M |
Title Screen
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Movie Title/Year and Scene
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Screenshots
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M (1931, Ger.)
In Fritz Lang's highly-influential, first sound film
- an expressionistic thriller about the controversial subject of
homicidal pedophilia, and a child molester/murderer
who terrorized the German city of Berlin:
- the opening scene of young Elsie Beckmann (Inge
Landgut), after school, bouncing her ball against a billboard,
and the shadow of psychopathic Berlin child-killer/molester Hans
Beckert (Peter Lorre) moving over the poster of the billboard
that offered a reward (reading "10,000
Marks of Reward - Who is the Murderer?"); in silhoutte Beckert
leaned down and spoke to the girl: ("You
have a very beautiful ball. What's your name?...")
- with his back to the camera, the scene of Beckert's
purchase of a balloon (while whistling a few bars of his tell-tale In
the Hall of the Mountain King from
Peer Gynt's Suite #1 by Edvard Grieg) from a 'blind man' peddler
(Georg John) in order to seduce the young girl
- soon after, Elsie's place setting at the
table was unoccupied and both the ball (bouncing away onto the grass)
and the balloon (floating away into telephone lines) were seen
- signifying the girl's abduction and murder;
an extra edition of the newspaper reported how another young kidnap-murder
victim had been claimed (the 9th victim)
- the scene of Beckert's grotesque making of faces
before a mirror, as investigators reported on the results of handwriting
analysis of the killer's anonymous letter to the newspapers
- the killer's urge to strike again, when he stood
at a store window - and in a reflection, he noticed a young girl
behind him; he grimaced and moved his hand to his mouth; when she
walked away behind him, he turned toward her direction and began
nervously whistling his tell-tale tune as he followed after her,
but he was thwarted when the girl met her mother; to fortify himself,
he sat down at an outdoor cafe and ordered himself two stiff cognac
drinks
Beckert's Urge to Kill Again
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- the scene of the blind balloon-seller hearing once
again the familiar whistled tune - he recognized it and said to
himself: "Wait! Didn't I hear that before? It was - it was...Listen
to that, that whistle there"; he called over a friend - a young
pickpocket named Heinrich (Carl Balhaus), who saw the whistler walking
away with another young girl; the blind man asked Heinrich: "Can't
you hear it? There....Have you seen the man who was whistling?...The
day when little Elsie Beckmann was murdered, a man bought a balloon
from me and there was a little girl with that man. And, and that
man was whistling too like the man there"; Heinrich pursued
after Beckert and saw him purchasing a gift at a candy store for
the young girl; Heinrich marked a large "M" in chalk on
his hand, and then struck Beckert on his left shoulder on the back
of his overcoat (he pretended to trip on one of Beckert's discarded
orange peels on the sidewalk) - in order to brand him with
the mark of Cain as an atrocious child-murderer; the innocent young
girl ominously handed Beckert back his dropped peeling knife
- the scene of Beckert's discovery that he was marked
with a stain - the little girl told him: "You're stained with something
white...There on your shoulder"; Beckert looked backward toward
his reflection and realized that he had a letter 'M' (meaning "Morder")
chalked on the back of his overcoat at shoulder level
- the criminal
underworld beggars pursued Beckert, eventually seized him, and set
him up for a trial to condemn him for his hideous string of crimes
- the best scene in the film was the lengthy sequence
in the kangaroo court in a distillery warehouse - at first
Beckert denied everything, but was then accused by the blind balloon-seller
of purchasing a balloon for the victim Elsie; Beckert vainly tried
to escape from the cellar, but was assaulted and thrown to the floor;
although he claimed that they had no right to hold him prisoner
or to "neutralize" him, Beckert started to incriminate himself due
to the dark forces within him; the tortured, sniveling, mass-murdering
offender piteously cried out to defend his actions - and claiming
that he was not responsible for his own cursed actions: ("But
me, can I behave - can I behave any different? Is it that I don't
have this curse inside of me? This fire? This voice? This torment?...I
always have to go down the street, and I always feel it behind
me. It's myself! And I follow me! In silence. But I can hear it.
Yes, sometimes it's like I'm chasing myself. I want to - I want
to escape from myself. But I can't. I can't escape from myself.
I must - I must follow the way that's chasing me. I must run, run
down endless streets. I want to get away. I want to get away. And,
running with me, the ghosts of the mothers and the children. They
never go away. They're always there! Always! Always! Always! They
only disappear when I do it. When I --- Then, I don't remember anything.
Then, then I'm standing in front of a sign and I read what I've
done. And I read and read. Have I done that? But I can't remember
any of that. And who's going to believe me? Who knows what it's
like to be me? How it calls me and screams inside of me! How I must
do it! I don't want to! I must! I don't want to! I must! And then
a voice screams! And I can't hear it anymore. Help! I can't! I can't.
I can't! I can't!")
Beckert in the Kangaroo Court Trial -
Held by Underworld Leaders and Beggars
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- the decision of the members of the court was murderous
and unmerciful - declaring that Beckert had just signed his own 'death
sentence': "That man must be eliminated. That man must disappear"
- the mothers of the victims and others in the gallery cried out:
"No mercy for the murderer. No mercy. Down with the murderer. He should
be killed. Annihilate the beast! Kill him! Kill that animal! Dead!
Murder him! Kill him! Away with him! Away with the beast! Kill him!
Kill him!"
- at the end of the accusations, the police intervened
(off-screen) - everyone surrendered and raised their hands- and
"in the name of Law," a real trial was held; Beckert was
prosecuted in a traditional courtroom (where his insanity
and illness were taken into account)
- in the film's conclusion during the trial's
announcement of the verdict by the chief judge , the mothers of
three of the victims watched in the trial gallery - still in mourning,
Elsie's mother Frau Beckmann (Ellen Widmann) warned: "This will
not bring our children back to life. People should take better care
of their children"
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Shadow of Child-Killer
Purchase of Balloon from Blind Man for Elsie
After the Murder, Beckert's Face-Making at Mirror
Blind Balloon-Seller: Recognizing the Familiar Whistled Tune
Beckert Grooming His Next Victim
The Chalk "M" Brand
Young Girl Handing Beckert His Knife
Beckert Marked with "M"
Beckert - Pursued
The Kangaroo Court Trial Attendees and 'Judges'
Elsie's Mother During Reading of Verdict: "This will
not bring our children back to life..."
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Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
(1985)
In George Miller's third Mad Max film, set
in a post-apocalyptic parched world:
- the wooden sign welcoming entrants to the remote
Bartertown in the Australian desert: "Helping Build a Better Tomorrow"
- the arrival of nomadic pilgrim and ex-cop "Mad
Max" Rockatansky
(Mel Gibson) in Bartertown where
he was told by the town's corrupt and charismatic overlord Aunty
Entity (Tina Turner) and the bald Collector (Frank Thring) that
power was generated from methane-rich "pig s--t" in Bartertown's
Underworld: ("Pigs--t.
The lights, the motors, the vehicles - all run by a high-powered
gas called methane. Methane comes from pigs--t")
- the promotion of ritualized gladiatorial conflict
to settle disputes - in the massive caged Thunderdome, surrounded
by a bloodthirsty audience clinging to the bars; Aunty Entity urged
Max to challenge and combat her rival - the weirdly-original, two-person
Master-Blaster, composed of a "little one" (dwarf-midget) known
as the Master (Angelo Rossitto) who controlled Underworld - "Master"
was also "the brains" who
rode on the back of the hulking, "muscle"-bound body known
as Blaster (Paul Larsson)
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The Thunderdome's Master of Ceremonies:
"Dying Time's Here!"
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The Two-Part Master-Blaster
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Aunty Entity
(Tina Turner)
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- Aunty Entity's introduction to the Thunderdome
proceedings: ("Welcome
to another edition of Thunderdome!")
- the fight was set up by the black-robed, ghoulish
Master of Ceremonies, Dr. Dealgood (Edwin Hodgeman), who held a
scepter: ("Listen on! Listen on! This is the truth of it. Fighting
leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn
near the death of us all. Look at us now, busted up and everyone
talking about hard rain. But we've learned by the dust of them all.
Bartertown's learned. Now when men get to fighting, it happens here.
And it finishes here. Two men enter, one man leaves. And right now,
I've got two men. Two men with a gut full of fear. Ladies and gentlemen,
boys and girls dying time's here!")
- the introduction of the two combatants: Mad Max against
the Master-Blaster: ("He's the ball cracker. Death on foot.
You know him. You love him! He's Blaster! The challenger, direct
from out of the Wasteland. He's bad. He's beautiful. He's crazy!
It's the man with no name! Thunderdome's simple. Get to the weapons,
use them anyway you can. I know you won't break the rules. There
aren't any. Remember where you are. This is Thunderdome. Death is
listening, and will take the first man that screams. Prepare! Two
men enter, one man leaves!")
- the scene of the spectators hanging on the giant
caged dome and cheering the gladiatorial action between the battling
protagonists bouncing on rubbery elastic bungee-type straps within
the bars of the Thunderdome, and the denouement when Max blew on
his high-pitched whistle (the sound was Blaster's weakness and incapacitated
him), and then knocked off Blaster's helmet with a sledgehammer
- and "Master" was revealed to be a retarded child: ("He's
got the mind of a child") - and after a long hesitation, Max
made a decision to disobey Aunty Entity and not kill his opponent;
suddenly, Aunty's guards killed Blaster
- Aunty announced Max's punishment for not killing
Master and for breaking the deal of "Two
men enter, one man leaves": (to the crowd) ("What's this?!
Do you think I don't know the law? Wasn't it me who wrote it? And
I say that this man has broken the law. Right or wrong, we had a
deal. And the law says, 'Bust a deal, face the wheel'")
Dr. Dealgood at the Wheel to Determine Max's Fate
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"All
Our Lives Hang by a Thread"
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GULAG
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- the scene of Max's sentencing, after the spinning
of a wheel to determine his penalty and fate, commented upon by
Dr. Dealgood: ("All our lives hang by a thread. Now we've got
a man waiting for sentence. But ain't it the truth? You take your
chances with the law. Justice is only a roll of the dice, a flip
of the coin, a turn of the wheel") - the wheel landed on "GULAG"
- the exile of Max when he was banished into the desert
wasteland of Gulag on the back of a pack animal during a sandstorm,
where he was rescued by a tribal group of abandoned feral children
and teenagers led by Savannah Nix (Helen Buday)
who lived in a lush green oasis at the bottom of
a rift in the desert; she called Max "Captain
Walker" and expected him to magically fly them "home" back to civilization,
a mythical place known as "Tomorrow-morrow Land" - seen
in a few slides in a hand-held picture viewer (with pictures of Sydney,
Australia before the apocalypse); the youths were descendants of the
victims of an earlier Boeing 747 airplane that crashed, piloted by
Captain Walker; its ill-fated flight was to escape the crumbling post-atomic
cities
- in the conclusion, the return of Max to Bartertown
to rescue some of the tribe's members (and to free "Master" and
take him along to help build a new home for the tribe), involving
a classic, lengthy desert chase sequence in junkmobiles between
Max and Aunty Entity (who wished to recapture "Master") - the chase
ended with her smiling farewell to Max when she spared his life:
("Well, ain't we a pair, Raggedy Man? Ha, ha, ha. Goodbye, soldier")
- the final flight toward abandoned, burned-out, dilapidated,
nuclear-devastated Sydney, Australia -- and the epilogue -- Savannah
Nix's poignant closing voice-over narrated monologue (her nightly
Tell) about the tribe's journey and its salvation by Mad Max: ("This
you know. The years travel fast. And time after time I done the
Tell. But this ain't one body's Tell. It's the Tell of us all. And
you got to listen it and remember. 'Cause what you hears today,
you gotta tell the newborn tomorrow. I's lookin' behind us now,
into history back. I sees those of us that got the luck and started
the haul for home. And I 'members how it led us here and how we
was heartful 'cause we seen what there once was. One look, and we
knewed we'd got it straight. Those what had gone before had the
knowin' and the doin' of things beyond our reckonin' - even beyond
our dreamin'. Time counts and keeps countin', and we knows now finding
the trick of what's been and lost ain't no easy ride. But that's
our trek, we gotta travel it. And there ain't nobody knows where
it's gonna lead. Still in all, every night we does the Tell, so
that we 'member who we was and where we came from. But most of all
we 'members the man who finded us, him that came the salvage, and
we lights the city. Not just for him, but for all of them that are
still out there. 'Cause we knows there'll come a night when they
sees the distant light, and they'll be comin' home")
The Tribe's Salvation by Mad Max - Flight From Desert -
and Savannah's Narrated Epilogue
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Bartertown Sign
In Bartertown: A City Powered by "Pig Shit"
Blaster's Helmet Dislodged, Revealing Retarded "Master"
Aunty Entity's Punishment For Max For Disobeying Deal: "Bust
a Deal, Face the Wheel"
Max's Sentencing:
Exile to Gulag
Savannah Nix
(Helen Buday)
The Feral Children
The Paradise Known as "Tomorrow-morrow Land" (Pre-Apocalyptic Sydney)
Lengthy Desert Chase
Aunty Entity Sparing Max - and Her Farewell to Him: ("Well,
ain't we a pair, raggedy man?...Goodbye, soldier")
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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, Australia/US)
In producer/director George Miller's highly-acclaimed
action-thriller film, the fourth film (a reboot) in the entire Mad
Max franchise, about a post-nuclear wasteland with warring factions:
- the opening voice-over narration (during the initial
credits) by drifter Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), to set the stage,
in post-apocalyptic Australia: "My
name is Max. My world is fire and blood. Once, I was a cop. A road
warrior searching for a righteous cause. As the world fell, each of
us in our own way was broken. It was hard to know who was more crazy.
