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 40

S (continued)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

The first shocking glimpse of drag-dressed musicians Jerry/Daphne (Oscar-nominated Jack Lemmon) and Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis) and the first view of a voluptuous band singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) ("a whole different sex") walking to the Florida-bound train and moving "just like Jell-O on springs" when she is squirted by a jet of steam, Sugar's sneaking of a drink and her depression ("I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop"), the upper train berth party scene, all of Sugar's songs (particularly 'Runnin' Wild'), Joe's mimicking of Cary Grant, the yacht seduction scene cross-cut with Daphne's tango with millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), Jerry's joyful squeal: "I'm engaged" and his reason for getting hitched ("Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" -- "Security"; and the funniest closing line in film history delivered by millionaire Osgood ("Well, nobody's perfect") to a cross-dressed Jerry who tactfully attempts to break their engagement, in Billy Wilder's classic comedy about the Roaring Twenties

Something Wild (1986)

The character of free-spirited, kooky, black-wigged Audrey Hankel (Melanie Griffith), nicknamed Lulu after actress Louise Brooks' femme fatale (from Pandora's Box (1929)), who takes off with staid and married, yuppie, NYC tax consultant Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) from a Manhattan diner (where he has skipped out on the check) to New Jersey; the scene in a motel where she engages in kinky sex with him - handcuffing him to a motel bed and making love to him while forcing him to call in sick to his boss, before attending her 10 year high school reunion in Pennsylvania with him and introducing him as her husband to her square mother Peaches (Dana Preu) - and Peaches' warning to Charlie: "That girl's got some strange ideas about life"; and the surprising appearance of Lulu's dangerous and menacing ex-con husband Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta in his screen debut) - and the shocking semi-accidental stabbing of Sinclair in the horrific fight scene in the bathroom by Driggs; also the crowd-pleasing conclusion when Audrey reappears in Charlie's life after he's quit his job, in director Jonathan Demme's off-beat black comedy

Something's Gotta Give (2003)

In this tables-turned around film, 57 year-old Diane Keaton was notable for her Oscar-nominated role as sexy, mid-50s, divorced, successful playwright Erica Barry - especially in the scene where 63 year-old Viagra-taking record-company mogul Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) - who dates younger women as girlfriends (including Erica's daughter Marin (Amanda Peet)): "I'm dating your daughter" - comes upon a naked and embarrassed Erica in her Hamptons beach house - and soon comes to take an interest in the more age-appropriate woman after suffering a mild heart attack, in writer/director Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy

Somewhere in Time (1980)

The evocative and soaring score of John Barry, the scene in which aspiring college playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is met by an elderly woman, early 20th century actress Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), who gives him a watch and requests: "Come back to me"; and eight years later at the Grand Hotel (on Michigan's Mackinac Island) the scene of Richard viewing a portrait of the young actress and learning that she died the night he received the watch - and then willing himself back in time through self-hypnosis to romance her as a young beauty; the couple's first meeting by the lake and her question: "Is it...you?", and his jolting return 'to the future' (after a night of love-making) by finding a modern-era penny dated 1979 in his pocket; and the ending in which a morbidly depressed Richard has an out-of-body experience toward a bright light where his long-lost love awaits him with outstretched arm, in director Jeannot Szwarc's popular, tear-jerking romance fantasy adapted from Richard Matheson's 1975 novel Bid Time Return

Son of Frankenstein (1939)

The great mirror scene in which the Frankenstein monster (Boris Karloff for the third and final time) is fascinated by his own reflection - he stares at his face, groans in despair, and then touches his hideous features and tries to rub them away, comparing them to the normal facial features of Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), son of the monster's creator, in Rowland V. Lee's monster film - the second sequel to the original 1931 film

The Song of Bernadette (1943)

The innocent wonderment of sickly French peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous/Mary Bernard (Oscar-winning Jennifer Jones) and the scene of her experiencing a vision of the Virgin Mary (uncredited and pregnant Linda Darnell) ("I saw a lady and she was all in white...and she wore a blue girdle and had a golden rose on each foot. I've never seen anything in my life so beautiful") in mid 19th century France; and the dramatic ending scene when she shows doubting, vicious and jealous Sister Vauzous (Gladys Cooper) her horribly diseased bone afflicted legs when being reprimanded for not suffering enough to have been chosen to see the Virgin; also Bernadette's death scene where she has a final visitation from the lady (who holds out her arms, smiles, and says "I love you!") -- coupled with the film’s climactic final moment when the cold hearted, atheistic local prosecutor Vital Dutour (Vincent Price), dying of throat cancer, stands before the grotto of the Virgin and suffers a crisis of faith, in director Henry King's inspirational film based on Franz Werfel's best-selling account

