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 8

C (continued)
Carnal Knowledge (1971)	The sexual fumblings of the threesome courtship of young, 1940s Amherst College roommates: the predatory Jonathan Fuerst (Jack Nicholson) and naive Sandy (Art Garfunkel) with coed sweetheart Susan (Candice Bergen), and how their lives approached middle-age; the bedroom-shower sequence revealing the vulnerability of Jonathan's unhappy and unfulfilled voluptuous actress-mistress-wife Bobbie (Ann-Margret) ("I wanna get married" and "the reason I sleep all day is 'cause I can't stand my life...I need a life") when he verbally demolishes her about her uselessness ("You want a job? I got a job for ya. Fix up this pigsty!"); Jonathan's slide-show lecture of his sexual conquests and the women in his life (titled "Ballbusters on Parade!"), and his dysfunctional solace found in the final scene with prostitute Louise (Rita Moreno) as he was sexually massaged ("It's rising, it's rising...more virile, domineering. More irresistible. It's up, it's in the air!"), in director Mike Nichols' dramatic and controversial film
Carrie (1976)	The scene of a terrified Carrie's (Sissy Spacek) first menstruation in a high school locker-shower room; and the scene of Carrie's religiously-fanatical mother Margaret White (Piper Laurie) warning Carrie about boys and prohibiting her from going to her prom ("Boys. Yes, boys come next. After the blood, the boys come. Like sniffing dogs...grinning and slobbering, trying to find out where the smell comes from, where the smell is. That smell!") - and the much-celebrated, exhilarating prom sequence in which the camera circles counterclockwise around Carrie and dream date Tommy (William Katt) as they move in the opposite direction, Carrie's bloody high school prom experience as she is crowned prom queen and then cruelly doused by pig's blood - and her murderous, fiery, violent telekinetic revenge (shown in split-screen); her mother's ecstatic crucifixion-death scene; and the recurring nightmare - shock second ending in which the dead girl's arm bursts out of the ground from beyond the grave toward classmate Sue Snell (Amy Irving), in Brian De Palma's classic horror film adapted from a Stephen King novel
Casablanca (1942)	The first view of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in his Cafe Americain nightclub playing chess by himself, the unexpected entrance of former love Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) with her vulnerable beauty and her request of piano player Sam (Dooley Wilson) to once again play "As Time Goes By," Sam's rendition of the song and Rick's strident interruption and first glance at Ilsa, the images of Rick's masculine mannerisms and the self-pitying scene later that evening of Rick alone with a cigarette and a bottle asking Sam to play "As Time Goes By" again, the flashback to bittersweet memories of Paris, the ink of Ilsa's goodbye note being washed away in the rain - and then Ilsa's unexpected appearance in the doorway in a shaft of light, Rick's nodding to the band leader to permit the playing of "The Marseillaise" - the French national anthem - and the memorable duel of national anthems with the crowd joining in to sing and drown out the Germans' anthem "Wacht am Rhein" - and Yvonne's proud reaction with tears in her eyes, the scene in which Ilsa realizes she cannot shoot Rick and then when he moves toward her and embraces her and gives an explication of what really happened in Paris, Capt. Louis Renault's (Claude Rains) acceptance of his gambling winnings AFTER closing down the cafe, and the final farewell scene between trench-coated Rick and Ilsa on the rainy, foggy airstrip with "Here's lookin' at you, kid" and Rick's noble sacrifice to let Ilsa leave with her husband, Renault's tense pause before ordering: "Round up the usual suspects," and the closing line: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" as Renault and Rick walk off the tarmac to an uncertain future - and so many more memorable sequences, in Michael Curtiz' definitive and popular Best Picture-winning classic
Casino (1995)	The opening pre-Saul Bass' credits sequence (his last work before he passed away) in which Jewish gambler Sam 'Ace' Rothstein (Robert De Niro) walks out of a casino and enters his parked car - and the slow-motion car explosion to Johann Sebastian Bach's Passion According to St. Matthew; the smooth sequence showing how cash flows from a gambler to the bagman in the casino; the introduction of the sexy prostitute/hustler Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone) at a roulette table and Ace's first look at her by spying through the security camera, and the quiet, faithful hang-dog character of Ace's right-hand man Billy Sherbert (Don Rickles in a serious role); the disintegrating relationship between Ace and violent mob hit-man/enforcer Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) including the tense desert scene ("Normally, my prospects of comin' back alive from a meeting with Nicky were ninety-nine out of a hundred. But this time, when I heard him say, 'A couple a hundred yards down the road', I gave myself fifty-fifty"); four very memorable violent sequences: the scene in which a scam artist running a blackjack racket is tortured; the eye-popping scene in which a rival mob tough's head is crushed in a vise; the scene of Nicky and his brother Dominick (Philip Suriano) beaten up with baseball bats and shovels, and then buried alive by Frank Marino (Frank Vincent); and the rub-outs to silence potential witnesses (when the mob leaders are arraigned) including the loyal Andy Stone (Alan King, also in a serious role); Ace and Ginger's disintegrating marriage, especially when a jealous Ace has her pimp ex-boyfriend Lester Diamond (James Woods) beaten up; and Ace's final eulogy for Las Vegas casino life ("The town will never be the same...Today, it looks like Disneyland"), in Martin Scorsese's mob film based on Nicholas Pileggi's non-fiction novel