Me or everyone else"
- the setting - the Citadel, ruled over by tyrannical,
evil despot King Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne), with hordes of his deranged,
bald albino disciples (vicious pale followers known as the War Boys); Joe
had a hideous appearance: a grotesque face mask composed of horse teeth
set in a large pair of jaws, with two air hoses coming off each side,
attached to a bellows system on his back for breathing assistance [Note:
Breast milk was supplied to the post-apocalyptic future by obese slave
women hooked up to milking devices]
- the early sequence of Max apprehended by the War Boys,
brought to the Citadel, where he was tattooed and muzzled - with an
exciting escape sequence in which Max jumped from an opening high
in a rock face and clung to a swinging hook before he was recaptured
- the sequence of mysterious driver Imperator Furiosa
(Charlize Theron) sent out by Joe in an armored War Rig to collect
fuel from Gas Town - but it was soon revealed
that Furiosa had changed course and was fleeing to the East from Joe,
and escaping with his five breeder brides - young warrior women: Capable
(Riley Keough), Cheedo the Fragile (Courtney Eaton), Toast the Knowing
(Zoë Kravitz), the Dag (Abbey Lee), and the fully-pregnant Splendid
Angharad (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley); they left a large painted message
for Joe: OUR BABIES WILL NOT BE WARLORDS
- the incredible sequence of the frantically-paced,
beautifully-choreographed non-stop chase, after King Joe found out
about Furiosa's betrayal; he sent all of his War Boys to pursue Furiosa
across the sun-parched wasteland and into the massive vortex of an
apocalyptic tornado-sandstorm, where she fled to evade the pursuers;
during the chase, another scavenging tribe, known as the Buzzards,
joined in
- one of the sickly War Boys named
Nux (Nicholas Hoult) strapped captive
Max Rockatansky (with a muzzle-type face mask) positioned like a figurehead
onto the front of the vehicle that he was driving - Max was connected
to Nux by a metal chain and via a central line blood transfusion tube
that functioned as a perpetual "blood bag"
Imperator Furiosa in War Rig -
Fleeing From Evil Despot
and Pale Albino War Boys
Max Was Tied as Figurehead to Nux's Vehicle
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- after Furiosa survived in the storm, and Max had escaped
from Nux's control, he confronted her and the warrior women and attempted
to steal her War Rig, but was unsuccessful when she fought back;
Max was forced to join forces with them as they journeyed to an idyllic
location from Furiosa's childhood known as the "Green Place"
- the next exciting chase sequence, when the warrior
women, Max, and Furiosa were pursued by a group of biker-gang bandits
in a canyon (with King Joe's forces close behind);
Splendid Angharad slipped and fell off the side of the War Rig
and was run over (with her unborn child) by the wheels of
Joe's car following behind (Max to Furiosa: "She went under the
wheels");
the group was reluctantly forced to carry on, while the other women
mourned for the loss of Spendid
- an enraged King Joe held Spendid Angharad's
body in his arms, and then later that night, a C-section was performed
on her belly by his lieutenant Organic Mechanic (Angus Sampson), to
pull out a perfectly-formed infant boy ("Crying shame. Another
month, could have been your viable human....Your number one alpha
prime. Hey, Rictus?...You lost a baby brother. Perfect in every way" -
he cut off and inspected the stillborn baby's umbilical cord; Joe's
adult son Rictus (Nathan Jones) cried out: "I had a brother!
I had a little baby brother! And he was perfect! Perfect in every
way!"
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Biker Gang Attack
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Angharad's Fall From Rig
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Max: "She went under the wheels"
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Angharad In King Joe's Arms
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C-Section
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Rictus: "I had a brother"
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- in the next sequence the following morning, the group
drove up to an abandoned water tower where a naked Valkyrie (Megan
Gale) was screaming for help, and it was feared to be a "bait" trap;
she cried out: "I am one of the Vuvalini! Of the Many Mothers! My
Initiate Mother was K.T. Concannon! I am the daughter of Mary Jabassa.
My clan was Swaddle Dog!" - her
clan of aging women, known as the Vuvalini, emerged, and the eldest,
Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer), informed Furiosa that the muddy
uninhabitable bog that they had previously traversed through was the "Green
Place"
- a striking image was one of Furiosa walking into the
sand, falling to her knees, and delivering a despairing primal scream
- Max convinced Furiosa and the other women on motorbikes
to turn around, go back through the canyon, and attack the unguarded
Citadel; during the counter-assault, although seriously wounded, Furiosa
hooked Joe's mask onto the wheels of his car, growled at him: "Remember
me?", and watched as the vehicle's wheels lethally ripped off the mask and
part of Joe's face
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Furiosa - Convinced by Max to Lead a Motorbike Attack
on the Unguarded Citadel
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Furiosa to King Joe: "Remember Me?"
Then Ripped Joe's Face Off
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- in the final redemptive scene, the group arrived at
King Joe's headquarters or Citadel base, where Joe's mouthless corpse
was displayed and then thrown to the ground to the delight of the
remaining War Boys; the poor citizens cannibalistically
fed off his body; the victorious forces of Furiosa, Joe's wives and
other Vuvalini were welcomed and cheered - a celebration was marked
by the release of water upon the inhabitants, and Furiosa was apparently
to be appointed as their new leader - she glanced at Max as he walked
off into the crowded masses
Last Glances
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- the film ended with the title card (white letters on
a black background): "Where must we go... we who wander this Wasteland
in search of our better selves?" -The
First History Man
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"My name is Max"
King Immortan Joe
Milking Devices
Max's Brief Escape from War Boys on Swinging Hook
Furiosa Driving Into the Desert Tornado-Sandstorm
Furiosa
(Charlize Theron)
Warrior Women
Nux and Five Warrior Women During Struggle
Valkyrie (Megan Gale): Suspected "Bait" Trap
Furiosa's Primal Scream
Display of Joe's Corpse in Citadel
Max and Others Victorious
Celebration at Citadel: Release of Water for Inhabitants
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Madame Bovary (1949)
In director Vincente Minnelli's version of the classic
Gustave Flaubert novel, a tragic melodrama with a musical score by
Miklós Rózsa - it was a controversial film for its
portrayal of an adulterous wife involved in self-destructive romances
in 19th century France:
- to appease censors, the film was structured as a
framing story with a prologue and epilogue - of author
Gustave Flaubert's (James Mason) 1857 courtroom trial (his novel
was charged with obscenity as "an outrage against public morals
and established custom");
he defended his scandalous novel before a French jury by describing
the story of his banned inflammatory and fictional book
about a character who was considered "a disgrace to France
and an insult to womanhood";
in the epilogue, Flaubert was eventually acquitted of all charges
(described in scrolling text at the film's end)
- the scene of Flaubert's defense of his fictional
creation: "Gentlemen, I do deny that I have made any attack upon
public morality. I have shown you the vicious, yes, for the sake
of understanding it, so that we may preserve the virtuous. Furthermore,
I deny that Emma Bovary is a monstrous creation of my degenerate
imagination. Monstrous she may be, but it was not I who created
her. Our world, your world and mine, created her, as I shall attempt
to demonstrate. There are thousands of Emma Bovarys. I only had
to draw from life. And there are hundreds and thousands of women
who wish they were Emma Bovary, and who have been saved from her
fate, not by virtue, but simply by lack of determination"
- the early flashback - Flaubert's (voice-over) narrated
description of Emma's (Jennifer Jones) convent youth, when the motherless
girl attended a convent: "Emma Roualt, motherless, had attended
a convent in the provincial city of Rouen. Emma at first detested
the convent. The scales, the eternal scales, when she might have
been learning love songs. The discipline, the dreadful conformity.
The eternal uniform, when a girl's young body is budding. Perhaps
it was the discipline itself and Emma's discontent that drove her
to dreams, and taught a lonely girl to live within herself. For
these became the happy years, these convent years, when a young
girl's mind could wander"
- as the narration proceeded, it described how Emma
lived in a fabricated fantasy world of romantic love novels (illegally
slipped into the convent for her to read): "She lived in a world
of love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely
pavilions, horses ridden to death on every page, gentlemen, brave
as lions, gentle as lambs, always well-dressed and weeping like
fountains. Oh, love in Italy! Oh, love in Spain!" - her dreamy obsessions
about another "faraway" life became: "Happiness. Fashion. High Romance...To
believe in Cinderella"
- the film's most celebrated, beautifully-choreographed
sequence was a high-society ball held by wealthy, aristocratic
nobleman Marquis D'Andervilliers (Paul Cavanagh), attended by
naive, kind, provincial doctor Charles Bovary (Van Heflin) and his
wife Emma Bovary (Jennifer Jones) wearing an exquisite white linen
gown; while her husband was in the billiards room and heavily drinking
champagne, Emma was courted by a number of admirers for dances
- one of Emma's partners was handsome, suave aristocratic landowner Rodolphe
Boulanger (Louis Jourdan) - tracked with a kinetic, dizziness-inducing
camera as they beautifully twirled around the ballroom; when she complained
that she was exhausted, hot, and couldn't breathe ("I would
like to stop, please. I can't breathe. I'm going to faint"),
Rodolphe ordered the windows to be broken, as the soused Charles
stumbled onto the dance floor repeatedly calling out Emma's name;
he became lost in the twirling partners, but was finally
able to barge in to ask his embarrassed wife to dance ("Hey,
I want to dance with my wife") - it caused her extreme humiliation
and she ran out of the ball-room
- much later, the scene
of Emma's sweaty and painful death after suicidally swallowing arsenic
(she had stolen from an apothecary) - she was devastated after
the stresses of further affairs and rejections, the complete deterioration
of her marriage with her husband, and indebtedness had all taken
their toll; she died in her husband's arms: ("I hurt Charles,
I hurt inside...Always trying to save me. Why are you always trying
to save me?...Where are we, Charles? Is this our house?...I'm going
to make you the most beautiful home, like, like pictures in magazines
when I was a child. There's not something wrong with things being
beautiful, is there?...What did I do? Hold me, Charles. Hold me")
Emma's Painful Suicidal Death Scene
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- after Emma's demise and the administration of last
rites by a priest (and a pardon for the suicide), Flaubert continued
his voice-over narration: "And so it was. A woman had been
born into this world and had died young. She had touched on numerous
lives - some lightly, some not so lightly. Some despised her. Some
mourned her a little. Some profited by her. And then, of course,
there were those she had ruined, who would never cease to love her"
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the final scene returned to the courtroom trial, where Flaubert successfully
defended the right to publish his work to the
presiding judge and court; his final lines of dialogue summarized
his defense: "Now there are those who are offended by her, and who see in
Emma Bovary's life an attack upon public morality. Gentlemen of the
court, I maintain that there is truth in her story, and that a morality
which has within it no room for truth is no morality at all. Men
may dislike truth. Men may find truth offensive and inconvenient.
Men may persecute the truth, subvert it, try by law to suppress
it. But to maintain that men have the final power over truth is
blasphemy and the last illusion. Truth lives forever. Men do not"
- a scrolling epilogue described the outcome: "Gustave
Flaubert's acquittal, almost a century ago, was a triumphant moment
in the history of the free mind. His masterpiece, 'Madame Bovary,'
became a part of our heritage, to live - - - like truth itself -
- - forever."
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Gustave Flaubert (James Mason): "I deny that Emma Bovary
is a monstrous creation"
Young Emma (Roualt) in Convent
Emma Bovary
(Jennifer Jones)
At The High-Society Ball, Waltzing with Rodolphe
Emma's Soused Husband Charles at Ball
The Trial's Presiding Judge
Flaubert's Ending Summary
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Madame Curie (1943)
In director Mervyn LeRoy's fact-based docu-drama/biopic
about ground-breaking research into radioactivity and the discovery
of radium in the late 19th century:
- the scene of determined lab assistant-wife Marie
Sklodowska/Curie (Greer Garson) and physicist-scientist-husband
Pierre Curie (Walter Pidgeon) seeing the results of "four
long years" of
their laborious work (isolating radium) in a shed - the use of
a tedious process called "final
crystallization" in order to isolate "precious
elusive radium" in a lab dish within
a covered evaporating bowl on one of their lab tables - however,
Marie was ultimately crushed that the crystallization process
produced only a stain rather than a chunk of radium
- the scene of Marie's visit to a doctor for an examination,
where she was cautioned about the danger to her hands after three
and a half years of work - burned by the pure radium and potentially
developing into cancer: ("We
have never seen burns quite like this before. They are very strange.
I can't ever remember seeing anything quite like them. They obviously
don't come from any normal substance"); Marie was cautioned:
("I don't wish to alarm you, Madame Curie,
but it is very possible that these burns might become serious, might
in fact develop malignantly if you continue to expose them excessively
to your unknown element. It is not impossible that they may be developed
into a cancerous nature. It is my advice, Madame, that you abandon
your experiments")
- Marie's frantic reaction to the stain: ("There's
nothing there, not a trace of anything, not a grain. Only a stain.
What's happened, Pierre? Where is our radium? What have we done?
Where is it? What's happened? Where is it, Pierre?...What did we
do that was wrong? What could we have done?...I can't stand it,
Pierre. Where is our radium? We worked for years and years and years.
It must be there. It must be there. Four long years in this shed")
- and later, Marie's
flash of insight while lying on her pillow and speaking to her husband:
("Pierre,
that stain on the saucer...We didn't even test it, did we?...What we
are expecting to find was a definite amount of radium, wasn't it? Something
we could see and feel. Not as much as a pinch of salt, you said....Pierre,
what if it's, what if it's merely a question of amount? What does so
little radium in proportion to the amount of material that we used
that as of now - we couldn't see it. What if that stain, even with
the merest, merest breath...(Marie sat up in bed) Pierre, could
it, could it be that that stain is radium?")
- the next scene when they dressed and rushed
to their lab to test Marie's theory; she was the first to
see the glowing radium through the window from a distance: ("Pierre!
