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 33

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Pinky (1949)	One of the earliest and most controversial films about inter-racial relations from Hollywood was this one -- an example of the many post-war 'problem pictures' -- this one was noted for using a white actress (Jeanne Crain) to portray light-skinned black nurse Pinky/Patricia Johnson (Oscar-nominated co-star Ethel Waters' grand-daughter) who tried to pass for white when she fell in love with white doctor Dr. Thomas Adams (William Lundigan) up North, and the scenes of her experiencing bigotry: (the accusation: "She's nothin' but a low-down colored gal" -- and her admission: "Yes, it's true, I'm colored. My grandmother's Mrs. Dysey Johnson"), in director Elia Kazan's stirring melodrama
Pinocchio (1940)	Jiminy Cricket as wooden puppet Pinocchio's official conscience with the song "Give a Little Whistle", the memorable "When You Wish Upon a Star" (to become a real boy) and Jiminy's high wire act on a violin string; Pinocchio's duping by wicked fox J. Worthington Foulfellow to join the circus; the song "Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee" ("Hey, diddly-dee, an actor's life for me!") and Pinocchio's song "I Got No Strings" while performing for Stromboli; the scene of the Blue Fairy coming to Pinocchio's aid after his nose has grown from so many lies and advising him: ("A lie keeps growing and growing until it's as plain as the nose on your face...Always let your conscience be your guide"); the sinister and scary Pleasure Island sequence where bad boys such as Lampwick grow donkey ears and tail; and the rescue of Gepetto from the belly of Monstro the Great Whale, and Pinocchio's transformation into a real boy ("Little puppet made of pine, awake. The gift of life is thine"), in possibly the greatest of all Disney animated cartoons (the filmmaker's second animated feature)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)	The memorable introduction of pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Oscar-nominated Johnny Depp) as he sails into a port while standing and balancing himself on the crow's nest of a ship in a seemingly dramatic, heroic entrance to a swelling score, but quickly revealed to be in a sinking dinghy - when he reaches the wooden pier, only the very tip of the mast is showing above water - and in a perfectly-timed move, he steps onto dry land from the submerged boat; the long, exciting, acrobatic and chatty swordfight between Jack and straight-laced hero William Turner (Orlando Bloom) in a blacksmith's shop; also the portrayal of the beautiful kidnapped Governor's daughter Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Geoffrey Rush as the wily undead pirate Barbossa - displayed with amazing special effects, in director Gore Verbinski's hugely popular comedy swashbuckler
Pixote (1981, Braz.)	The many grim and disturbing images of Third World urban poverty, including the shot of an aborted baby in a bucket in a bathroom, and the scene of 10-year old orphaned/abandoned boy Pixote (Fernando Ramos da Silva) suckling at the breast of prostitute Sueli (Marilia Pera) in director Hector Babenco's urban drama
A Place In the Sun (1951)	The powerful romantic chemistry between poor boy George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) and rich society girl Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) in the "Are they watching us?" dancing and balcony scenes including their soft-focus kiss in gigantic closeup ("Tell Mama, tell Mama all"); the scene of pregnant factory co-worker Alice (Shelley Winters) telling George that he must marry her right away; the lake/rowboat "murder" scene when George rows out into the middle of Loon Lake with Alice and she falls overboard and drowns; the dramatic trial, and the final prison/execution farewell scene in the death cell between the condemned George and Angela, in Best Director-winning George Stevens' classic tearjerker based upon Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy
The Plainsman (1936)	The character of bull-whip snapping Calamity Jane (Jean Arthur), and the famous barroom floor death scene of Wild Bill Hickok (Gary Cooper) as he was kissed by Calamity, in Cecil B. DeMille's epic western
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)	The scene of marketing executive Neal Page (Steve Martin) and buffoonish, shower curtain ring sales rep Del Griffith (John Candy) sharing a cramped hotel room and sleeping in the same bed (and waking up snuggling together), and the extended, ill-fated rental car sequence with an incompetent clerk, topped off when Page realizes that Del has used his credit card, and his indignant punching of Del - with an embarrassing trip over his own suitcase, and the one-minute scene of Page spouting off the "F" word over a dozen times, in director John Hughes' odd-couple road comedy