Song of the South (1947)

The live-action and animated sequences including the folklore of Brer Rabbit and Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus stories (with three animated sequences with Brer Rabbit (including the amusing Tar Baby tale), Brer Fox and Brer Bear that are told by Uncle Remus (James Baskett)), and the delightful Oscar-winning song "Zip A Dee Doo Dah", in Disney's film that has since been accused of racial stereotypes - making it difficult to obtain and view

Sons of the Desert (1933)

Laurel and Hardy's great sight gags and childish innocence, the scene of Stan's consumption of wax apples in the Hardy living room, and the scene involving an iron tub full of hot scalding water when Oliver feigns illness; also the scene of their return home from "Hawaii" (wearing leis and carrying pineapples and ukeleles) and being forced to hide in the attic, and much more, in director William Seiter's slapstick comedy

Sophie's Choice (1982)

The flashback scene of the excruciating, heart-rending 'choice' that Polish-Catholic woman Sophie Zawistowska (Oscar-winning Meryl Streep), now living in Brooklyn, had to make in the Auschwitz concentration camp with a Nazi officer - and her decision: "Take my little girl!", in this melodramatic tearjerker by writer/director Alan J. Pakula - based on William Stryon's best-selling novel

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

The final terrifying scene of bed-ridden invalid Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck) overhearing the murderous plot for her own death by a crossed-signal phone call, and her frantic, hysterical screams for help as the killer approaches, and the last line of dialogue - the film's title, in director Anatole Litvak's psychological thriller

The Sound of Music (1965)

The breathtakingly beautiful opening scene in the Austrian Alps when the helicopter-mounted camera swoops down from the clouds to a hilltop covered with wild flowers and grass where postulant, dirndl-skirted Maria (Oscar-winning Julie Andrews) is rotating, dancing and singing "the hills are alive...", Maria's superb singing voice and her role as governess for the seven von Trapp children (lined up and introduced by the Captain (Christopher Plummer) with a whistle), their day excursions around various Salzburg locations, with the lilting and inspirational Rodgers and Hammerstein songs and numbers "Do-Re-Mi" and "Edelweiss", and the Trapp Family's final performance and flight across the mountains to Switzerland to elude capture by the Nazis, in director Robert Wise's great Best Picture-winning family musical

South Pacific (1958)

The singing of "I'm gonna wash that man [Rossano Brazzi as planter Emile De Becque] right out of my hair" by GI nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) on a naval island outpost, in Joshua Logan's musical (mostly shot on location on the island of Kauai in Hawaii) based on stories by James A. Michener and on the original Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play by Rodgers and Hammerstein, by director Joshua Logan

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)

The after-effects of kids in the sleepy town of South Park seeing the R-rated Canadian film by the comedy team of Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire; the scene of muffled-voiced, parka-clad third-grader Kenny (voice of Matt Stone) lighting his flatulence on fire, dying (as usual) and being sent to Heaven (with nude female angels) and then to Hell where Satan was portrayed as the homosexual lover of Saddam Hussein; the scene of a USO show with a Winona Ryder-like woman suggested to be propelling Ping-Pong balls from below her waist; the declaration of war against Canada - to blame it for the ensuing corruption, and the foul-mouthed songs including "Blame Canada" and "Uncle F--ker", and the anti-profanity sing-along song "It's Easy, MMMKay", in Trey Parker's and Matt Stone's co-written and directed often-vulgar, non-PC, and anarchistic animated musical that shows satirical irreverence toward small towns, the movie ratings system, various religious icons, and much more

Soylent Green (1973)

Elderly Sol Roth's (Edward G. Robinson, who was dying during filming) poignant, painless and suicidal death in an euthanasia clinic amidst musical and visual montages of a peaceful green world with a waterfall, with his friend Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston, who shed real tears due to the real-life poignancy of the dying Robinson) at his side; and Thorn's horrified discovery of the true composition of the Soylent Corporation's new artificial food product Soylent Green, and his desperate pleas to police chief Hatcher (Brock Peters) as he was dragged away: "It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food... Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!", in Richard Fleischer's dystopic sci-fi detective thriller set in the year 2022