It's there. Our radium! It's there! It's there!"); they ran
inside, looked down at the glowing radium, and hugged each other
triumphantly over their profound discovery
- the concluding scene of a frail and widowed Madame
Curie making an appearance and speech before the Faculty of Science
at the University of Paris, to commemorate the 25th year anniversary
of the discovery of radium: ("Even now, after twenty-five years
of intensive research, we feel there is a great deal still to be
done. We have made many discoveries. Pierre Curie, in the suggestions
we have found in his notes and in thoughts he expressed to me, has
helped to guide us to him. But no one of us can do much if each
of us perhaps can catch some gleam of knowledge which modestly insufficient
of itself may add to man's dream of truth. It is by these small
candles in our darkness that we see before us, little by little,
the dim outlines of that great plan that shapes the universe. And
I am among those who think that for this reason, science has great
beauty and with its great spiritual strength will in time cleanse
this world of its evils, its ignorance, its poverty, diseases, wars
and heartaches. Look for the clear light of truth. Look for unknown
new roads even when man's sight is keener far than now. Divine wonder
will never fail him. Every age has its own dreams. Leave then the
dreams of yesterday. You - take the torch of knowledge and build
the palace of the future")
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Burns on Marie's Hands
The Tedious Work to Isolate Radium in Lab
Madame Curie's Flash of Insight About the Stain Being
Radium: "We couldn't see it"
Glowing Radium in Lab: "It's There. Our Radium"
Madame Curie's Speech at Univ. of Paris 25 years later:
"Look for the clear light of truth"
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The Magic Box (1951, UK)
In director John Boulting's biopic drama with two
major flashbacks (one from a second wife's point of view, and one
from the POV of the main character) - about a British pioneer in
cinematic history:
- the extraordinary moving sequence in which the
pioneering, British inventor of the movie camera - obsessed photographer
William Friese-Greene (Robert Donat), urged a helmeted Police
Constable 94-B (Laurence Olivier) passing on the street to come
up to his room - he spoke excitedly to the Constable: ("Come quickly! Come
on, come and see...I've got something to show you, something I've
done. You must come and see!..I feel I've simply got to show someone")
- inside the apartment, the inventor instructed
the wary Constable to sit down for a demonstration, and
to turn out his flashlight ("lamp"); then he was told: "Now,
watch that white sheet" (a hanging white cloth sheet), although
the Constable nervously grabbed for his nightstick; Friese-Greene
began to proudly show off his first triumphant film screen projection; he started
to hand-crank his device (with a loud mechanical clicking noise),
to display 'moving pictures' of Hyde Park taken during an afternoon
visit; after the brief demonstration, the Constable was amazed and
dumbfounded - he remarked: "That was Hyde Park. I recognized it.
Where's it come from? And where's it gone to?" - he
looked behind the white sheet
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Friese-Greene Hand-Cranking the Projector
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Constable: "That Was Hyde Park. I recognized
it"
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Looking Behind the White Sheet 'Screen'
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- Friese-Greene's answer as he pointed at his marvelous
machine: "It's all here. Here, look! That's where the Hyde
Park you saw is. Like a magic lantern"; he then explained the
principle of the 'moving' pictures, including the development of
a strip of celluloid film over many years and other technical details:
("Yes, it moved, didn't it, ha? Now
look, look at this strip of celluloid film. It took me years to
get to that. Years. That's the secret. Dozens of snapshots of Hyde
Park. That's what it's called. It comes from this spool over these
rollers, that's for tension. You've gotta have tension, under this
second spool down here. Now, look in the middle. It's a bit like
a magic lantern, but instead of one picture at a time, you see eight
or more pictures every second, and that's what you see on that sheet
there. Eight pictures every second,
and they're all merged together into one moving, living picture!
See? Ha! Of course, there's a bit more to it than that, that! I'm
not saying it's perfect. Far from it, but it works! God be praised.
It works, doesn't it? You can see that" - he became tearfully
joyful about his accomplishments: "You know, it's a quite
extraordinary feeling, something you've been wondering about and
dreaming about for 15 years. And then, all of a sudden,
it's there. It's in your hands, with a life of its own")
- the Constable made a congratulatory exclamation:
("You must be a very happy man, Mr. Friese-Greene")
- in the film's conclusion, set in 1921 at a London
film industry business conference, the aged and impoverished
Friese-Greene delivered a short speech in front of the audience:
("Gentlemen, I am not a businessman, no.... You know, when
this business was a fairground sideshow, I suppose you could only
speak of it in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence....Only a few
of us could see then it would become a sort of universal language,
and it has become that, you see. And this universal language that
could say great things - oh dear, it so often babbles and drivels
so foolishly. It does, you know. I mean, that in time, the world,
well, it'll tire of it....If the film does not grow up with its
audience, then it will die. You know, it's only in the nursery that
children fight and destroy the things in their hands. The film is
in your hands, and you may not behave like children. YOU MUST NOT
DESTROY IT! Don't! It's, it's very easy to be good businessmen.
It's so difficult to grow up. So difficult, and --- and so, I ask
you, I - ask you to work together. All my life, gentlemen, I - I
have tried. There's so much to hope for, so much. There is - I have
tried"
- when he meandered and became incoherent, Friese-Greene
was forced to return to his seat, where he became delirious (hearing
voices from his past), collapsed onto the floor and died; a film
canister fell to the floor from his hands; as his pockets were emptied
of their contents, the items were placed on a table:
his film canister, spectacles, a pawn ticket for some cuff links,
a prism, and "one and ten pence - just the price of a seat
at the pictures"
Friese-Greene's Final Speech Before His Death
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William Friese-Greene (Robert Donat)
A Demonstration For Police Constable
94-B (Laurence Olivier)
Screen Projection of a 'Moving Picture'
"And then, all of a sudden, it's there"
Constable: "You must be a very happy man..."
After His Death - The Contents of His Pockets Were Set
on a Table
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The Magnificent
Ambersons (1942)
In director Orson Welles' period drama, with impressive
photography and innovative cinematic techniques, about the demise of
the Amberson family due to the oncoming industrial revolution:
- the opening voice-over narration (Orson Welles)
sequence demonstrating the changing styles and fashions: ("The
magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873. Their splendor lasted
throughout all the years that saw their Midland town spread and
darken into a city. In that town in those days, all the women
who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk
or velvet and everybody knew everybody else's family horse and
carriage. The only public conveyance was the streetcar. A lady
could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and the car would
halt at once, and wait for her, while she shut the window
... put on her hat and coat ... went downstairs... found
an umbrella... told the 'girl' what to have for dinner...and
came forth from the house. Too slow for us nowadays, because
the faster we're carried, the less time we have to spare")
- with the narrator's ultimate conclusion:
"Against so homespun a background, the magnificence of the
Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral"
- the views of the
great Amberson mansion, a convincing, turn-of-the-century re-creation,
inhabited by the richest family in the town: (voice-over: "There
it is, the Amberson mansion. The pride of the town...Sixty thousands
dollars worth of woodwork alone. Hot and cold running water, upstairs
and down. And stationary washstands in every last bedroom in the
place")
- the introduction of young George Minafer (Bobby
Cooper as boy) ("George Amberson Minafer, the Major's one grandchild,
was a princely terror") - the offspring of dull, pallid, colorless
and passionless Wilbur Minafer (Don Dillaway) and beautiful Isabel
Amberson (Dolores Costello), the only daughter of
Major Amberson (Richard Bennett); the boy was a spoiled, insufferable,
hateful, daredevil brat dressed in velveteen and with golden ringlets
in his hair; he was seen riding recklessly through town in
a tiny carriage, whipping his buggy pony; careening by, he upset
a gardener with a hoe; although indulged and adored by his mother,
everyone in town longed to see George receive his ultimate "come-uppance":
"They did hope to live to see the day, they said, when that boy
would get his come-uppance"
- the courtship between George
Minafer (Tim Holt as adult) and Lucy Morgan (Anne Baxter), when George
first encountered her father, automobile
entrepreneur and widower Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten), who was
dancing in the mansion dancing Aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead),
Wilbur Minafer's unmarried, shrill-voiced sister; George insultingly
called Eugene "a queer looking duck" before actually
meeting him
- their sleigh-riding sequence
in winter-time, when the couple were seen whirling along in a
horse-drawn sleigh, passing Eugene's stalled vehicle and calling
out: "Get a horse!" but
then their sleigh carriage tipped over, and dropped them into
the snow where they were seen sneaking a kiss with each other; at
the end of the sequence, as Eugene drove away from the snowy
scene in his experimental car, the camera slowly irised-out on
the car [a tribute to older silent films], turning the screen
black
- the dining room table sequence in which Eugene Morgan
elegantly and beautifully delivered a very significant speech, philosophizing
about the growth of the new invention: the automobile - and admitting
the possible consequences of the new industrial revolution: ("With
all their speed forward, they may be a step backward in civilization.
It may be that they won't add to the beauty of the world or the
life of men's souls. I'm not sure. But automobiles have come. And
almost all outward things are going to be different because of what
they bring. They're going to alter war and they're going to alter
peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle
ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right.
It may be that in ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the
inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend
the gasoline engine but would have to agree with George: that automobiles
had no business to be invented"); before the speech George
insultingly despised automobiles as a "useless nuisance"
- the revealing conversation of self-pitying and gossipy
Aunt Fanny and George on different landings
of the Amberson's circular staircase, with each successive landing
of the staircase featuring stained-glass windows that were labeled
"Faith," "Hope," "Charity,"
"Music," and "Poetry"; Fanny confessed her loneliness
following her brother Wilbur's death, and then revealed that Isabel
never really cared for any other man in her life but Eugene; George
was incensed that gossips in the town talked of Eugene's love
for his widowed mother Isabel, and his jealousy intensified
- the marvelous scene in which Isabel was deeply affected
after reading Eugene's letter asking
if she would choose her oedipal son or stand up against him: (in part:
"...And so we come to this, dear. Will you live your life your
way, or George's way? Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what
you have to oppose now is your own selfless and perfect motherhood.
Are you strong enough, Isabel? Can you make a fight? I promise you
that if you will take heart for it, you will find so quickly that
it's all amounted to nothing. You shall have happiness and only
happiness. I'm saying too much for wisdom, I fear. And oh my dear,
won't you be strong? Such a little short strength it would need...")
- ultimately, Isabel chose her son George's wishes over happiness
with Eugene
- the close-up image of George watching Eugene leave
the mansion for the last time just before Isabel's death - his
determined face was reflected in the window pane from Isabel's familiar
vantage point - he replaced her image and imposed his own will
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George Watching Eugene Leaving Mansion
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Isabel's Death-Bed Scene
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- the emotional sequence of the promenade
of George and Lucy along the main boardwalk of the town during
a long take, when George tried to force Lucy to show some emotion
for him, and essentially told her goodbye forever: ("This is our
last walk together, Lucy...This is the last time I'll see you
ever, ever in my life. Mother and I are starting on a trip around
the world tomorrow"); she wished him well (without betraying her
sadness): "I do hope you have the most splendid trip"; once George had
left, her face revealed a deep sadness and her eyes filled with
tears
- soon after her return from abroad, the scene of
Isabel's death-bed farewell scene with George by her side, with
spider-web shadows falling over her face - and at the moment of
her death, the shade was pulled down over the lace curtain and
the web patterns became dark over her face
- the rambling and incoherent speech
in which the old and senile patriarch - Major Amberson disjointedly
mused on the source of life before his life also ended: ("It
must be in the sun. There wasn't anything here but the sun in the
first place...The Earth came out o' the sun, and we came out of
the Earth. So whatever we are..") - he left no inheritance
to either George or Fanny
- the lyrical scene of the discussion between Eugene
and Lucy in the garden, when she resigned
herself to not marrying George because of his vindictiveness, and
instead decided to support her father's every wish
- the lengthy sequence of Aunt Fanny suffering a
nervous breakdown in the empty crumbling Amberson mansion with
her nephew George, after they had both fallen on hard times; in
the empty kitchen, George and Fanny discussed the sorry state
of their finances and how much they would need to live; she worried
that Georgie would abandon her, and complained about how her own
penny-pinching efforts to provide have failed miserably; Fanny
slumped helplessly against the boiler and slid to the floor; George
commanded her to get up and not sit there with her back against
the boiler, but she became hysterical: "It's not hot, it's
cold. The plumber's disconnected it. I wouldn't mind if they hadn't...I
wouldn't mind if it burned me, George!"
- the sequence was followed by a brilliantly-choreographed,
elaborate tracking dolly shot moving through four rooms, as they
continued to argue; the two moved backward from the cold boiler
out the kitchen door and through the reception hall (past the
circular staircase) and into the boarded-up Amberson front parlor
- where sheets shrouded the furniture in the otherwise empty living
room
- the low-key but powerful sequence,
with voice-over narration (by Orson Welles), when George finally
received his "come-uppance" after
his mother died and he sat at her empty bedside: ("George Amberson
Minafer walked homeward slowly through what seemed to be the strange
streets of a strange city. For the town was growing, changing. It
was heaving up in the middle, incredibly. It was spreading incredibly.
And as it heaved and spread, it befouled itself, and darkened its
sky. This was the last walk home he was ever to take up National
Avenue to Amberson Addition, and the big old house at the foot of
Amberson Boulevard. Tomorrow, they were to move out. Tomorrow, everything
would be gone....Something had happened, a thing which years ago
had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town.
And now it came at last: George Amberson Minafer had got his come-uppance.
He'd got it three times filled and running over. But those who had
so longed for it were not there to see it. And they never knew it.
