I must go and be the person I have to be"; also their dinner scene in which Billy continually ignores his father's instructions and gets the dessert (chocolate chip ice cream) from the refrigerator before eating his main meal of salisbury steak - forcing Ted to take his "spoiled" son to the bedroom as he screams: "I hate you! I want my Mommy" - and later that night Ted's tender bedside reconciliation with his son and explanation about why Joanna left; also the hilarious scene in which Billy encounters his father's nude overnight guest Phyllis Bernard (Jo Beth Williams) in the hallway and asks her if she likes fried chicken, and the dramatic scene of Ted's plea at a child custody hearing that Joanna must not take Billy: "I'm not a perfect parent. Sometimes I don't have enough patience 'cause I forget that he's a little kid. But I'm there. We get up in the morning and then we eat breakfast, and he talks to me and then we go to school. And at night, we have dinner together and we talk then and I read to him. And we built a life together and we love each other. If you destroy that, it may be irreparable. Joanna, don't do that, please. Don't do it twice to him," in director Robert Benton's Best Picture-winning marriage-related drama
L
L.A. Confidential (1997)	The scene in which gossip-mongering, suave celebrity detective Sgt. "Hollywood" Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) makes a deal with clean-cut, straight-arrow, college-educated, neophyte cop Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) and promises: "You help me with mine, I'll help you with yours - deal?"; the sight of Veronica Lake look-alike, high-class hooker Lynn Bracken (Oscar-winning Kim Basinger) pimped by millionaire Pierce Morehouse Patchett (David Strathairn) - specializing in movie-star look-alike prostitutes; the character of the sleazy tabloid Hush Hush magazine editor Sid Hudgens (Danny DeVito); the interrogation scene of an alleged rapist of a Mexican woman in which violent, tough cop Bud White (Russell Crowe) bursts in on Ed's questioning, pulls out his gun, empties it of all but one bullet, and then sticks the gun in the black suspect's mouth while pulling the trigger and threatening: "One in six, where's the girl?"; the bloody scene at the Night Owl Coffee shop where six victims were discovered; the scene when the cops mistake the real Lana Turner for a high-priced prostitute, and the stunning scene when corrupt and diabolical veteran cop and police chief Capt. Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) unexpectedly kills Vincennes with one shot, in director Curtis Hanson's great neo-noir police drama of the early 50s derived from James Ellroy's 1990 novel
L.A. Story (1991)	The many gags about LA's lifestyle (ie. the Walk/Don't Walk sign that reads: "Like Uh Don't Walk"); wacky LA Weatherman Harris K. Telemacher's (Steve Martin) complaint about how men can't judge if a woman is ready for a party or not; and also his amusing thought: "I could never be a woman, 'cause I'd just stay home and play with my breasts all day"; also the one-upsmanship scene of ordering coffees at a trendy restaurant: ("I'll have a half double decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon"); the brilliantly funny cameo by Patrick Stewart as a French-accented Maitre D' ("You zink with a bank statement like zis you can have ze duck?!"); the classic museum scene in which Telemacher roller-skates past objets d'art, then describes one painting to his friends as sexy: ("Look how he's painted the blouse sort of translucent. You can just make out her breasts underneath and it's sort of touching him about here. It's really... pretty torrid, don't you think?") - and when the painting is revealed, it's a large red rectangle!; the romance between Harris and British journalist Sara McDowel (Victoria Tennant), and the freeway sign (!) that gives him advice about romancing her; and Harris' reaction after touching bouncy, playful Valley Girl SanDeE*'s (Sarah Jessica Parker) breasts: "Your... your breasts feel weird" with her unexpected reply: "Oh, that's 'cause they're real," and the powerfully romantic scenes, including the Enya-scored scene when he walks with Sara and they are magically transformed into children and then they kiss, and Harris' line after summoning storms to prevent Sara from returning to English - as he kisses her passionately: "Forget for this moment the smog and the cars and the restaurant and the skating and remember only this. A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true" (and all of the freeway signs flash "CONDITION CLEAR"), and the funny final shot of the freeway sign saying: "What I really want to do is DIRECT", in actor/director Steve Martin's existential, surreal romantic comedy set in Los Angeles
La Dolce Vita (1960, It.)	The image in the opening scene of a helicopter lifting and transporting a huge statue of the figure of Christ with outstretched arms over the city of Rome (the Eternal City) and across the Vatican, and the classic night-time sequence - following a dull party attended by playboy gossip writer Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) - of bosomy, sexy, and seductive blonde Hollywood starlet Sylvia (Anita Ekberg) in a black evening gown spontaneously wading, dancing, cavorting and cooling off in the water of Rome's Trevi Fountain (a practice now banned) to tempt Marcello and seek attention, in Federico Fellini's landmark masterpiece
Lady and the Tramp (1955)	The romantic 'spaghetti-dinner' scene of cocker spaniel Lady and the scruffy, backstreet roguish Tramp at the back entrance to an Italian restaurant, sharing nibbles on a strand of spaghetti and meeting in an unexpected kiss for the first time, Lady's encounter with the colorful assortment of dogs in the dog pound, and the vicious fight between the Tramp and a disgusting rat that is threatening a baby, in Disney's animated film