Planet of the Apes (1968)	The Oscar-winning make-up artistry of the civilized yet dictatorial ape-like creatures; the scene of stranded American astronaut George Taylor's (Charlton Heston) snarling and defiant insults toward the ruling apes, when sprayed with a high-powered hose and when caught in a net like a beast: ("It's a madhouse!" and "Take your stinkin' paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"); also the "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" pose; the laugh-out-loud goodbye kiss between Taylor and Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter): (Taylor: "Doctor, I'd like to kiss you goodbye." Dr. Zira: All right, but you're so damned ugly"); and the startling, twist-surprise ending as George rides down a beach on horseback with mute cavewoman Nova (Linda Harrison) in the Forbidden Zone and suddenly sees the spiked crown of a battered Statue of Liberty buried waist-deep in beach sand - and his exclamation to earlier generations as he pounds his fist into the sand: "Oh my God! I'm back, I'm home. All the time. We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah damn you, (God) damn you all to hell!", in Franklin J. Schaffner's original film of the long-running series
Platoon (1986)	The controversial scene in a Vietnamese village as malevolent and murderous Sgt. Bob Barnes (Tom Berenger) cold-bloodedly executes an innocent but talkative elderly Vietnamese woman, and is prevented from murdering a young girl by intervention from Sergeant Elias Grodin (Willem Dafoe); the statement of the film's major conflict - the struggle for the "possession of the (my) soul" of enlisted idealistic rookie soldier Private Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) as he narrates (writing a letter) while on patrol in the rain: "I don't know what's right and what's wrong anymore. The morale of the men is low, a civil war in the platoon. Half the men with Elias, half with Barnes. There's a lot of suspicion and hate. I can't believe we're fightin' each other, when we should be fighting them"; the many dark or night scenes of hand-to-hand and close-range combat with VCs; Chris' narrated letter to his Grandmother: "They come from the end of the line, most of 'em. Small towns you never heard of...They're poor. They're the unwanted, yet they're fighting for our society, and our freedom. It's weird, isn't it?"; and the startling scene in which the saintly and compassionate Sgt. Elias staggers out of the jungle after being shot by sociopathic Sgt. Barnes and left for dead in the Vietnamese jungle - his arms outstretched upwards in slow-motion in a sacrificial, crucifixion pose (while Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings is played) as he is repeatedly shot by VC enemy forces - viewed from a chopper overhead - and wounded Chris' final thoughts after being carried on a stretcher for evacuation by a helicopter as he sees the devastation below - "...we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves, and the enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there the rest of my days...", in Oliver Stone's Best Picture-winning war film
Play It Again, Sam (1972)	The scene of the breakup of Allan Felix (Woody Allen) and his wife Nancy (Susan Anspach) because she's an active 'doer' and he's a passive 'watcher' - and when she says she'll contact his lawyer, he responds: "I don't have a lawyer. Want to call my doctor?"; the flawless impersonation of Humphrey Bogart (Jerry Lacy) as he counsels Allan about being a desirable and virile man; all of nerdy Allan's disastrous blind date scenes and rejections - especially the one in which he fails to impress his blind date Sharon (Jennifer Salt) by gesturing and sending an Oscar Peterson record album into the air, and another failed pickup at an art gallery when he asks a girl (Diana Davila) what she's doing later and she responds: "Committing suicide" - then undeterred, he asks about Friday night!, and when a blonde (Suzanne Zenor) on the dance floor rejects him with: "Get lost, worm!"; also the scene of Bogart advising Allan to tell Linda (Diane Keaton): "I have met a lot of dames, but you are really something special" - when it works, Allan coos happily to Bogart: "She bought it!"; and a clever re-enactment of the airport scene from Casablanca in the film's final moments when Allan gives up Linda: "She came over to babysit with me because I was lonely" was his excuse, in actor/director Woody Allen's funny classic
Play Misty For Me (1971)	D. J. Dave Garland's (Clint Eastwood) breathy delivery of the "Play Misty for Me" dedications; psycho-stalker Evelyn's (Jessica Walter) threatening, knife-wielding scenes of terror, and the plunge to her death in the final struggle, in actor/director Clint Eastwood's crime thriller - his directorial debut film
The Player (1992)	The subtle opening and closing shots that reveal the underlying joke of the premise -- the movie is a 'film-within-a-film' about how the film came to be (the erroneous murder and cover-up of a disgruntled screenwriter by callous, insincere, back-stabbing, shallow film producer Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins)); the uncut, unedited, single-take opening credits sequence - a remarkably complex, 8-minute and six second roaming and tracking camera on a Hollywood studio lot to capture glimpses of pitch meetings and overhear bits of conversations (one pair of producers ironically and referentially comments on Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958) and its famed opening uncut tracking shot); and the huge cast of celebrities and filmmakers who play themselves (except for Whoopi Goldberg who plays Beverly Hills police chief Susan Avery ("Oh, please! This is Pasadena. We do not arrest the wrong person. That's L.A.!")); the ridiculous 25 words or less cross-breeded film pitches that Mill hears - like for the sequel The Graduate Part II ("Mrs. Robinson has a