Those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all
about him")
- shortly later, George would be seriously injured,
ironically, in an automobile accident
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The Amberson Mansion
Young George Minafer
("A Princely Terror")
Courtship in the Mansion: George
Minafer and Lucy Morgan
Sleigh-Riding Sequence - Ending with Iris-Out Effect
Eugene's Dinner-Table Speech About the Invention of the
Automobile
On the Staircase: George and Aunt Fanny
Promenade: Goodbye Scene Between George and Lucy
Death of Major Amberson
Aunt Fanny's Nervous Breakdown with George Next to Inoperative
Boiler ("It's not hot, it's cold")
George Kneeling at His Mother's Empty Bedside - He Had Finally Received
His "Come-Uppance"
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Magnolia (1999)
In Paul Thomas Anderson's ambitious, artful, adult-oriented
human drama with an ensemble cast - and a compelling, bold and overlapping
multi-strand narrative about San Fernando residents who were plagued
by fractured relationships:
- the film's prologue emphasizing the themes of chance
and coincidence - and a description of three deaths and the question:
Did these three cases just happen randomly by chance, or was it
something less coincidental?; one of the deaths was a tale
of a scuba diver in a tree - entwined with the urban legend of
a son accidentally murdered (in a freakish occurrence) while trying
to commit suicide by jumping off a building
- throughout, the melancholy lyrics of singer-songwriter
Aimee Mann that underscored the film's motifs
- the scene in a San Fernando Valley hotel where sleazy
motivational speaker and self-help guru/shyster Frank T.J. Mackey
(Oscar-nominated Tom Cruise) led a "Seduce and Destroy" seminar
for misogynistic, sexually-frustrated males
- his lecture to his audience to "Respect the
cock! And tame the cunt! Tame it! Take it on headfirst with the
skills that I will teach you at work and say no!...You will not
control me! No!...You will not take my soul! No!...You will not
win this game! 'Cause it is a game, guys. You want to think it's
not, huh? You want to think it's not? You go back to the schoolyard
and you have that crush on big-titted Mary Jane. Respect the cock.
You are embedding this thought. I am the one who's in charge. I
am the one who says Yes!... No!... Now!... Here!... And it's universal,
man. It is evolutional. It is anthropological. It is biological.
It is animal. We...are...men!" - and his advice: "l
will not apologize for who l am. l will not apologize for what l
need. l will not apologize for what l want!"
- the scene of Frank's interview with TV reporter
Gwenovier (April Grace) with probing questions about his past, and
his answers about his family: ("My father was in television. My
mother - this is going to sound silly to you...She was a librarian");
when asked: ("How does she feel about 'Seduce and Destroy'?
What does she say?"), Frank answered: ("Well, she says, 'You
go get 'em, honey'")
- the cast's (wherever they were located) sing-along
of verses to Aimee Mann's heartbreaking ballad "Wise Up" ("...But
it's not going to stop / 'Til you wise up")
- the sequence of Linda Partridge's (Julianne Moore)
visit to a pharmacy to pick up a strong prescription of medications
(Prozac, Dexedrine, and liquid Morphine), and the inquisitive clerk
asking: ("Strong,
strong stuff here, boy. Wow, what exactly you have wrong, you need
all this stuff?");
she became extremely agitated: ("Motherf--ker!...You f--king
asshole!...Who the f--k do you think you are? l come in here, you
don't know me. You don't know who l am, what my life is, and you
have the balls, the indecency, to ask me a question about my life?...l
come in here, I give these things to you, you check, you make your
phone calls, look suspicious, ask questions! I'm sick! l have sickness
all around me, and you f--king ask me my life? What's wrong? Have
you seen death in your bed? In your house? Where's your f--king
decency? And then I'm asked f--king questions. What's wrong?!")
- the scene of regret, expressed to nurse Phil Parma
(Philip Seymour Hoffman), who was caring for near-death, cancer-stricken
TV producer Earl Partridge (Jason Robards), about Earl's meeting
up with Lily in grade 12, and then being unfaithful to her for 23
years, and abandoning his family and young son Frank when she was
dying of cancer: ("And we meet. She was f--king like a doll. Yeah.
A beautiful porcelain doll. And the hips, child-bearing hips, you
know that? So, so beautiful. And I cheated on her, over and over
and over again. Because I wanted to be a man. And I didn't want
her to be a woman, you know? A smart, free person who was something!
My f--king mind then. So stupid, that f--king mind! Stupid! Jesus
Christ! What would I think, did I think for what I'd done? She was
my wife for twenty-three years and I went behind her over and over.
F--king asshole that I am. I'd go out and I'd, I'd f--k and I'd
come home and get in her bed, and say 'I love you.' This is Jack's
mother. His mother, Lily. These two that I had and I lost. This
is the regret that you make. This is the regret that you make and
the something you take and the blah, blah, blah, something, something.
Gimme a cigarette. Mistakes like this, you don't make. Sometimes,
you make some and OK. Not OK, sometimes, you make other ones. Yeah.
Know that you should do better. I loved Lily. I cheated on her.
She was my wife for twenty-three years. And I have a son. And she
has cancer. And I'm not there, and he's forced to take care of her.
He's fourteen years old. To, to take care of his mother and watch
her die on him. A little kid, and I'm not there. And she does die.
l loved her so. And she knew what l did. She knew all the f--king
stupid things I'd done. But the love was stronger than anything
you can think of. The god-damn regret. The god-damn regret! And
I'll die. Now I'll die, and I'll tell ya what, yeah, the biggest
regret of my life. l let my love go. What did l do? I'm sixty-five
years old. And I'm ashamed. Million years ago. The f--king regret
and guilt, these things. Don't ever let anyone ever say to you,
you shouldn't regret anything. Don't do that. Don't. You regret
what you f--king want. Use that. Use that. Use that regret for anything,
any way you want. You can use it, OK? Oh, oh God.")
- the guilt-ridden speech of young gold-digging, drug-addicted
trophy wife Linda Partridge to her husband's lawyer Alan Kligman (Michael Murphy), requesting
that her sick, wealthy husband/TV producer Earl Partridge's will
must be changed because she didn't deserve his money; in the scene,
she confessed and admitted that she never loved Earl, and originally
married him only for his money, but now really loved him as he was
dying: ("I have to tell you something. I have something to tell you. I want to
change his will. Can I change his will? l need to....No,
you see, uhm, I never loved him. I never loved him - Earl. When I
met him when I started, I met him, I f--ked him, and I married
him because I wanted his money. You understand? I'm telling you this.
I've never told anyone. I didn't love him, but now, you know, I know
I'm in that will, I mean, we're all there together. We made that
f--king thing, and all the money I'll get. And I-I don't want it,
because I love him so much now. I've fallen in love with him now for
real as he's dying. And, uhm, I look at him, and he's about to
go, Alan. He's moments, he's - I took care of him through this, Alan.
What now, then? (slightly later) I don't want him to die. I didn't
love him when we met and I-I did so many bad things to him that he
doesn't know. Things that I want to confess to him. But now I do.
I love him...I don't want any money. I couldn't live with myself with
this thing that I've done. I've done so many bad things. I f--ked
around. I f--king cheated on him");
Alan suggested that her only avenue was to "renounce the will
when the time comes," so the money would go to the "nearest
relative" - Frank, causing her to become hysterical, suicidal and extremely agitated:
("No, that can't happen. Earl doesn't want him to have anything")
- Frank's final and bitterly-angry confrontation with
his estranged father on his deathbed, before completely breaking
down: ("You don't look that bad. You prick. 'Cock sucker.'
That's what you used to like to say, right? 'Cock sucker.' But you
are a cock sucker, Earl. It hurts, doesn't it? Huh? You in a lot
of pain? She was in a lot of pain. Right to the end, she was in
a lot of pain. l know because l was there. You didn't like illness,
though, do ya? l was there. She waited for your call. For you to
come. l am not gonna cry. l am not gonna cry for you! You cock sucker.
l know you can hear me. l want you to know that l hate your f--king
guts. You can just f--king die, you f--k. And l hope it hurts. I
f--king hope it hurts. I f--king hate you! God damn you, you f--king
asshole! Oh God, you f--king asshole, don't go away, you f--king
asshole, don't go away, you f--king asshole...")
- the controversial and audacious ending - a literal
rainstorm of frogs
- the film's last lines, a conversation between Officer
Jim Kurring (John C. Reilly) and Claudia Wilson Gator (Melora Walters)
about having their relationship work out, overshadowed by Aimee
Mann's song "Save Me" -- ("But can you save me come on and save
me if you could save me from the ranks of the freaks who suspect
they could never love anyone"): ("I
just wanted to come here, to come here and say something, say something
important, something that you said. You said we should say things
and do things. Not lie, not keep things back, these sorts of things
that tear people up. Well, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do what
you said, Claudia. I can't let this go. I can't let you go. Now,
you, you listen to me now. You're a good person. You're a good and
beautiful person, and I won't let you walk out on me. And I won't
let you say those things - those things about how stupid you are
and this and that. I won't stand for that. You want to be with me,
then you be with me. You see?" (she smiled))
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Scuba Diver and Suicidal Son in Prologue
Sleazy Motivational Speaker Frank Mackey
Linda's Angry Rant at Pharmacist
Near-Death, Cancer-Stricken TV Producer Earl Partridge
(Jason Robards)
Linda's Discussion With Lawyer About Changing Earl's Will
Frank's Angry Confrontation With Father on Deathbed
Frogs Raining Down
Claudia Listening to Officer Jim's Plea: "I Can't Let You Go"
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Make Mine Music (1946)
In Disney's eighth animated feature - an unofficial,
less "artsy" follow-up to Fantasia
(1940) - containing two of the classic
animated segments (out of ten total original segments)
- the
comic retelling of "Casey at the Bat" from
the classic 1888 Ernest Thayer tale of an arrogant ballplayer; it
ended with the verses, as Casey was at bat with two strikes against
him without ever swinging: ("The sneer is gone from Casey's
lip, his teeth are clenched in hate; he pounds with cruel violence,
his bat upon the plate. And now the pitcher holds the ball, and
now he lets it go, and now the air is shattered by the force of
Casey's blow. (song) Somewhere in this favored land, the sun is
shining bright; somewhere bands are playing sweetly, and somewhere
hearts are light, somewhere men are laughing, somewhere
children shout; but there is no joy in Mudville - mighty
Casey has struck out")
- the 15-minute
Disney version of "Peter and the Wolf" based
on Sergei Prokofiev's famous symphony of the same name with each
character represented by a particular musical instrument, and narrated
by scratchy-voiced Sterling Holloway
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"Casey at the Bat"
"Peter and the Wolf"
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Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)
In Leo McCarey's melodramatic, moving family story about
the social issue of aging and its harsh reality; it was based
on Josephine Lawrence's 1934 novel The
Years Are So Long; it has the reputation of being one
of the saddest and most poignant, tearjerking and sentimental films
ever made (similar to Ozu's Tokyo
Story (1953, Jp.)), especially since it was made during
the wearying last years of the long drawn-out Depression:
- the ending statement in the opening credits: "Life
flies past us so swiftly that few of us pause to consider those who
have lost the tempo of today. Their laughter and their tears we do
not even understand for there is no magic that will draw together
in perfect understanding the aged and the young. There is a canyon
between us, and the painful gap is only bridged by the ancient words
of a very wise man --- HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER"
- the scene in 1936 of the financially-distraught, devoted
elderly couple: Barkley (or "Bark") "Pa" Cooper
(Victor Moore) and Lucy "Ma" (Breckenridge)
Cooper (Beulah Bondi) - married for 50 years, who announced to family
members during a family reunion that they had lost their foreclosed
house to the bank when they could not make the mortgage payments after
he stopped working four years earlier ("and with everything going
out and nothing coming in, I couldn't keep up the payments")
- and the surprise disclosure that the six months of leeway given
by the bank was about to expire
- the assistance
from their five grown-up children for housing or support provided
only a difficult and temporary solution -- "Ma" would
move to live in the cramped NYC apartment home of eldest son
George Cooper's (Thomas Mitchell) family with his wife Anita (Fay
Bainter), to share a bedroom with bratty daughter Rhoda (Barbara
Read), while "Pa" would
be 360 miles away at the home of mean-spirited daughter Cora Payne
(Elisabeth Risdon) and her unemployed husband Bill (Ralph Remley)
- two scenes represented the compromised difficulties
of their separation - (1) a loud phone call between "Ma" with "Pa"
in George and Anita’s living room where Anita was teaching
a bridge class of eavesdropping card players, and (2)
the partial reading-aloud of a very personal letter from "Ma" to
"Pa" by his friend - an affable Jewish drugstore shopkeeper Max Rubens
(Maurice Moscovitch), who awkwardly paused on the sentence: "...and
this is just between us two"; the letter described how "Ma" had been
taken to a "dreary and dismal" old folks home to hint that she should
move there; the letter ended with the sad statement: "Oh Bark, dear.
If only something would turn up so that we could be together. I love
you so that..." - it was so touching that Max couldn't finish reading
the entire letter
- due to the disruptions, intrusions and lack of space
in New York,
in a tremendously well-acted scene, "Ma" spoke to Anita
and apologized for all the problems they'd had, and soon after, she
told son George that she had decided on her own (even though it had
been intimated to her) to move to a female retirement-nursing home,
the Idylwild Home for Aged Women in Juniper, NY: ("I don't want
to hurt your feelings but I haven't been too happy here. It's lonesome
in this apartment with everybody gone all day. Would you mind terribly
if I decided to leave you, to go to the Idylwild Home? Well, it's
a fine place. I'd meet friends my own age...Once I thought that your
father and I might get together again but I see that it will never
turn out that way. So I want to go to the home. Well, I'm glad that's
over. I hated to tell you as much as you would have hated to tell
me anything like that");
meanwhile, she would keep it a secret until "Pa" could
travel to the warmer climate of California for health reasons, to
live with unseen daughter Addie: ("He must never know that I'm
going...This is one thing that has to be handled my way. Just let
him go on thinking that I'm living with you and Anita. You can always
forward my letters. It'll be the first secret I've ever had from him");
she also tenderly told George another "little secret": "Just between
us two, you're always my favorite child"
- the final day that "Pa" and "Ma" enjoyed
together in the company of strangers, and their dinner at the Hotel
Vogard where they had honeymooned 50 years earlier, instead of attending
a farewell dinner with their children; they had drinks: ("Two
cocktails...Two old-fashioneds for two old-fashioned people"),
became tipsy and tried fun tongue-twisters ("Betty Botter bought
a batch of bitter butter" and "Betty Botter
bought a batch of baby buggy rubber bumpers"), reminisced about
their courtship and the week of their wedding, and flirted
and danced a slow waltz with each other (after the band leader noticed
them and changed the tune to "Let Me Call You Sweetheart");
at 9 pm, they took a taxi to the train station, and "Pa" sweetly
sang the dance song to "Ma" during the ride - she joined
in at the end:
"Let me call you sweetheart I'm in love with you Let me hear
you whisper That you love me too...Keep the love light glowing In
your eyes so blue Let me call you sweetheart I'm in love With you"
- the sad and downbeat ending scene of their
heartbreaking farewell to each other at a NY train station
(the same one where they started their honeymoon years earlier),
and the few simple pleasantries exchanged during most probably their
last moments together outside the train car, as they reaffirmed their
love:
- Lucy: Well, give Addie my love, and tell her to take good care of
you.