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958)	The image of a sexually-frustrated Maggie "the Cat" (Elizabeth Taylor) usually in a slinky slip or white dress - fighting with presumed homosexual husband Brick (Paul Newman), and the scene in the cellar between Brick and Big Daddy (Burl Ives), in Richard Brooks' powerful drama adapted from Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play
Cat People (1942)	The kitten-faced young bride and Balkan artist Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon) who is haunted by her inner demons - in one scene, she claws the sofa with her nails, and then is jealously involved in two frightening, feline stalkings of rival female Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) for her architect husband's (Kent Smith) attention: on a Central Park path at night (accentuated by the hissing, squealing air-brakes as a bus pulls abruptly into the screen), and a second similar scene in a YWCA indoor swimming pool when she terrorizes Moore - accompanied by growls and shadows of a black panther; also the film's aftermath includes the fate of psychiatrist Dr. Louis Judd's (Tom Conway) after kissing Irena, in Jacques Tourneur's low-budget supernatural thriller
The Champ (1931)	The two major tear-inducing scenes: the jail scene in which drunken and incarcerated Andy 'Champ' Purcell (Oscar-winning Wallace Berry) reluctantly disowns his young, adoring and devoted son Dink (Jackie Cooper) to send him away to live with his mother ("I'm tired of feeding you, let her feed you for awhile. I don't like ya anymore, you're hanging around to every place that I go, and I don't like it, that's all") as the bawling boy begs: "I wanna stay with you," and the climactic scene after a boxing bout in which the down-and-out ex-heavyweight boxing 'Champ' wins the match, but dies with Dink by his side in the locker room as he implores: ("Keep your chin up, don't cry, come on, give your old man a smile, keep it..."), in King Vidor's emotional father-son tearjerker
Champion (1949)	One of the best films about boxing and prize fighting, with intense boxing scenes, and the character of brutal, arrogant and savage prizefighter Michael 'Midge' Kelly (Oscar-nominated Kirk Douglas) who decides to cross the mob-fixed fight by KO-ing his opponent, in director Mark Robson's (and producer Stanley Kramer) archetypal, film-noirish sports film
Charade (1963)	The violent fight scene on a slippery Paris rooftop between Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) and hook-armed Herman Scobie (George Kennedy), and other memorable chase sequences; and the witty dialogue regarding the relationship between lovely Regina ("Reggie") Lambert (Audrey Hepburn) and Peter (Reggie: "Do you know what's wrong with you?" Peter: "No, what?" Reggie: "Absolutely nothing"), and the final scene's revelation that Peter was none other than Mr. Brian Cruikshank in the Treasury Department - their closing discussion about marriage is interspersed with his demands for the hidden fortune (stamps): (Reggie: "...Marriage license! Did you say marriage license?" Cruikshank: "Now don't change the subject. Just give me the stamps" Reggie: "Oh, I love you, Adam... Alex... Peter... Brian... Whatever your name is. Oh, I love you. I hope we have a lot of boys and we can name them all after you" - in this tongue-in-cheek thriller and mystery-romance by director Stanley Donen
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)	The character of Geoffrey Vickers (Errol Flynn) - a dedicated officer in the British Army (the 27th Bengal Lancers) stationed in India during the mid 19th Century, and the famous, suicidally-doomed charge with Max Steiner's four-beat bass changing in tempo with the pace of the charge and its fatal aftermath (for both horses and men), in director Michael Curtiz' stirring war-adventure epic film inspired by Tennyson's poem of a battle in the Crimean War
Chariots of Fire (1981)	The lyrical, often-imitated opening scene of Olympic runners in slow-motion in the surf on the edge of a beach preparing for the 1924 competition in Paris underscored by Vangelis' score, and evangelical Christian Eric Liddell's (Ian Charleson) breaking of the race tape in the 400 m. finals, in Hugh Hudson's Best Picture-winning British drama