Spartacus (1960)

Clenched jaw slave-revolt leader Spartacus (producer/actor Kirk Douglas) and his gladiator-training school slave dealer Lentulus Batiatus (Oscar-winning Peter Ustinov); Spartacus' shout from a caged cell: "I am not an animal"; the scene of the savage duel/fight to the death with fellow Ethiopian slave Draba (Woody Strode); scenes of Roman decadence and gluttony including the controversial, homo-erotic bath scene in which bisexual Roman patrician Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier) questions young slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis) about his gender/sexual preferences ("Do you eat oysters?...Do you eat snails?....My taste includes both snails and oysters"); the independent-minded, slave girl Varinia's (Jean Simmons) near-nude bathing scene; the colossal slave rebellion against Rome and massive final battle sequence (with projected fireballs); Marcus Crassus' deal for betrayal - foiled when each devoted slave - in an inspirational scene - proclaims: "I'm Spartacus" to save the real Spartacus from execution by standing up and daring to be identified as such; also Spartacus' short heroic statement to Antoninus after being asked "Are you afraid to die, Spartacus?" ("No more than I was to be born"), Antoninus' and Spartacus' sword-duel to the death and Antoninus' last words ("I love you, Spartacus, as I love my own father"); and the last scene of his crucifixion along the roadside with his wife and child at his feet (she assures him: "He's free, Spartacus..."), in Stanley Kubrick's ancient 1st century BC epic

Speed (1994)

One of the most exciting action thrillers of all time, involving an L.A. city bus rigged with explosives ready to blow if the bus goes under fifty miles per hour; the character of mad bomber Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) with his threatening description of the film's actual plot-pitch: ("Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do, Jack? What do you do?"); and Annie (Sandra Bullock) as the terrified passenger driving the fatal bus under the guidance of LA SWAT team specialist Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves); also the amazing sequence of the improbable long jump the bus made over a missing section of freeway and other scenes of the bus hurtling through congested LA traffic, in director Jan De Bont's superb action film (his debut film)