-
Pa: Well, you'll very likely see her soon yourself. I'll get a job out
there, and I'll send for you right away.
- Lucy:
I
don't doubt that, Bark. You'll get a job. Of course you will.
- Conductor: All aboard.
- Pa: They didn't give us much time, did they?
Goodbye, Lucy dear. (They kissed)
- Lucy: Goodbye, darling.
- Pa:
In case I don't see you again...
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Lucy:
What?
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Pa: Well, anything might happen. The train could jump off the track.
If it should happen that I don't see you again, it's been very nice
knowing you, Miss Breckenridge.
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Lucy: Bark, that's probably the prettiest speech you ever made. And in
case I don't see you a - well, for a little while. I just want
to tell you, it's been lovely, every bit of it, the whole fifty years.
I'd sooner been your wife, Bark, than anyone else on Earth.
- Pa: Oh, thank you, Lucy.
- Conductor: All aboard.
- Lucy: Get going, Pa.
"Ma's" Farewell as "Pa's" Train
Departed
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- the departure of "Pa's" train, as "Ma" blew
kisses to him through the train window, and then watched in dismay
as the train pulled away, before the final fade-out (enhanced again
by the tune 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart')
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"Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother"
"Pa" and "Ma" Cooper's House About to be Foreclosed - With
Eviction

Loud Phone Call From Lucy to Bark During Bridge Game

Max Reading Lucy's Personal Letter to "Pa"
Distraught Lucy ("Ma") Telling George That She Had Decided
to Move to Nursing Home

To George: "You're always my favorite child"
Final Day at the Hotel Vogard - 50 Years After Marriage
Taxi to Train Station
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Malcolm X (1992)
In writer/director Spike Lee's inspirational 3 1/2
hour tribute-documentary (biopic) on the life of a former burglar,
cocaine-addicted drug-user and pimp who became a radical, controversial
Black Nationalist leader - based on Alex Haley's novel The
Autobiography of Malcolm X:
- the titles sequence - with the inflammatory words
of Malcolm X (Denzel Washington) speaking to American blacks,
in voice-over, intercut with grainy video footage from the Rodney
King/LA police-beating video filmed in March 1991: ("Brothers
and sisters, I'm here to tell you that I charge the white man.
I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth.
I charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth.
There is no place in this world that that man can go and say he
created peace and harmony. Everywhere he's gone, he's created
havoc. Everywhere he's gone, he's created destruction. So I charge
him, I charge him with being the greatest kidnapper on this earth!
I charge him with being the greatest murderer on this earth! I
charge him with being the greatest robber and enslaver on this
earth! I charge the white man with being the greatest swine-eater
on this earth, the greatest drunkard on this earth! He can't deny
the charges. You can't deny the charges! We're the living proof
of those charges! You and I are the proof. You're not an American,
you are the victim of America. You didn't have a choice coming
over here. He didn't say: 'Black man, black woman, come on over
and help me build America.' He said, 'Nigger, get down in the
bottom of that boat, and I'm taking you over there to help me
build America.' Being born here does not make you an American.
I'm not an American. You're not an American. You're one of the
22 million black people who are the victims of America. You and
I, we've never seen any democracy. We ain't seen no democracy
in the cotton fields of Georgia. There ain't no democracy down
there. We didn't see any democracy in the streets of Harlem, in
the streets of Brooklyn, in the streets of Detroit, and Chicago.
Ain't no democracy down there. No, we've never seen democracy.
All we've seen is hypocrisy. We don't see any American dream.
We've experienced only the American nightmare")
- at the end of the titles sequence, the backdrop
of an American flag was burned into the image or shape of an 'X'
- the sequence in a prison (Malcolm was a zoot-suited
hustler charged with burglary, and sentenced to 8-10 years) when
fellow inmate Baines (Albert Hall) challenged Malcolm's lifestyle
(and gave him some nutmeg to end his drug addiction); he cautioned
Malcolm to stop pretending to be white, and to quit conking his
hair with poison (a method of hair-straightening): ("Why not
look like what you are? What makes you ashamed of being black?...
You just another cat strutting down the avenue in your clown suit
with all that mess on you! Looking like a monkey! The white man
sees you and laughs because he knows you ain't white"); then Baines
urged Malcolm to be transformed by turning to Elijah Muhammed
(Al Freeman, Jr.) and the teachings of the Nation of Islam: ("Elijah
Muhammad can get you out of prison. Out of the prison of your
mind. But maybe all you want is another fix")
- the scene of Malcolm's brief proposal of marriage,
via payphone, to Betty Shabazz (Angela Bassett); she told him
of her steadfastness even when he would be away: "You're with
me, even when you're away"
- the scenes of various speeches
of controversial black nationalist liberation leader Malcolm "X" Little
specifically, Malcolm's
angry Harlem speech to residents above the oppressive 'white man':
("...I'm gonna tell you like it really is. Every election year
these politicians are sent up here to pacify us! They're sent here
and setup here by the White Man! This is what they do! They send
drugs in Harlem down here to pacify us! They send alcohol down here
to pacify us! They send prostitution down here to pacify us! Why
you can't even get drugs in Harlem without the White Man's permission!
You can't get prostitution in Harlem without the White
Man's permission! You can't get gambling in Harlem without
the White Man's permission! Every time you break the seal on that
liquor bottle, that's a Government seal that you're breaking! Oh,
I say and I say it again, ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked!
Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what He does...")
- in the scene of Malcolm's visit to Harvard University,
the brief moment when a white blonde coed (Fia Porter) interrupted
him and asked for his advice: "Excuse me, Mr. X, uhm. Hi. I've
read some of your speeches and I honestly believe that a lot of
what you have to say is true. And I'm a good person in spite of
what my ancestors did. I just wanted to ask you - what can a white
person like myself, who isn't prejudiced, what can I do to help
you and further your cause?" - he dismissively, coldly and bluntly
replied: "Nothing" and walked off
- his pre- and post-Mecca
trip press conferences: ("When you tell your people to stop
being violent against my people, I'll tell my people to put away
their guns")
- Malcolm
X's famous line: "We didn't land on
Plymouth Rock - Plymouth Rock landed on us!" - pointing out
that African blacks did not come willingly
to America
- the hospital march scene of Nation
of Islam supporters (in solidarity for wounded Brother Johnson (Steve
White) who had been beaten unconscious by the police, crying out: "We
want justice"); Malcolm X spoke defiantly to Captain Green
(Peter Boyle) after being told to disband the mob: ("Fruit
of lslam are disciplined men. They haven't broken any laws, yet");
when news came from the doctor that Johnson would live, Malcolm
X called off the march by quietly raising his hand to signal the
marchers to leave; the Captain noted: "That's too
much power for one man to have"
- the climactic and chaotic set-piece of X's assassination
in Harlem's Audubon Ballroom in February of 1965 presented as
a conspiracy of Nation of Islam leaders; after a smoke bomb was
ignited as a diversion, Malcolm was shot-gunned to death while
standing at the podium and then two others pumped bullets into
his prone body on the stage floor - with his devastated wife Betty
holding her dead husband in her arms
The Assassination in NYC's Audubon Ballroom (Feb
1965)
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- the use of documentary footage of Martin Luther
King Jr. commenting on Malcolm's death: ("The assassination
of Malcolm X was an unfortunate tragedy and it reveals that there
are still numerous people in our nation who have degenerated to
the point of expressing dissent through murder and we haven't learned
to disagree without being violently disagreeable")
- the voice-over eulogy of Ossie Davis for Malcolm X,
presented with a montage of photos of Malcolm's
life: ("Here, at this final hour, in this quiet place, Harlem
has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes. Extinguished
now, and gone from us forever. It is not in the memory of man that
this beleaguered, unfortunate, but nonetheless proud community,
has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American
who lies before us - unconquered still. I say the word again, as
he would want me to: Afro-American. Afro-American Malcolm.
Malcolm had stopped being Negro years ago. It had become too small,
too puny, too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that.
Malcolm had become an Afro-American, and he wanted so desperately
that we, that all his people, would become Afro-Americans, too....Malcolm
was our manhood. Our living, black manhood. This was his meaning
to his people. And in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves")
- the final coda sequence of African-American schoolchildren
(in the present day) standing and declaring
individually: "I am Malcolm X",
followed by a view of anti-apartheid, newly-freed activist Nelson
Mandela (as Himself, the future South African President) standing
in a South African classroom and speaking to the black students:
("As Brother Malcolm said: 'We
declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being,
to be given the rights of a human being, to be respected as a human
being in this society on this earth in this day which we intend
to bring into existence --- '"); the last incendiary words
were spoken by Malcolm himself: ("'--by any means necessary!'")
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"I am Malcolm X"
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Nelson Mandela in S. African Classroom
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American Flag Burned Into an "X"
Malcolm X in Prison - Speaking to Brother Baines About Turning
to Elijah Muhammed and the Nation of Islam
Proposal of Marriage to Sister Betty - Via Payphone
Angry Harlem Speech: ("They send drugs in Harlem
down here to pacify us!")
Confronting a Harvard University Blonde Coed
"We didn't land on Plymouth Rock - Plymouth Rock landed on us"
Malcolm X to Capt. Green
Documentary Footage of MLK Jr.
Montage of Photos of Malcolm X's Life During Eulogy
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Malpertuis (1971, Belgium) (aka The Legend
of Doom House)
In Belgian director Harry Kümel's dramatic, fantasy
Euro-horror, arthouse film - a unique, atmospheric and unpredictable
masterpiece with a bizarre, moody, eerie, mythical and macabre story
(with numerous plot twists) about a haunted and 'damned' house:
- the striking opening title credits, disintegrating
into dripping, blood-red letters (see left)
- the opening scene of blonde-haired,
blue-eyed young sailor Jan (Mathieu Carrière) and his arrival
at his home port - where he vainly went looking for his Beacon Quay childhood
home (it had disappeared and was replaced by a fishing shop); he followed
a woman he thought was his sister - she was actually Bets (French pop
singer Sylvie Vartan), a sultry, blue velvet-dressed cabaret singer
and working girl in the Venus Bar, a gaudy bordello in the town's red-light
district, where he was bloodily beaten in the head during a brawl with
Sylvie's pimp and left unconscious
- after a dissolve and spinning,
blurred camera, he found himself shanghaied; he awoke (virtually imprisoned)
in a nautical-themed bedroom (of his own imagination?) at the home
of his sinister family - the title's mystifying and ominous grand,
labyrinthine home known as Malpertuis (translated 'fox's den,' 'cunning
house,' or 'evil house'); it was inhabited by a number of off-beat,
insane and strange relatives and hangers-on (awaiting an inheritance),
and surrounded by misty grounds with decaying ruins and bare trees
- the first views of corpulent, bed-ridden family patriarch,
Jan's strange uncle Quentin Cassavius (Orson Welles), living in an
enclosed upstairs suite; always ravenous and pounding on the floor
for cowering servants to bring him food: ("He's hungry again! He wants
more to eat...So close to death and all he thinks about is food. He
stuffs himself Iike a pig, but he won't live any longer. No one is
immortal, not even the great Cassavius"); the dying Cassavius was
lying back on his enormous, crimson-hued bed framed by curtains, reclining
in tuxedo-like pajamas on silk bedsheets
- the five roles (three were multi-faceted) of Susan
Hampshire (in various disguises) - (1) Jan's sweet, reassuring and
naive older sister Nancy, (2) beautiful and mysterious redhead Euryale
with often downcast eyes, and (3) passionately promiscuous, black-garbed
spinster and temptress Alice; the actress' fourth and fifth brief
roles were as a nurse, and as Jan's present-day wife Charlotte
The Many Character Roles of Susan Hampshire
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Nancy
Jan's Pure Sister
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Redhead Euryale
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Temptress Alice (or Alecto)
One of the 3 Furies
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- the deathbed scene of Uncle Cassavius divulging the
conditions of his last will and testament that were read by Eisengott
(Walter Rilla) to the group of depraved misfits gathered around
- it was specified that all would acquire his vast wealth and inheritance
equally - but only if they remained in Malpertuis for the rest of their
lives (literally entrapped and kept prisoner), and the last two (if
male and female) were required to marry: ("Each beneficiary will
receive an annual income in proportion to the total estate. However,
from that moment on, each beneficiary shall remain at Malpertuis.
They may never leave the house. They shall undertake to live here
until the end...Everything at Malpertuis must remain unchanged. The
entire estate shall go to the last survivor. If the last two survivors
are a man and a woman, they have to marry. They then inherit Malpertuis
and all that goes with it")
- strange circumstances: after Cassavius' tomb was opened
by Jan, his corpse had transformed into a stone statue; and it was
rumored that Cassavius had wanted to create a "master race" of
blonde haired, blue eyed people: ("He talked about a master race...Yes,
a new golden age. Blonde hair, blue eyes, whatever") - he had
become the bullying, controlling, and powerful ruler of his own circumscribed
world
- the scene of Alice's naked (body-double) seduction
of Jan in a locked, dark blue-draped room, matching the blue of Sylvie's
and Nancy's dresses; she approached him with the inviting words: "I'm
a woman. I want you to love me"
- the plot revelation in the devastating climactic,
plot-twisting ending of the other-worldly secrets
of Malpertuis - during Cassavius' voyages to the
Greek isles, he had found that the inhabitants were previously-abandoned
and forgotten ancient Greek gods; Cassavius imprisoned and captured
the ghosts of these gods, returned to Malpertuis, and had their spirits
sewn by taxidermist Philaris (Charles Janssens) into the skins of normal
men and women; they were condemned to live out their eternal lives in
this restricted form - Cassavius' last wish was for them to mate and
produce a new race of demi-gods; he was hoping that eventually, one
of his mortal descendents (nephew Jan or niece Nancy) would have a child
after sex with one of the Greek gods, in order to create a new age for
mankind
- the secrets of Malpertuis were described by Euryale
in her own words: ("The
last gods of Greece. Cassavius discovered us on an island in the
Ionian Sea. There were only a few gods left. The rest had disappeared,
because people no longer believed in them. Cassavius abducted those
defenseless ghosts and brought them to Malpertuis. The monster instructed
his sIave Philaris to sew that once proud company into miserable
human skins")
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Euryale Removing the Human
Skin of Malpertuis'
Inhabitants
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A 'Last Supper" Set-Up
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- in the striking conclusion, the outer human skin (or
masks) of Malpertuis' inhabitants were ripped
off to reveal the underlying features of marble statuary; to save
Jan, Euryale had frozen or petrified them in an artfully-arranged "Last
Supper" styled setup
- Euryale's revelation that she was
one of the three Gorgons, who claimed she was immortal and unchanging
because she hadn't been forgotten like the others: ("Cassavius
didn't dare change anything about me. All the others perished because
they were forgotten. I alone have never been forgotten. I'm immortal.