Charly (1968)	The transformation of 30 year old bakery worker Charly Gordon (Best Actor winning Cliff Robertson) with an IQ of 59 into a supergenius via a science experiment, Charly's disproportionate, stunted emotional growth compared to his intellectual development, highlighted by his primitively-displayed seduction of his special-ed teacher Alice Kinnian (Claire Bloom) (who eventually falls for him and romps with him in the outdoors in a lengthy montage); the sorrowful scene in which Charly finds out that his newfound intelligence is only temporary, and tells Alice to leave him (after she had proposed marriage to him), and the tearjerking freeze-frame shot of Charly, once again mentally retarded but smiling and care-free, playing with other children on a see-saw, in director Ralph Nelson's soap-opera-ish adaptation of Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon
Chicken Run (2000)	The repeated attempts of fiesty heroine Ginger (voice of Julie Sawalha) to escape from the 'concentration camp' chicken coop of evil, money-hungry Mrs. Tweedy (voice of Miranda Richardson), swaggering American rooster Rocky's (voice of Mel Gibson) daring rescue of Ginger from a Rube Goldberg-like chicken pie-making machine; the crowd-pleasing climax when Mrs. Tweedy, clinging to a rope of Christmas lights attached to a chicken-shaped aircraft, swiped her axe at Ginger -- momentarily, it seemed as if Ginger had been beheaded, but revealed she'd tricked Tweedy into severing the line, causing Mrs. Tweedy to plunge into her own pie-making machine -- as her husband (voice of Tony Haygarth) smugly told her: "I told you they was organized!"; and the chicken-and-egg debate between rats Nick (voice of Timothy Spall) and Fetcher (voice of Phil Daniels) in the end credits (Fetcher: "Yeah, but you have to have an egg to have a chicken" Nick: "Yeah, but you've got to get the chicken first to get the egg, and then you get the egg..."), in Aardman Studio's claymation film
Un Chien Andalou (1929, Fr.)	The shocking and disturbing opening sequence when a young man - after seeing a cloud sliver slicing across a full moon - slices a woman's (Simone Mareuil) wide-opened eye (in closeup, it's actually a calf''s eye) in half with a sharp-edged razor, the image of ants coming out of a hole in a man's hand, the dismembered hand lying in the street, and a decomposed horse on a grand piano, in Luis Bunuel's surrealistic film
Children of Men (2006)	The opening scene of white-collar government bureaucrat and ex-activist Theo Faron (Clive Owen) on his way to work on London's Fleet Street in fascist-run, terrorist-riddled England in the dystopic year 2027 - in the midst of a civil war - when a suicide bomber blast occurred a few steps away, and during the film's long and heroic journey to the utopian Human Project on the coast to protect a miraculously-pregnant woman, the scene of the terrifying road-ambush scene - filmed from the POV inside the car in a long unbroken shot - when Theo's estranged ex-lover/wife Julian Taylor (Julianne Moore), the leader of the insurgent underground Fishes revolutionary group, was shot in the neck and died shortly after; also the scene of African fugee (short for refugee) Kee (Claire-Hope Ashitey) revealing to Theo her extended pregnant belly (the first pregnancy in the world in about 18 years) and telling him that she trusted him, and their thrilling escape from the 'safe house' when Theo attempted to jump-start their vehicle by coasting downhill, and their seeking of refuge at the hidden-in-the-woods home of Theo's long-haired, dope-smoking hippie friend Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine) - and the scene of Jasper's execution (after he euthanized his catatonic wife with a Quietus suicide-kit) with his "pull my finger" joke; also the amazing, single-shot scene of Theo assisting Kee in the birth of her baby girl in a crumbling, cold Bexhill apartment building in the refugee camp and internment center area; and the film's most magical moment when Theo and Kee (with her crying baby in her arms) descended the stairs in the midst of a bloody seige and uprising (filmed continuously with a hand-held camera) surrounding a Bexhill apartment building - and the British soldiers and other combatants stood back momentarily in quiet awe; and the hopeful final scene in which Theo (wounded during the skirmish) slumped over in a rowboat and died at the same moment that they reached the buoy rendezvous point with the Human Project's ship Tomorrow's appearance in the fog; in director Alfonso Cuarón’s bleak but visually-brilliant science-fiction chase-thriller
Children of Paradise - Les Enfants du Paradis (1945, Fr.)	After the opening credits, the rising of an actual theatre curtain to reveal the first view of the 'children of paradise' - the poor and rowdy playgoers in the audience who must watch from the galleries at a distance in the cheap seats, and the scene of introverted, delicate, moon-faced theater mime Baptiste Deburau (Jean-Louis Barrault) re-enacting - through remarkable pantomime - a crime (the criminal theft of an onlooker's watch) that was performed by petty thief Pierre-Francois Lacenaire (Marcel Herrand) - and proving that the falsely-charged raven-haired, fickle, seraphim-like (or Garbo-like) beauty/courtesan Garance (Arletty) is not the pickpocket; also the scene of Garance telling a nobleman in her bedroom that she loves the mime Baptiste, in Marcel Carne's dazzling and beautiful theatrical masterpiece set in early 19th century Paris and shot during the period of France's occupation by the Nazis