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

S (continued)
Some Like It Hot (1959)	The first shocking glimpse of drag-dressed musicians Jerry/Daphne (Oscar-nominated Jack Lemmon) and Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis) and the first view of a voluptuous band singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) ("a whole different sex") walking to the Florida-bound train and moving "just like Jell-O on springs" when she is squirted by a jet of steam, Sugar's sneaking of a drink and her depression ("I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop"), the upper train berth party scene, all of Sugar's songs (particularly 'Runnin' Wild'), Joe's mimicking of Cary Grant, the yacht seduction scene cross-cut with Daphne's tango with millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), Jerry's joyful squeal: "I'm engaged" and his reason for getting hitched ("Why would a guy want to marry a guy?" -- "Security"; and the funniest closing line in film history delivered by millionaire Osgood ("Well, nobody's perfect") to a cross-dressed Jerry who tactfully attempts to break their engagement, in Billy Wilder's classic comedy about the Roaring Twenties
Something Wild (1986)	The character of free-spirited, kooky, black-wigged Audrey Hankel (Melanie Griffith), nicknamed Lulu after actress Louise Brooks' femme fatale (from Pandora's Box (1929)), who takes off with staid and married, yuppie, NYC tax consultant Charles Driggs (Jeff Daniels) from a Manhattan diner (where he has skipped out on the check) to New Jersey; the scene in a motel where she engages in kinky sex with him - handcuffing him to a motel bed and making love to him while forcing him to call in sick to his boss, before attending her 10 year high school reunion in Pennsylvania with him and introducing him as her husband to her square mother Peaches (Dana Preu) - and Peaches' warning to Charlie: "That girl's got some strange ideas about life"; and the surprising appearance of Lulu's dangerous and menacing ex-con husband Ray Sinclair (Ray Liotta in his screen debut) - and the shocking semi-accidental stabbing of Sinclair in the horrific fight scene in the bathroom by Driggs; also the crowd-pleasing conclusion when Audrey reappears in Charlie's life after he's quit his job, in director Jonathan Demme's off-beat black comedy
Something's Gotta Give (2003)	In this tables-turned around film, 57 year-old Diane Keaton was notable for her Oscar-nominated role as sexy, mid-50s, divorced, successful playwright Erica Barry - especially in the scene where 63 year-old Viagra-taking record-company mogul Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson) - who dates younger women as girlfriends (including Erica's daughter Marin (Amanda Peet)): "I'm dating your daughter" - comes upon a naked and embarrassed Erica in her Hamptons beach house - and soon comes to take an interest in the more age-appropriate woman after suffering a mild heart attack, in writer/director Nancy Meyers' romantic comedy
Somewhere in Time (1980)	The evocative and soaring score of John Barry, the scene in which aspiring college playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is met by an elderly woman, early 20th century actress Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), who gives him a watch and requests: "Come back to me"; and eight years later at the Grand Hotel (on Michigan's Mackinac Island) the scene of Richard viewing a portrait of the young actress and learning that she died the night he received the watch - and then willing himself back in time through self-hypnosis to romance her as a young beauty; the couple's first meeting by the lake and her question: "Is it...you?", and his jolting return 'to the future' (after a night of love-making) by finding a modern-era penny dated 1979 in his pocket; and the ending in which a morbidly depressed Richard has an out-of-body experience toward a bright light where his long-lost love awaits him with outstretched arm, in director Jeannot Szwarc's popular, tear-jerking romance fantasy adapted from Richard Matheson's 1975 novel Bid Time Return
Son of Frankenstein (1939)	The great mirror scene in which the Frankenstein monster (Boris Karloff for the third and final time) is fascinated by his own reflection - he stares at his face, groans in despair, and then touches his hideous features and tries to rub them away, comparing them to the normal facial features of Baron Wolf von Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), son of the monster's creator, in Rowland V. Lee's monster film - the second sequel to the original 1931 film
The Song of Bernadette (1943)	The innocent wonderment of sickly French peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous/Mary Bernard (Oscar-winning Jennifer Jones) and the scene of her experiencing a vision of the Virgin Mary (uncredited and pregnant Linda Darnell) ("I saw a lady and she was all in white...and she wore a blue girdle and had a golden rose on each foot. I've never seen anything in my life so beautiful") in mid 19th century France; and the dramatic ending scene when she shows doubting, vicious and jealous Sister Vauzous (Gladys Cooper) her horribly diseased bone afflicted legs when being reprimanded for not suffering enough to have been chosen to see the Virgin; also Bernadette's death scene where she has a final visitation from the lady (who holds out her arms, smiles, and says "I love you!") -- coupled with the film’s climactic final moment when the cold hearted, atheistic local prosecutor Vital Dutour (Vincent Price), dying of throat cancer, stands before the grotto of the Virgin and suffers a crisis of faith, in director Henry King's inspirational film based on Franz Werfel's best-selling account
Song of the South (1947)	The live-action and animated sequences including the folklore of Brer Rabbit and Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus stories (with three animated sequences with Brer Rabbit (including the amusing Tar Baby tale), Brer Fox and Brer Bear that are told by Uncle Remus (James Baskett)), and the delightful Oscar-winning song "Zip A Dee Doo Dah", in Disney's film that has since been accused of racial stereotypes - making it difficult to obtain and view
Sons of the Desert (1933)	Laurel and Hardy's great sight gags and childish innocence, the scene of Stan's consumption of wax apples in the Hardy living room, and the scene involving an iron tub full of hot scalding water when Oliver feigns illness; also the scene of their return home from "Hawaii" (wearing leis and carrying pineapples and ukeleles) and being forced to hide in the attic, and much more, in director William Seiter's slapstick comedy