stroke...dark and weird and funny") or other films described as 'Out of Africa meets Pretty Woman' (for Goldie Hawn) or 'Ghost meets The Manchurian Candidate' (for Bruce Willis); and the hot tub scene of Griffin with story editor/girlfriend Bonnie Sherow (Cynthia Stevenson) - that sets up the premise of the film about the receipt of threatening postcards and the amount of time "before he becomes dangerous" - 5 months; the scene the morning after the writer's murder in the studio office in which ambitious new employee Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher) proposes finding storylines from the morning's paper instead of hiring scripters, with Mills' response: "I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process"; and the film's ending with Griffin driving while hearing a pitch by a mysterious psychotic writer of a movie called The Player - about the movie just seen ("It's a Hollywood ending, Griff. He marries the dead writer's girl (Greta Scacchi) and they live happily ever after") - with a mocking of the audience with a subtle and faintly-heard: "Nyah, nyah, nyah-NYAH-nyah" sung by an infant in the score, in director Robert Altman's famed low-budget Hollywood satire with a tapestry of characters
Point Blank (1967)	Virtuoso, artsy, avant-garde editing techniques (i.e., flashbacks, time lapses, dream motifs, etc), such as Walker's (Lee Marvin) shooting (and dying dream?) in an Alcatraz cell before the opening credits -- and his return visit a few years later by ferry; the scene of Walker's loud stride along a corridor - cross-cut with a view of his wife Lynne (Sharon Acker) in bed and then dressing before visiting a beauty parlor; his violent and vengeful shoot-up of his double-crossing wife's empty bed - defiled after she ran off with his ex-partner Mal Reese (John Vernon) - and Lynne's later suicidal drug overdose; Walker's wild driving and crashing of a car under LA freeway ramps in order to intimidate and get the salesman to talk; Walker's backstage fight in a nighclub against two thugs with a swirling psychedelic backdrop behind them; the scene of Lynne's sister Chris (Angie Dickinson) - naked and hastily dressing in the background as Walker holds a gun on Reese in the foreground while demanding: "I want my 93 grand now"; and the scene of Chris' energetic but futile slapping, throttling (with her handbag), and pounding of her fists into Walker to make him feel something - until she collapses to the floor, in John Boorman's brutal crime classic neo-noir based on the pulp crime novel The Hunter by Richard Stark
Police Academy (1984)	The podium fellatio scene - in which Cmndt. Eric Lassard (George Gaynes) delivers a speech to dignitaries, while a hooker (Georgina Spelvin) and cadet recruit Carey Mahoney (Steve Guttenberg) hide inside the podium - during the speech, Lassard shows facial signs of being pleasured, with contortions, groans and moans; after he finishes the delivery, Lassard sees Mahoney, not the hooker, emerge from beneath the podium, in director Hugh Wilson's hit police-related comedy
Poltergeist (1982)	Special effects of television possession and scenes of paranormal events, the view of wide-eyed daughter Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke) watching late-night TV snow and her memorable: "They're heeere"; the view of chairs unexplainably self-stacked in the kitchen, and the scare-moment of the frightening, evil-grinning clown doll vanishing from its customary chair, grabbing owner Robbie (Oliver Robbins), pulling him under the bed and attempting to strangle him; all the attempts at exorcism and house-cleansing by short-statured clairvoyant Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein), and the terrifying climax of muddy, unearthed corpses, in director Tobe Hooper's and co-producer/co-writer Steven Spielberg's horror classic
Porco Rosso (1992, Fr./Jp.) (aka The Crimson Pig)	The adult fable of a dashing seaplane pilot, Porco Rosso (meaning "Red Pig"), who'd been cursed with the head of a pig, and Porco's astounding mystical tale to young Fio about how he became cursed - told in flashback: after a fierce air battle, he found himself in an aerial limbo, floating on a sea of cloud that stretched for an eternity, with pure blue sky above, broken only by a white band that turned out to be thousands of planes manned by dead pilots (reminiscent of A Guy Named Joe (1943) and A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven (1946)), in famed Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's film
Porky's (1982)	The shower-room scene, in which one of the teens exclaims after viewing through a peep-hole: "I've never seen so much wool! You could knit a sweater," the discovery of the ogling boys by the towel-clad girls, Tommy's (Wyatt Knight) placing of his member through the spyhole, and gym coach Ms. Balbricker's (Nancy Parsons) painful two-handed grab - in director Bob Clark's notoriously infantile, coming-of-age teen sex comedy