Chimes at Midnight (1965) (aka Falstaff)	The portrayal of William Shakespeare's charismatic, corpulent thief/drunken scoundrel/adventurer Sir John/Jack Falstaff (Orson Welles), the Battle of Shrewsbury with inappropriately-armored Falstaff wading through the muddy battlefield and other armored men swinging heavy weapons, and Prince Hal's (Keith Baxter) final betrayal of his friend Falstaff that elevates him to the status of a King (renamed Henry V), in Orson Welles' last classic masterpiece
The China Syndrome (1979)	The thrilling, suspenseful scene of heroic, long-time nuclear power plant engineer Jack Godell (Jack Lemmon) locking himself inside the reactor room following a scary 'incident' and demanding to speak on live TV after knowing that a meltdown almost occurred and that there are Ventana nuclear power plant violations that need to be divulged, and the later scene of his speaking to reporter Kimberly Wells (Jane Fonda) from inside the control room when a SWAT team cuts the signal, enters the control room and shoots Jack dead, in James Bridges' cautionary political thriller-drama
Chinatown (1974)	The dark evocation of a late 1930s Los Angeles in a tale of murder, incest, and water rights; the night-time slitting of impulsive detective Jake Gittes' (Jack Nicholson) nose with a switchblade (by director Roman Polanski) ("You're a very nosy fellow, kitty-cat, huh?") and Gittes' sporting of a bandaged nose for the remainder of the film, Jake's lunch conversation with corrupt and perverse tycoon Noah Cross (John Huston) at the Albacore Club, who repeatedly mispronounces his name and where he is told: ("You may think you know what you're dealing with, but believe me, you don't," "You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything," and "The future, Mr. Gits - the future!"), the celebrated scene of beautiful and wealthy, troubled newly-widowed client Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) repeatedly being slapped by Gittes and revealing the scandalous truth about the young and enigmatic Katherine (Belinda Palmer) that she is hiding: "she's my sister...she's my daughter...She's my sister and my daughter! ...My father and I...understand? Or is it too tough for you?", and the tragic ending in Chinatown including the haunting closing line: "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown", in director Roman Polanski's great neo-noir detective story
Cimarron (1931)	The breathtaking reenactment of the homesteader's wild dash in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, in this early sound western and Best Picture winner based on the best-selling Edna Ferber epic by director Wesley Ruggles
The Cincinnati Kid (1965)	The scene of the climactic and suspenseful showdown 5-card stud poker game between young poker player The Cincinnati Kid or Eric Stoner (Steve McQueen) and legendary champion card player Lancey Howard or "The Man" (Edward G. Robinson) - in which the Kid's full-house (with Aces and tens) is beaten by "The Man's" straight flush (when he turns over a Jack of Diamonds) - accentuated by closeups; the "Kid" admits: "I'm through" although Lancey compliments him on a good game: ("You're good, kid, but as long as I'm around, you're second best. You might as well learn to live with it"), in Norman Jewison's Hustler-like high-stakes poker-gambling film
Cinderella (1950)	The fanciful and magical transformation of Cinderella's (voice of Ilene Woods) plain dress into a beautiful, sparkling white gown, and other transformations: the pumpkin into a carriage, the mice into horses, the dog into a footman and the horse into a driver by her fairy Godmother (voice of Verna Felton) - as she sings the Oscar-nominated song, "Bibbidy-Bobbidi-Boo", in Disney's animated masterpiece
Cinema Paradiso (1989)	The euphoric scene of middle-aged Italian film director Salvatore Di Vitto (Jacques Perrin) returning to his childhood, small-town Sicilian home after 30 years to revisit the condemned Paradiso theatre, where he screens one last reel left by theatre projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) who had just passed away - composed of all the excised and censored kisses (presented in an amorous montage - two stills shown to the right) that the village priest Father Adelfio (Leopoldo Trieste) had removed from dozens of films shown there - the images bring tears to his eyes, in writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore's sentimental homage to the movies that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film
The Circus (1928)	The scene of the Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) eluding a pickpocket and cop in the hall of mirrors; also his antics in a circus environment where he inadvertently becomes part of the show as a prop man; his eating of a hotdog from the extended hand of a baby in its father's arms; the scenes of being locked in a cage with a sleeping lion (and a barking dog outside) - and the tightrope act attempt with a wild monkey on his head and biting his nose; and the classic memorable finale in which The Tramp walks in the opposite direction away from the departing circus, in director/actor Charlie Chaplin's early and captivating award-winning silent film

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