My name is Gorgon. I am Love, I am Death. Jan, you force me to be
your destiny. Bitter is the fruit of knowledge") - she reached
out to Jan for a fatal embrace, looked directly up at him with wide
eyes after kissing him - and turned him to marble!
- the coda (in the present day) and the posing of the
film's major question - was everything in Jan's disturbed and fevered
mind the result of his blow to the head?; as he was discharged from
a mental hospital, he was congratulated by his doctor for writing
such an imaginative diary during therapy: ("You have a fertile imagination.
The idea of abducting the last Greek gods while they're waiting to
die, to humiliate them and make them live the lives of the petit
bourgeois - that's a bit strange for a computer expert. The insanity
probabIy messed around with memories from when you were young")
Leaving the Hospital and Returning to a Hallway in
Malpertuis
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- the film's Wizard of Oz-like ending (similar
to when Dorothy awakened from dream land and found all of her fantasy's
characters surrounding her as earthly companions); Jan
(wearing a dark gray suit) was escorted down the white-walled clinic
corridors by his overjoyed wife Charlotte (also Susan Hampshire);
he recognized other medical officers, visitors and patients who watched
his departure; in the film's final lines of dialogue, Charlotte spoke:
"How are you, darIing?" Jan answered: "I'm compIeteIy
cured, darIing"
- a second strange plot
twist - after he kissed Charlotte, he turned and the exit doors
closed behind him; he found himself back in one maze-like
corridor of Malpertuis with brick walls lit by flaming torches; he
gazed toward his normal sailor persona who walked hurriedly towards
him; the film ended with a zoom-in and freeze-framed close-up of sailor
Jan's left eye
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Cabaret Singer/Prostitute Bets (Sylvie Vartan)
Jan Awakening From Unconsciousness
in Malpertuis After Bloody Beating
Bed-Ridden, Dying Family Patriarch Quentin Cassavius
- Jan's Occultist Uncle
The Reading of Cassavius' Will at His Deathbed
Cassavius' Corpse - Turned to Stone
Alice's Naked Seduction of Jan
Euryale's Revelation to Jan That She Was Unchanging and Immortal
("My name is Gorgon")
Euryale Turning Jan to Stone
Released From the Hospital, with Wife Charlotte in Present Day
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The Maltese
Falcon (1941)
In director John Huston's classic noir/detective
debut film based on Dashiell Hammett's novel, about the elusive
search for a one foot-tall, jewel-encrusted 'black bird' statuette
in the shape of a falcon:
- the film's memorable sinister and moody imagery,
great casting and characterizations including hard-boiled San
Francisco private eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), deceitful femme-fatale
Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), effeminate and creepy Joel
Cairo (Peter Lorre), erudite "Fat
Man" Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet), and gunsel Wilmer
(Elisha Cook Jr.)
- the opening scene of a pleading Miss Wonderly (Mary
Astor) in the offices of the Spade and Archer detective agency in
San Francisco, asking for protection
against a mysterious man named Floyd Thursby
- the surprise night-time killing (point-blank) of
Spade's infatuated and enthusiastic partner Miles Archer (Jerome
Cowan) at the corner of Bush and Stockton Streets in the city; soon
after, Spade was considered a likely suspect
- the first meeting of Spade with the deceiving
Brigid O'Shaughnessey (alias Miss Wonderly), wearing stripes, in
an apartment on California Avenue, under the name of Miss Leblanc;
she was trying to charm him when she begged helplessly: ("You've
got to trust me, Mr. Spade. Oh, I'm so alone and afraid. I've got
nobody to help me if you won't help me. Be generous, Mr. Spade.
You're brave. You're strong. You can spare me some of that courage
and strength surely. Help me, Mr. Spade. I need help so badly. I've
no right to ask you, I know I haven't, but I do ask you. Help me!");
he could see through her fake sincerity and knew she was 'dangerous':
("You won't need much of anybody's help. You're good. It's chiefly your
eyes, I think, and that throb you get in your voice when you say
things like 'Be generous, Mr. Spade'") but he was obviously attracted and allured to
her anyway; he demanded another $500 for further investigative expenses
- the scene of Joel Cairo (with a gardenia-perfumed
business card that Spade smelled) meeting with Spade in his office,
and telling about his search for the statuette and an offer of $5,000
for its recovery: ("I'm trying to recover, an ornament that,
ah, shall we say has been mislaid...I thought and hoped you could
assist me. The ornament, ah, is a statuette, the black figure of
a bird"); when Cairo drew a gun, Spade quickly disarmed him
and knocked him out - and when Cairo regained consciousness, he
whined: "Look what you did to my shirt!", and soon drew
his gun a second time on Spade: ("Will you please clasp your
hands together at the back of your neck? I intend to search your
offices")
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Smelling Cairo's Perfumed Card
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Homosexual Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre)
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Drawing a Gun
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- during a second visit with Brigid in her hotel room,
Spade confronted her directly: "You, uh -
you aren't exactly the sort of a person you pretend to be, are ya?...
The schoolgirl manner, you know, blushing, stammering, and all that...
if you actually were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never
get anywhere"); he also complimented her on her 'act' - "You're
good. You're very good!"; after seductively asking Spade what she
could offer besides money, he brutally took her face in his hands
and kissed her roughly - digging his thumbs into her cheeks, as
she accepted his lingering kiss; then he angrily and distrustfully
told her: ("I
don't care what your secrets are. But I can't go ahead without more
confidence in you than I've got now. You've got to convince me that
you know what this is all about, that you aren't just fiddling around,
hoping it'll all come out right in the end")
Second Visit with Brigid O'Shaughnessey
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- the subsequent scene of Spade's rough treatment of
Cairo when later meeting with him and Brigid, and his harsh words
toward the petty criminal: ("When
you're slapped, you'll take it and like it!")
- the menacing scene in the hotel room of a seated
Gutman speaking to Spade over drinks, emphasizing the importance
of straight-talking: ("I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally
picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's
something you can't do judiciously unless you keep in practice.
Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell you right out - I'm
a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk"), explaining
the history of the bird (shot from floor angle, showing off his
huge girth), and later speaking about his obsessive quest over 17
years for the bird: ("I'm a man not easily discouraged when I want something")
- the discovery of a clue about the location of the
Black Bird - the newspaper notice of the arrival of a boat (La Paloma)
at the docks from Hong Kong (it was aflame), and shortly later,
the mortally-wounded Captain Jacobi (Walter Huston) stumbled into
Spade's office with the bundled falcon, and then died from his gunshot
wounds
- the subsequent meeting in Spade's apartment with
the entire gang, and Spade's initial suggestion to the Fat Man that
Cairo be the fall guy for the murders of Thursby and Jacobi: ("Give
them Cairo!") - and then Spade informed the Fat Man's intimidated "gunsel" Wilmer
that he was being double-crossed in plain sight: ("They're
selling you out, sonny") - after knocking out Wilmer, Spade
told the Fat Man: "There's our fall guy!" and the Fat Man
agreed: "You
can have him"
- the suspenseful scene of the unwrapping of the bundled
package in which the falcon bird ("the dingus") was discovered to
be fake - not gold but only made of lead: (Gutman: "Fake! It's
a phony! It-it's lead! It's lead! It's a fake!")
- Cairo telling off Gutman, blaming him for their failures,
and calling him names: ("You, it's you who bungled it, you and
your stupid attempt to buy it. Kemidov found out how valuable it was. No wonder we had
such an easy time stealing it. You, you imbecile! You bloated idiot!
You stupid fathead!") - Cairo, Gutman, and Wilmer would
soon be arrested after they fled the scene to continue their search
for the bird in Istanbul
- Brigid's final confrontation with Spade in which
he forced her to confess to the double-crossing murder of his partner
Miles Archer in order to implicate Thursby, her unwanted accomplice:
("This isn't the time for that school girl act. We're both of us sitting
under the gallows. Now, why did you shoot Miles?"); she confessed
and then tried to throw herself at him, but he coldly rejected
her: ("Well, if you get a good break, you'll be out of Tehachapi
in 20 years and you can come back to me then. I hope they don't
hang you, precious, by that sweet neck...Yes, angel, I'm gonna
send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a
good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If
they hang you, I'll always remember you"); he then reasserted
his resolve: (Spade: "You're taking the fall." Brigid:
"You've been playing with me. Just pretending you care to trap
me like this. You didn't care at all. You don't love me!" Spade: "I
won't play the sap for you!...You killed Miles and you're going
over for it"); and then Spade reiterated his code of ethics: ("When a man's
partner's killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't
make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner,
and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're
in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets
killed, it's - it's bad business to let the killer get away with
it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere")
Spade to Brigid: "You're taking the fall!"
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- Brigid was handed over to officers for the murder
of Miles Archer - she was arrested and ultimately took "the
fall"
- the famous ending quote in response to Sgt. Polhaus'
(Ward Bond) question ("It's heavy. What is it?") about the
false black bird: ("The, uh,
stuff that dreams are made of")
- Brigid was tearfully taken away and waiting
in the elevator for the gates to close - the steel cage was pulled
in front of her like the bars on a captive's cell, framing her frightened,
motionless, lonely face staring fixedly between the bars of the
gate. the last image of Brigid's exit to her fate was down
the elevator with the gate casting a shadow of cell bars on her
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San Francisco Private Eye Sam Spade's Office
Miss Wonderly
(Mary Astor)
The Murder of Miles Archer by an Unknown Figure in the
Dark
Spade's First Meeting with Duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessey:
"Help me, Mr. Spade!"
Spade's Rough Treatment of Cairo: "When you're slapped, you'll take
it and like it!"
Gutman's Discussion with Spade
Arrival of La Paloma - The Dying Freighter Captain Jacobi
with the Black Bird in Spade's Office
Gunsel Wilmer - Proposed to Be
The "Fall Guy!"
The Unwrapping of the Bird
Recriminations About the Fake Bird: "You stupid fathead!"
"The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of"
Brigid Arrested and Behind Elevator Gate
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A Man Escaped - or: The Wind Blows
Where It Wishes (1956, Fr.) (aka Un Condamné à Mort
S'est échappé ou Le Vent Souffle où il Veut)
In Robert Bresson's dramatic wartime POW jailbreak-escape
thriller, based on a true story about French Resistance fighting member
André Devigny who was held in Montluc prison at Lyon by the occupying
German Gestapo during WWII in 1943 - with the protagonist's voice-over
commentary describing the action:
- in the stunning, suspenseful opening sequence without
dialogue, the first escape attempt of condemned Lt. Fontaine (Francois
Leterrier) - while being transported to the Lyon military prison
- sitting in the back seat of a car; after eyeing and touching the
door handle, he was able to open it and jump from the slowing car
when a streetcar crossed their path; he was recaptured
(off-screen, while shots, scuffling and cries in German were heard
- one instance of the film's brilliant use of diegetic sound) as the
camera remained stationary inside the car when he was thrown back
in the car, handcuffed to himself, and arrived bloodied and unconscious
at his prison cell - clear evidence that he had been severely beaten
(with the butt of a pistol) by German guards; he was sentenced to
death for espionage and sabotage
- Fontaine's incarceration in a claustrophobic small
cell with a high ceiling and a small window - and the sequences of
his meticulous and patient planning for a future escape from the prison
- he completely deconstructed his entire cell for purposes of creating
makeshift tools for escape: he whittled down a spoon into a sharp
tool, took apart his bed, the light fixture, mattress and springs,
and clothing (making hooks and ropes), and chiseled down and loosened
the panel boards of his poorly-made, wooden cell door
- the use of a passive camera, where the Germans
were often seen as shadowy, undetailed characters
(with most of the events outside the cell remaining off-screen)
- the unexpected appearance of 16 year-old, teenaged
François Jost (Charles Le Clainche), a young cellmate - viewed
suspiciously (as a potentially untrustworthy spy?) by Fontaine and causing
him a severe dilemma: ("There was no time to lose. I'd have to make
a choice. Either bring Jost with me, or do away with him...But would
I have the courage to kill this kid in cold blood?"), until the two
began to trust each other, and made a daring, tense, and determined
escape attempt together - with only a limited amount of time to succeed
- the final nightime foggy and dark view of
the two undetected prisoners quickly retreating from the prison after
scaling between two buildings and dropping to the ground
The Escape of Jost and Fontaine
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Lt. Fontaine Escaping from Moving Car - Camera Remained
Stationary Inside Car, as He Was Recaptured
Severely Beaten
Arrival of Young Cellmate Yost
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A Man For All Seasons (1966,
UK)
In Fred Zinnemann's Best Picture-winning film of
Richard Bolt's adaptation of his own play:
- the main plot: the continuing strength and courage
of Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas More (Oscar-winning Paul Scofield)
- after King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) declared himself the Supreme
Head of the Church of England; More, a devout Catholic, refused
on principle to sign the Act of Succession and would not take
the Oath of Supremacy that would grant permission to the King
to divorce his own elder brother Arthur's widow - his barren wife
Catherine of Aragon; Henry
was intent on having a wife bear a male heir to continue his dynastic
reign, so he set his sights on marrying mistress Anne Boleyn (Vanessa
Redgrave)
- the "Give the Devil Benefit of Law" scene - More's reverential
defense of the law toward brilliant lawyer William
Roper (Corin Redgrave), a Lutheran, who had designs to marry his
daughter Margaret "Meg"
(Susannah York); during a heated discussion, Roper asked: "Now you
give the Devil benefit of law!" - More
artfully responded: "Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through
the law to get after the Devil?" - when Roper replied: "Yes. I'd
cut down every law in England to do that," More responded forcefully:
("Oh, and
when the last law was down, and the Devil turned on you, where would
you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted
thick with laws from coast to coast, man's laws, not God's, and
if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really
think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Yes. I give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake")
- determined to break from Rome, King Henry renounced
papal authority - and demanded that bishops and Parliament renounce
all allegiance to the Pope; he declared himself the head of
the Anglican Church, known as the Act of Supremacy - hence, he
annuled his current marriage and wed Anne (who was then crowned
as Queen in 1533); the new Archbishop of Canterbury (Cyril Luckham)
upheld the marriage
- Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern) in Parliament passed
a law requiring all English subjects to take an oath of allegiance
to accept Henry's will, but More refused to accept the heresy
and publically endorse Henry - and was imprisoned for a year in
the Tower of London for being a traitor
- the scene of More's trumped-up, fallacy-filled court
trial that included the treachery of courtier Richard Rich (John
Hurt) when he perjured himself to destroy More; More denied the
accusations of Rich: ("In
good faith, Rich, I am sorrier for your perjury than my peril"),
and then asserted: ("You know if I were a man who heeded not
the taking of an oath, I need not be here. Now, I will take an oath.