The Lady Eve (1941)	The scenes of comic erotic seduction, sexy legs, slapstick pratfalls, and witty dialogue between Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) and wealthy snake expert Charles "Hopsie" Pike (Henry Fonda), the memorable seduction scene in her ship's cabin after Charles escorts Jean there to try on a new pair of evening 'slippers' and she extends her shapely leg - and he becomes overpowered by her perfume, and their wedding night scene aboard a speeding train in which Jean's elaborate scam to pose as her own virtuous sister Lady Eve Sedgwick seduces Hopsie - a second time - when she tells him (to his dismay) about all her past lovers (Angus, Herman, Vernon, Cecil, Hubert, Herbert, and John), in Preston Sturges' classic romantic comedy
The Lady from Shanghai (1948)	The stunning character of short-haired blonde femme fatale Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth), the secret meeting at the aquarium between Irish seaman Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles) and Elsa - deliberately positioned before predatory fish, and the visually-intriguing, climactic shoot-out in the Crazy House-Hall of Mirrors in an abandoned amusement park between O'Hara, Elsa, and her wealthy lawyer husband Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) - set among multiple distorted mirrors that break and shatter into millions of shards, in writer/director Orson Welles' film noir classic
Ladyhawke (1985)	The famous, beautifully photographed "transformation" scene in which cursed lovers Captain Etienne Navarre (Rutger Hauer) and Isabeau d'Anjou (Michelle Pfeiffer) can only see each other for a split second between night and day, and cannot touch -- and Etienne's frustrated howl as Isabeau flies away as a hawke; and the joyous tearful reunion-celebration of the lovers Etienne and Isabeau - after the curse had been lifted as Etienne remarked: "You cut your hair!" - in the scene, their companions: the escaped thief Phillipe Gaston - the Mouse (Matthew Broderick) and cloistered monk Father Imperius (Leo McKern) tearfully looked on, in Richard Donner's fantasy adventure
The Lady Vanishes (1938)	Elderly governess Miss Froy's (Dame May Whitty) silent scream that is drowned out by the sound of a train whistle on a train bound for London from the Swiss Alps, the vanished Miss Froy's handwriting on the train window, the sight of a Harriman's Herbal Tea bag stuck to the train window pane for a moment, socialite Iris Henderson's (Margaret Lockwood) sleepy discovery that the nurse-nun attendant is wearing high heel shoes, the eerie appearance of a fully-bandaged "patient," the image of the two outsized glasses with doped brandy drinks, and Miss Froy (actually revealed to be a British agent) seated at a piano playing her cryptic melody at the very end, in Alfred Hitchcock's early classic thriller and last British film
The Last Detail (1973)	The character of Billy "Badass" Buddusky (Oscar-nominated Jack Nicholson), and the tense scene between Buddusky and a "redneck bartender" (Don McGovern) over a beer order for sailor/prisoner Meadows (Oscar-nominated Randy Quaid) - with the bartender threatening to summon the shore patrol, culminating with Billy's retort: "I am the motherf--king shore patrol, motherf--ker! I am the motherf--king shore patrol! Give this man a beer!", in director Hal Ashby's military-related, anti-authoritarian buddy film strewn with obscenities
The Last Emperor (1987)	The sight of the last emperor of the Qing dynasty - child emperor Pu Yi (Richard Vuu as 3 years old), who ascends the throne in 1908 and toddles out beyond a billowing yellow curtain to view outside the palace throne room the lined-up hordes of supporters, eunuchs and ritualistic worshippers; the young emperor's tutoring by Scot Reginald 'R.J.' Johnston (Peter O'Toole); the scene of the teenaged emperor riding his bicycle to the outer gate and being forbidden to leave the imprisoning Forbidden City walls; and the scene of preparations for his marriage - in which he unveils his arranged marriage partner Wan Jung (Joan Chen) after which she smothers him with lipstick-kisses all over his head - and later shared his bed with a second wife-concubine Wen Hsiu (Vivian Wu) (as they explored each other's bodies under a silk sheet); also the scene of Pu Yi (John Lone) as an exiled young adult dressed in Western clothes, cigarette in his hand, and singing wistfully "Am I Blue?" while leaning on a piano in a Western nightclub in Tianjin in 1927 - and later escaping to Manchukuo as a puppet ruler where his wife Wan Jung becomes an opium addict (and is eventually placed in an asylum) and has an affair with leather-clad lesbian Japanese spy Eastern Jewel (Maggie Han) (who nibbles on her toes!); the ten years of his imprisonment as # 981 in Foo Shoe - a Russian prison/re-education camp (where he can't even tie his own shoes) - but where he majestically scribbles his name on the ground - and the scene of his eventual release in 1959; and the final sequence of an older Pu Yi in 1967 (the year of his death) - as a simple Peking gardener and also as a tourist visiting the Forbidden City where he ascends the Dragon Throne once again and shows an amazed young boy his hidden cricket box, in Bernardo Bertolucci's Best Picture-winning epic
The Last House on the Left (1972)	A taboo-breaking and often revolting 'snuff'-type film about the long ordeal of two teenaged girls: Mari Collingwood (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis Stone (Lucy Grantham) who are searching for pot when kidnapped by a group of escaped convicts led by Krug Stillo (David Hess), brutally and sadistically tortured, raped, dis-emboweled, and eventually murdered in the woods (intercut with views of 'surprise party' preparations for Mari by her parents (Gaylord St. James and Cynthia Carr)); and the later scene of payback revenge/slaughter by the Collingwoods on the gang, in Wes Craven's controversial early low-budget horror film

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