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)	The scene of the immense tidal wave (caused by a submarine-induced earthquake) hitting the Poseidon, and the incredible special effects shots of the capsized luxury cruise ship turned upside down with passengers dangling and a man falling up/down from a table through a large window; also the scene of using a giant Christmas Tree to climb up and out of the ship’s grand ballroom; and the water-rescue scene when Jewish passenger Mrs. Belle Rosen (Oscar-nominated Shelley Winters) saves Rev. Frank Scott (Gene Hackman) from drowning, and gasps: "in the water, I'm a very skinny lady" and then dies of a heart attack after admitting: "I guess I'm not a champion of the Women's Swimming Association anymore"; also the scene of detective cop husband Mike Rugo's (Ernest Borgnine) reaction to his ex-prostitute wife Linda's (Stella Stevens) death -- angrily venting his rage at Frank and sobbing: "You! Preacher! YOU LYIN', MURDERIN', SON-OF-A-BITCH! You almost suckered me in! I started to believe in your promises! That we had a chance!", also Frank's sacrificial death (he closes the steam vent while yelling: "Keep going! Rogo! Get them through!" and then falls into the flaming wreckage himself); and the triumpant ending in which the five survivors bang on the thin hull to attract rescuers, and Mike's changed opinion of Preacher Frank: "The preacher was right! That beautiful son-of-a-bitch was right!", in this classic Irwin Allen disaster epic (with an Oscar-winning song "The Morning After" and a special Oscar for Visual Effects)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)	The first appearance of a smoldering, femme fatale Cora (Lana Turner) wearing a white, two-piece playsuit - she drops her lipstick case and it rolls across the floor, the terrific magnetism between Cora and drifter Frank (John Garfield), the scene in which an evil Cora convinces Frank to murder her roadside eatery proprietor-husband Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), and the tragic car crash scene (their kiss while he is driving is a fatal one), in director Tay Garnett's thriller-noir based upon James M. Cain's novel
Pretty Woman (1990)	The changing relationship over a week between Hollywood street-hooker Vivian Ward (Oscar-nominated Julia Roberts) and wealthy corporate raider Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) after starting out as client-customer date ("We both screw people for money" and "I appreciate this whole seduction thing you've got going on here, but let me give you a tip: I'm a sure thing"); and the scene of Vivian's extravagant shopping spree in boutiques on Rodeo Drive; the bathtub scene; and her ultimate rescue by her gallant Prince Charming in the film's conclusion with a stretch limousine, a dozen red roses clenched in his teeth, his fire-escape climb to her balcony, and his profession of live - with a kiss ("I want more. I want the fairy tale") - in Garry Marshall's romantically-sentimental fantasy Cinderella story
The Pride of the Yankees (1942)	The famous heart-tugging, July 4, 1939 farewell scene of famed # 4 ball player Lou Gehrig (Gary Cooper), afflicted with the uncurable disease of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in his mid-30s, first accompanied by his supportive and tearful wife Eleanor (Teresa Wright) in the dark tunnel leading to the infield, and then saying goodbye to his fans and teammates and delivering his speech at a microphone at home plate: "...People all say that I've had a bad break. But today -- today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth" - as it echoes throughout Yankee Stadium with 62,000 in attendance, in director Sam Wood's popular biographical baseball sports movie
The Princess Bride (1987)	The scenes of the Grandfather (Peter Falk) telling sick and bedridden 10 year old Grandson (Fred Savage) about the story (from the S. Morgenstern novel The Princess Bride) of the heroic noble knight (farm boy Westley played by Cary Elwes) saving his beautiful fair-haired princess (lover Buttercup played by Robin Wright Penn) from evil fiancee Prince Humperdink (Chris Sarandon), with the storyteller's regaling about the swashbuckling, chatty cliff-top duel between caricatured drunken Spanish master swordsman Inigo Montoya (Mandy Patinkin) and the mysterious masked man clad in black named Dread Pirate Roberts (Cary Elwes - Westley in disguise); the dreaded 'Fire Swamp' (with giant rodents and quicksand), the characters of exiled, cynical magician Miracle Max (Billy Crystal) and his screeching wife Valerie (Carol Kane), and Max's famous line: "Have fun storming the castle!"; Inigo's vengeful quote to six-fingered Count Tyrone Rugen (Christopher Guest): "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die"; and the fairytale ending with a successful rescue and romantic kiss (described by the Grandfather as "Since the invention of the kiss, there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind -- THE END"), and the Grandson's bedtime request to have the story read again the next day - and the Grandfather's reply: "As you wish", in Rob Reiner's romantic fantasy comedy based on screenwriter William Goldman's novel
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)	The romantic pairing of Rudolph/King Rudolf (Ronald Colman) and Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll), especially in their garden scene together, the exciting swordfight (with cross-cut dialogue) between impersonating King Rudolf and villain Rupert (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), and the final departure scene between the two lovers, in director John Cromwell's and David O. Selznick's classic production of Anthony Hope's swashbuckling adventure

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

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