Sophie's Choice (1982)	The flashback scene of the excruciating, heart-rending 'choice' that Polish-Catholic woman Sophie Zawistowska (Oscar-winning Meryl Streep), now living in Brooklyn, had to make in the Auschwitz concentration camp with a Nazi officer - and her decision: "Take my little girl!", in this melodramatic tearjerker by writer/director Alan J. Pakula - based on William Stryon's best-selling novel
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)	The final terrifying scene of bed-ridden invalid Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck) overhearing the murderous plot for her own death by a crossed-signal phone call, and her frantic, hysterical screams for help as the killer approaches, and the last line of dialogue - the film's title, in director Anatole Litvak's psychological thriller
The Sound of Music (1965)	The breathtakingly beautiful opening scene in the Austrian Alps when the helicopter-mounted camera swoops down from the clouds to a hilltop covered with wild flowers and grass where postulant, dirndl-skirted Maria (Oscar-winning Julie Andrews) is rotating, dancing and singing "the hills are alive...", Maria's superb singing voice and her role as governess for the seven von Trapp children (lined up and introduced by the Captain (Christopher Plummer) with a whistle), their day excursions around various Salzburg locations, with the lilting and inspirational Rodgers and Hammerstein songs and numbers "Do-Re-Mi" and "Edelweiss", and the Trapp Family's final performance and flight across the mountains to Switzerland to elude capture by the Nazis, in director Robert Wise's great Best Picture-winning family musical
South Pacific (1958)	The singing of "I'm gonna wash that man [Rossano Brazzi as planter Emile De Becque] right out of my hair" by GI nurse Ensign Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) on a naval island outpost, in Joshua Logan's musical (mostly shot on location on the island of Kauai in Hawaii) based on stories by James A. Michener and on the original Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play by Rodgers and Hammerstein, by director Joshua Logan
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)	The after-effects of kids in the sleepy town of South Park seeing the R-rated Canadian film by the comedy team of Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire; the scene of muffled-voiced, parka-clad third-grader Kenny (voice of Matt Stone) lighting his flatulence on fire, dying (as usual) and being sent to Heaven (with nude female angels) and then to Hell where Satan was portrayed as the homosexual lover of Saddam Hussein; the scene of a USO show with a Winona Ryder-like woman suggested to be propelling Ping-Pong balls from below her waist; the declaration of war against Canada - to blame it for the ensuing corruption, and the foul-mouthed songs including "Blame Canada" and "Uncle F--ker", and the anti-profanity sing-along song "It's Easy, MMMKay", in Trey Parker's and Matt Stone's co-written and directed often-vulgar, non-PC, and anarchistic animated musical that shows satirical irreverence toward small towns, the movie ratings system, various religious icons, and much more
Soylent Green (1973)	Elderly Sol Roth's (Edward G. Robinson, who was dying during filming) poignant, painless and suicidal death in an euthanasia clinic amidst musical and visual montages of a peaceful green world with a waterfall, with his friend Detective Thorn (Charlton Heston, who shed real tears due to the real-life poignancy of the dying Robinson) at his side; and Thorn's horrified discovery of the true composition of the Soylent Corporation's new artificial food product Soylent Green, and his desperate pleas to police chief Hatcher (Brock Peters) as he was dragged away: "It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food... Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!", in Richard Fleischer's dystopic sci-fi detective thriller set in the year 2022
Spartacus (1960)	Clenched jaw slave-revolt leader Spartacus (producer/actor Kirk Douglas) and his gladiator-training school slave dealer Lentulus Batiatus (Oscar-winning Peter Ustinov); Spartacus' shout from a caged cell: "I am not an animal"; the scene of the savage duel/fight to the death with fellow Ethiopian slave Draba (Woody Strode); scenes of Roman decadence and gluttony including the controversial, homo-erotic bath scene in which bisexual Roman patrician Marcus Licinius Crassus (Laurence Olivier) questions young slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis) about his gender/sexual preferences ("Do you eat oysters?...Do you eat snails?....My taste includes both snails and oysters"); the independent-minded, slave girl Varinia's (Jean Simmons) near-nude bathing scene; the colossal slave rebellion against Rome and massive final battle sequence (with projected fireballs); Marcus Crassus' deal for betrayal - foiled when each devoted slave - in an inspirational scene - proclaims: "I'm Spartacus" to save the real Spartacus from execution by standing up and daring to be identified as such; also Spartacus' short heroic statement to Antoninus after being asked "Are you afraid to die, Spartacus?" ("No more than I was to be born"), Antoninus' and Spartacus' sword-duel to the death and Antoninus' last words ("I love you, Spartacus, as I love my own father"); and the last scene of his crucifixion along the roadside with his wife and child at his feet (she assures him: "He's free, Spartacus..."), in Stanley Kubrick's ancient 1st century BC epic
Speed (1994)	One of the most exciting action thrillers of all time, involving an L.A. city bus rigged with explosives ready to blow if the bus goes under fifty miles per hour; the character of mad bomber Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper) with his threatening description of the film's actual plot-pitch: ("Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do, Jack? What do you do?"); and Annie (Sandra Bullock) as the terrified passenger driving the fatal bus under the guidance of LA SWAT team specialist Jack Traven (Keanu Reeves); also the amazing sequence of the improbable long jump the bus made over a missing section of freeway and other scenes of the bus hurtling through congested LA traffic, in director Jan De Bont's superb action film (his debut film)