If what Master Rich has said is true, I pray I may never see God
in the face. Which I would not say were it otherwise, for anything
on earth!"); then he stated that Rich's testimony, and his
refusal to modify his own testimony, doomed him: ("I
am a dead man. You have your will of me")
- in the short following sequence as Rich was about
to leave the court, More noticed a golden pendant around Rich's
neck: ("That's a
chain of office you're wearing...The Red Dragon") - obviously
a bribery reward - Rich had recently been appointed as the new Attorney
General for Wales; More noted to Rich: ("Why Richard,
it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But
for Wales"); without a jury or deliberations (a sham trial),
More was quickly found guilty and pronounced "guilty of high
treason"
- during his last words when he was finally able to
speak, More passionately defended his actions and chastised his
former friend and King, for committing an illegal action - he cited
the Biblical basis for the authority of the Papacy over Christendom,
and stated that the Church was immune to the state's interference
- guaranteed in both the Magna Carta and in the King's own Coronation
Oath: ("Since
the Court has determined to condemn me, God knoweth how, I will
now discharge my mind concerning the indictment and the King's title.
The indictment is grounded in an act of Parliament which is
directly repugnant to the law of God and His Holy Church.
The supreme government of which no temperable person may by
any law presume to take upon him. This was granted by the
mouth of our Saviour, Christ Himself, to St. Peter and
the bishops of Rome whilst He lived and was personally present here
on earth. It is therefore insufficient in law to charge any Christian
to obey it. And more than this, the immunity of the Church is promised
both in Magna Carta and in the King's own Coronation Oath");
he then went on, vowing his allegiance to the King, but still disapproving
of the marriage: ("I am the King's true subject and I pray
for him and all the realm. I do none harm. I say none harm. I think
none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive then in
good faith, I long not to live. Nevertheless, it is not for
the supremacy that you have sought my blood, but because I
would not bend to the marriage!")
- the concluding scene of More's beheading execution
at the Tower of London and his brief poignant words: ("I am
commanded by the King to be brief and since I am the King's obedient
subject, brief I will be. I die His Majesty's good servant, but
God's first"); then he spoke directly to his executioner (Eric
Mason) after giving him a coin for his duty, and forgave him: ("I
forgive you, right readily. Be not afraid of your office. You send
me to God")
- the epilogue voice-over of the narrator (voice of
Colin Blakely), about the aftermath and how More became a revered
martyr: ("Thomas More's head
was stuck on Traitors' Gate for a month. Then his daughter, Margaret,
removed it and kept it 'til her death. Cromwell was beheaded for
high treason five years after More. The Archbishop was burned at
the stake. The Duke of Norfolk should have been executed for high
treason, but the King died of syphilis the night before. Richard
Rich became Chancellor of England and died in his bed")
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King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw)
Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield) Defending the Law to
William Roper
Treachery of Richard Rich Perjuring Himself - for the
Reward of Being Appointed Attorney General of Wales
More's Defense of His Actions
Pronounced Guilty of High Treason - Final Thoughts
Beheading Execution at Tower of London
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Man Hunt (1941)
In director Fritz Lang's anti-Nazi, WWII political
thriller - a film-noirish story set on the eve of the war, about
a suave English gentleman adventurer pursued by the Nazis for threatening
to assassinate Hitler:
- the film's opening - the tense sequence of
big-game hunter Capt. Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) stalking
within shooting distance of Hitler's summer palace (Berchtesgaden)
in the Bavarian Alps in the mid-summer of 1939, and being tempted
to aim at the dictator's head and chest with a precision telescopic
viewer, and pul the trigger - the gun was unloaded and clicked
empty; then, he gave a salute-wave to the Fuhrer, paused for a moment,
and then thought about committing
the assassination for real; Thorndike loaded a cartridge into
the rifle, but he was jumped by a German Nazi sentry as he pulled
the trigger a second time, and the shot went wild - he later claimed
- the scene of Thorndike's capture and incarceration
- brought before the brutal Gestapo, led by white-uniformed, monocle-wearing
chief Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders); although Thorndike claimed
"It was a sporting stalk...stalking the game you're after for
the fun of it, not to kill...the sport is in the chase, not the
kill. I don't kill any longer, not even small game"; nevertheless, he
was compelled to sign a confession (that he had acted as an assassin
for the British government), but he refused, so he was forced
to submit to beatings and torture ("How well do you stand pain?")
(off-screen) and a scheduled execution
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Thorndike - Identified and Questioned by Major
Quive-Smith
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- Thorndike ultimately survived being pushed off a
'treacherous' cliff ledge (his death was to be made to look like
an accident) when his backpack became caught in a tree and it cushioned
his fall; after regaining consciousness, he evaded a search by bloodhounds,
and escaped from Europe to England (by stowing away on a Danish
steamship with the aid of an English cabin boy Vaner (Roddy McDowall))
during a massive pursuit and man-hunt by German Nazi spies looking
for him
- the growing romance after London
Cockney streetwalker/seamstress Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett) helped Thorndike
to evade Germans during their search - and his thankful purchase
of a "dangerous weapon" for her - a hatpin made of chromium (in
the shape of an arrow) to decorate her beret - given with his "undying
gratitude and admiration"
- during
his flight, there was a tense sequence of a pursuit in a dark subway
tunnel of the London Underground, when one of Quive-Smith's
men, German agent Mr. Jones (John Carradine) with a
long sharp blade hidden inside his walking stick, stalked after
Thorndike and after a hand-to-hand struggle in the tube, was electrocuted
when he was punched and fell backwards onto the electrified third
rail (with sparks flying); subsequently during the investigation
into the "TUBE MURDER MYSTERY," Jones (who had acquired
Thorndike's passport and billfold) was identified as the dead hunter
Thorndike in newspaper headlines: ("MURDER IN THE UNDERGROUND
- Capt. Alan Thorndike's Body Found"); a male murder suspect
at the scene (Thorndike himself, with a scar on his right cheek)
was reported to have escaped; now both the British police and the
Nazis were both engaged in a man-hunt, searching for Thorndike
Mr. Jones' Deadly Chase After Thorndike in the London
Underground Tube
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- the concluding scene was the confrontation
between Quive-Smith who had located and entrapped Thorndike in
his cave-hideout in the woods; through a tiny opening in the
cave wall, he passed in Jerry's beret with the chromium arrow hat-pin
hanging on a stick - signifying her death; he explained how that
during their search, the Germans questioned her and threw her out
of a window when she wouldn't betray him: ("She made your mistake,
Thorndike, she flauted obvious power. She refused to tell us anything...She
was found dead in the street, Thorndike. The police reported that
she, uh, jumped to her death from a window")
- then, after Thorndike angrily admitted that he had
wanted to personally kill the Fuhrer, Quive-Smith strongly urged
and forced him to sign the confessional document - he said it would
help the Germans who had just invaded Poland that same day (September
1, 1939): ("Today Europe, tomorrow the world!"); while stalling
for time, Thorndike fabricated a
makeshift bow (with his belt and a strip of wood) and used Jerry's
chromium hat-pin as an arrow (strapped to the stick); then, through
the hole in the cave wall, he shot the arrow and mortally-wounded
Quive-Smith in the side of the head; however, the German was able
to shoot and wound Thorndike before expiring; Thorndike
was able to crawl over to
Quive-Smith's corpse and destroy the false inflammatory signed confession
by tearing it with his teeth
- during his long recuperation, Thorndike experienced
flashbacks to double-exposed memories of Jerry, who had helped him
during their brief romance; in the film's denouement set during
WWII, the healed Thorndike had joined the British RAF a year later,
and was on a bombing mission over Germany; unexpectedly, he parachuted
into Germany's Third Reich - his reconnaissance objective this time
was to really assassinate Hitler with his hunting rifle, as the
narrator patriotically described (in voice-over) his mission in
the film's last lines, to the tune of "My
Country 'Tis of Thee": ("And from now on, somewhere within
Germany, is a man with a precision rifle and the high degree of intelligence
and training that is required to use it. It may be days, months or
even years, but this time he clearly knows his purpose and, unflinching,
faces his destiny")
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During His Recuperation: Flashbacks to Cockney Prostitute
Jerry Stokes
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Ending: Thorndike Parachuting Into Germany With a
Mission to Assassinate Hitler
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Aiming an Unloaded Rifle at the Fuhrer
Below the Cliff, Thorndike's Backpack Snagged on a Tree
Thorndike Regaining Consciousness After Cliff Fall
Thorndike's Purchase of a Chromium Arrow for Streetwalker Jerry's Beret
Jerry's Hat with Arrow
Thorndike's Makeshift Bow - Pulling It Back and Aiming
The Target Seen Through Cave Opening: Quive-Smith's Head
Mortally-Wounded Quive-Smith Shooting Thorndike
Before Dying
Wounded Thorndike Destroying False Confession With His Teeth
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The Man I Love (1947)
In Raoul Walsh's forgotten, noirish melodramatic soap
opera (a classic 'women's picture'), and dramatic character study -
a tale of regret, damaged romance and unhappiness:
- the opening late-night jam session sequence set in
a NY (Manhattan) night club, to introduce hardbitten, tortured, jazzy
torch singer Petey Brown (Ida Lupino) who was singing - with a smoky
voice - the sad Gershwin title tune (dubbed by Peg La Centra) while
sharing her cigarette with the piano player
- the sequences involving Petey's temporary refuge
from NYC at Christmas-time, traveling to visit her three siblings
in their Long Beach, CA apartment: her two sisters - 18 year-old
Virginia 'Ginny' Brown (Martha Vickers), and hard-working, downtrodden
married waitress Sally (Brown) Otis (Andrea King) (her unbalanced
husband, ex-Army Sgt. Roy Otis (John Ridgely), was recuperating in
a military hospital from shell-shock), Sally and Roy's young son was
Buddy Otis (Patrick Griffin); also living there was Petey's corrupted
and cocky younger brother Joey Brown (Warren Douglas) (a hired wannabe
'tough guy' thug)
Petey's Siblings: Brother and Two Sisters
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Tough-Guy Joey Brown (Warren Douglas)
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Sally
(Andrea King)
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Petey's 18 Year-Old "Kid Sister" 'Ginny'
Brown
(Martha Vickers)
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- Joey
and Sally were both under the employ of shady, playboyish,
small-time gangster/racketeer and Bamboo Club club owner Nicky Toresca
(Robert Alda) (Sally actually worked in Uncle Tony Toresca's (William
Edmunds) diner-spaghetti-restaurant) - Toresca was making unwanted,
lecherous and predatory advances toward Sally, even though she rejected
him ("I don't have boyfriends"); the feisty Petey took a job as a
singer in Toresca's nightclub to distract and divert the detestable
Nicky to herself
- the problems that resulted from Ginny's secret crush
on the across-the-hall neighbor - Johnny O'Connor (Don McGuire) who
was married to neglectful, trampy, irresponsible and flirtatious Gloria
O'Connor (Dolores Moran) - they had baby twin boys that Ginny and
Sally often cared for; party-girl Gloria - who hated being a mother
and housewife ("I'm tired of cooking and taking care of babies") also
became involved in an affair with Toresca; Petey had a negative opinion
about Gloria that she expressed to Sally: ("She wouldn't give you
the time of day if she had two watches")
- at the club, Petey's continuing and difficult relationship
with down-and-out, brooding and haunted alcoholic, divorced, and legendary
ex-jazz pianist San Thomas (Bruce Bennett), a Merchant Marine who
still hadn't recovered from the breakup with his ex-wife ("Isn't
life difficult enough without mixing it up with memories?"); Petey's
relationship with him temporarily ended and she turned spiteful when
his ex-wife Amanda Chandler returned home to the LA area and his interest
waned in her (Petey told him: "I don't feel like sharing you with her...I'm
not sharing you at all, San, and that's final!"); however, they still
saw each other
- a major tragedy occurred one
evening, when Toresca ordered the neighbor's sloppy-drunk party-girl
cheating wife Gloria O'Connor to leave his place after she tried to
force herself on him; Toresca strong-armed Joey to drive her home:
"Get her outta here!"; during the drive, Gloria foolishly jumped out
of the car on the busy highway, and as Joey watched in his rear-view
mirror, she was run over by an oncoming vehicle - she was instantly
killed; afterwards, Toresca
refused to take any responsibility for the death, and compelled the
bungling Joey to take the blame: ("This
is your rap!...You're the one that got me into this mess, and you're
the one that's gonna get me out");
Petey intervened and confronted Toresca in his office about what had
just happened; she tried to bribe him to keep quiet
about the circumstances of Gloria's death (and her brother Joey's
involvement and responsibility); he agreed only if she would return
to him: ("Grow up, baby. Stick with me in my gutter. We both talk
the same language...You're what I want")
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Gloria's Tragic Death
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Toresca To Joey
("This is your rap!")
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Petey's Intervention with Toresca
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- after discussing what to do, Toresca
invited Petey to join him for a nighttime drive ("It'll
cool us both off"); as they descended stairs to the garage, they
were confronted by widower-husband Johnny O'Connor
seeking revenge against Toresca for Gloria's death; he wielded a
gun and was ready to murder Toresca; after talking sense to him failed:
("Johnny, don't be a fool...Now listen, Johnny. I wouldn't care if you got the
whole load pumped into him, but you're too nice a guy. You've got
kids to think of. This'd be murder"), Petey authoritatively delivered
a karate chop to Johnny's wrist to disarm the gun, repeatedly slapped
him across the face, and convinced him to leave without violence: ("Please
go home, will you, please?"); she then turned and threatened Toresca
- challenging him to reveal the truth of Gloria's death to authorities:
"If you don't call the police and tell them the truth, Nicky,
I will!"
Toresca and Petey Confronted by Johnny O'Connor With
Gun
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- in the gripping, bittersweet final scene, after most
of her family's problems were resolved through her interventions, and
a restored Roy had returned home to Sally, Petey decided to leave
town - (she assured Sally: "Don't you worry about me, kid. I'll land
on my feet, I always do")
- she
also said her goodbyes to San who was about to ship out with the
Merchant Marines; she confessed her love to him during final embraces:
("Oh,
San, I do love you. I know you don't feel the same way. Don't say
you do, darling, because nobody could love two people the way you
did her. I'm gonna miss you so"); he couldn't promise her anything,
but said he would return:
"And I'll be back...Remember what you once told me when I was low.
All of us are standing in the mud" - she responded: "Some
of us are looking at the stars"; as he touched her chin for a last
kiss, he delivered the film's final line of dialogue: "Here's lookin'
at ya, baby!"; she watched as he boarded the ship and waved one
last time at her, as the gangplank was pulled away; a slight smile developed
on her tearful face while she strode away in the open-ended conclusion
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Torch Singer Petey Brown (Ida Lupino) in NYC
Petey's Arrival at Brown Household in California on Christmas Eve
Nicky Toresca's Interest in Waitress Sally
Sally's Angry, Hospitalized Shell-Shocked Husband,
Ex-Army Sgt. Roy Otis
(John Ridgely)
Across-the-Hall Neighbors Gloria and Johnny O'Connor with Twin Baby Boys
Party-Girl Gloria
Petey with Nicky Toresca (Robert Alda)
Petey with San Thomas
(Bruce Bennett)
Petey's Break Up with San
Ending: Petey's Goodbye to Sally
Ending: Petey's Goodbye to San Who Was Leaving for
Merchant Marines
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Man of Aran (1934, UK)
In pioneering director Robert Flaherty's semi-staged (or
fabricated) documentary ("docu-fiction") about the harsh life
of survival on Ireland's desolate, weather-beaten, rugged and barren
Aran Islands about 30 miles off Ireland's western coast:
- the close-knit family - viewed dialogue-less (with
over-dubs only) - archetypal characters: fisherman/patriarch - the
'Man of Aran' (Colman "Tiger" King),
his Wife (Maggie Dirrane), and young Son (Michael Dillane)
- the churning of the thunderous waves that threatened
to drown the villagers
- the portrayal of the gritty and inventive struggle
to grow food without soil, by laying
seaweed down on the bare rock to produce a potato
crop (Title-card: "Seaweed - the foundation of their farm")
- the scene of the boy fishing with a line from towering
cliff faces, when he spotted something, climbed down the rocks, and
stood face to face with the gaping mouth of a great white shark swimming
by in the water (the musical score on the soundtrack suddenly stopped
to emphasis his find)
- the film's centerpiece - the elaborate montage sequence
of the prolonged, two-day boat hunt for a basking shark by harpooning
(to provide lamp oil) - a practice that had actually ended many decades
earlier
Montage of Shark Hunt
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- in the conclusion, the incredible storm scenes and
turbulent churning waters, with giant waves threatening to engulf
the fishing boat
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Threatened Villagers
Growing Food (Potatoes) Using Seaweed
Fishing on Cliff's Edge
Sighting of Shark
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Man of the West (1958)
In Anthony Mann's last western:
- the opening scene - a robbery (on a train
bound for Fort Worth, Texas) - when ex-outlaw and
Texan hero Link Jones (Gary Cooper), with a dark and troubled past,
lost the savings of his community
of Good Hope (to be used to hire a schoolteacher); he was abandoned
with cardsharp con-man Sam Beasley (Arthur O'Connell) and Crosscut
Saloon singer Billie Ellis (Julie London)
- the trio's on-foot arrival at an isolated,
broken-down ranch house where Link, now reformed, revealed he
had once been raised and trained as a gang member to rob banks; inside,
they found the thieving train robbers and their
patriarchal leader Dock Tobin (Lee J. Cobb) - Link's uncle
- the notorious scene of drunken, twisted and violent
outlaw Coaley Tobin (Jack Lord) threatening Billie Ellis
by forcing her to strip down to her underwear; he forced Link
- his own cousin - to watch by sitting him on a chair: ("Come
on in, Link, you're just in time...Your gal's gonna undress for
us. We saved a front row seat for ya! Ha, ha, ha! It's gonna be
a big show"); Coaley instructed the humiliated Billie to undress, and to force her
to begin the striptease, he wielded a knife: ("You see
this? (He held up his knife) Now start takin' off your clothes.
What's the matter with your girl, Link? Make her do it...It's
gonna be right now....Start takin' off your clothes....(He held
a knife at Link's throat) You're not talkin' us out of this.
Now undress. Start with the shoes. Wanna see me cut him?
Huh? Ha-ha! (She removed her shoes) The stockings. (She removed
her black stockings) Get up. That shirt thing, now, peel it off.
(She unbuttoned her red top) I don't have to tell you what's
next, do I? (She unfastened her red dress) Come on. Come on! (She
removed her white blouse) How are ya enjoying this cousin? Huh?
Huh?...Get that petticoat off!")
- Link was forced to rejoin
the robbers for a bank heist in the town of Lassoo (eventually
discovered to be a ghost-town)
- the concluding vengeful retaliation of Link against
Coaley - by goading him into a brutal and epic fistfight (without
Coaley's gunbelts or knife), and then forcing him to strip off
his clothes!; Sam interceded when Coaley angrily shot at Link,
and was killed; Coaley was then shot by another of Link's
cousins, Claude Tobin (John Dehner)
- by the film's end, Link had killed off a
number of gang members, but found that in his absence, Billie had
been raped (off-screen) and beaten; in retaliation in the film's
climactic end, he killed Dock and reclaimed the stolen funds, and
then Billie and Link went their separate ways
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Billie Ellis (Julie London)
Knife Held to Throat of Link Jones by Coaley Tobin (Jack Lord)
Forced to Strip
Vengeful Retaliation Against Coaley
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The Man Who Fell To Earth
(1976, UK)
In Nicolas Roeg's impressionistic, hallucinatory,
disjointed, non-literal sci-fi film and parable:
- the scene of pale, ethereal humanoid alien visitor
Thomas "Tommy" Jerome Newton's (rock star David Bowie
in his feature film debut) arrival on Earth by splashing into
a Southwestern lake in New Mexico
- his first unsettling contact with society, but soon
he acquired wealth as a tycoon, heading up a technological
firm using advanced inventions from his home planet
- "Tommy's"
bored, crippling and addicted habit of watching a dozen televisions
at once (and his screams of "Get out of my mind, all of you!
Stay where you belong! Go away! Go back where you came from")
- Thomas' memories/visions of his Anthean family suffering
and dying on his drought-stricken home planet
- the frequent and often unusual playful encounters
between Tommy and Mary-Lou, including the scene in which he drunkenly
threatened Mary-Lou with a pistol: ("I think you know, you
know too much about me... I can do anything, now, you know? I can
kill you right here on this bed. Then I could phone room service.
And they'd - they'd take your body away, and then I'd have them
send up another girl"); she begged for her life: ("Oh,
Tommy. Tommy. I just want it to be like it was. Me, the two of us.
You. You. The way you were"); however, he was fooling her - it
was only a blank-firing fake gun
Threatening Mary-Lou With a Mock Pistol - and Love-Making
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- in an exploratory and explicit sex scene involving
the mock pistol, Tommy dipped the gun's barrel into a glass of
wine, licked it and drank from the glass, and then had a frenzied
and loveless encounter with Mary-Lou
- the startling revelation of his true Anthean form
- androgynous, cat-eyed and hairless - to naive and lonely New Mexico
hotel cleaning lady/girlfriend Mary-Lou (Candy Clark) who uncontrollably
peed down her leg at the horrific sight of him; before long, she
had taught him about many human ways, including sex
"Tommy's" True Planet Anthea Form
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- after a few decades passed, Newton eventually ended
up corrupted and ravaged by alcohol and despairing depression -
and unable to return to his doomed home; the final image was of
a completely drained, eternally-trapped, broken, depressed and alone
alcoholic Thomas - inebriated in a cafe chair (with his head bowed,
and his hat facing the camera), with the film's final lines: ("I
think maybe Mr. Newton has had enough, don't you?"
"I think maybe he has")
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Arrival of Humanoid Alien "Tommy" - Splash into Lake
A Bank of Televisions
Mary Lou: "You can come in Tommy, don't be embarrassed"
Love-Making
Mary-Lou Peeing in Shock
Last Image: Thomas Alone and Drunk in a Cafe Chair With
Head Down
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The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1956)
In Alfred Hitchcock's dramatic and colorful remake
of his own political thriller film from 22 years earlier:
- during the title credits - the foreshadowing of
the film's climactic ending: "A single crash of Cymbals and how
it rocked the lives of an American family."
- the opening introduction of the McKenna family
- American tourists: surgeon Dr. Benjamin "Ben" McKenna
(James Stewart) and his wife, newly-retired singing star Josephine "Jo" (Doris
Day) from Indianapolis, Indiana, with their 11 year-old son Henry
or "Hank"
(Christopher Olsen); on
a bus traveling from Casablanca to Marrakech in French Morocco
(in Northern Africa), they met a Frenchman named Louis Bernard
(Daniel Gelin) who intervened
when Hank accidentally pulled off the veil of one of the local Muslim
women
- the startling moment when a sinister-looking man
knocked at the McKennas' hotel-room door in Marrakech [Note: He
would later be identified as Rien (Reggie Nalder), a hired assassin];
Louis Bernard was in the McKenna's hotel room and witnessed the
incident, and then abruptly cancelled his dinner plans with them
- the 'fish-out-of-water' dinner scene that evening
in Marrakech, when the McKennas met a friendly English couple
at a local Arab restaurant -- the Draytons: Lucy
(Brenda De Banzie) and Edward (Bernard Miles) [Note: They were later
revealed to be the real criminals - leaders
of an anarchist terrorist group, involved in an assassination plot];
it was unusual that Louis Bernard was also in attendance at the restaurant,
but basically ignored the McKennas
- the scene in the Marrakech
bazaar marketplace the next day (the McKennas were
with the Draytons) when saw a robed, dark-skinned man, obviously
with face paint, being chased by police, and then stumbling into
the square and falling to the ground, with a knife sticking out
of his back; he reached out to speak to Dr. McKenna: ("Monsieur
McKenna. I'm Louis Bernard")
In Marketplace, Disguised Arab (Louis Bernard) Knifed
in the Back -
With Whispered Secret to Dr. McKenna
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- the whispered secret told to Dr. McKenna (with
a closeup of his ear) by the disguised Arab, actually Frenchman
Bernard whom the McKennas had met earlier:
("A man, a statesman, is to be killed, assassinated, in London. Soon,
very soon. Tell them in London to try Ambrose Chappell"); mystified
by the murder, Dr. McKenna told his wife: ("Why
should he pick me out to tell?")
- it was later revealed
by the police that Louis was a French Intelligence agent working
there in Morocco, part of the Deuxime Bureau, better known
as the "American FBI": ("The dead man found out
what he had been sent here to discover. That's why he was killed.
He told you what he had discovered... Because he placed complete
confidence in you")
- the ominous phone call received by Dr. McKenna
in the police headquarters, revealing that son "Hank"
had been kidnapped for blackmailing purposes:
("If you tell even one word of what Louis Bernard whispered to
you in the marketplace, your little boy will be in serious danger.
Remember, say nothing")
- the revelation by Dr. McKenna to Jo, that he had
figured out why they had been approached by Bernard before his
death - they had been mis-identified as a couple
that Bernard was suspiciously tracking: ("He started to talk
to us, and the reason he started to talk to us was 'cause he was
on the lookout for a suspicious married couple.. a different married
couple [the Draytons]....He found them, all right. It was in the restaurant
where we had dinner last night. And that's one of the reasons he was
killed")
- the scene of Dr. McKenna going off track the next
day in his search back in London - when he met with two taxidermists
named Ambrose Chappell, Sr. (George Howe) and Jr. (Richard Wordsworth)
- and discovering shockingly, that Ambrose Chapel was a place -
not a person, and it was where Hank was being held hostage by the
Draytons and the Ambassador (Mogens Wieth) who had hired the Draytons
to arrange for the assassination
- the wordless 12-minute climactic sequence in London's
Royal Albert Hall during a concert performance (of the London Symphony
Orchestra) where both Jo and Ben McKenna was keenly aware of
an assassination plot of some sort (the murder of foreign dignitary
- Prime Minister (Alexis Bobrinskoy)), about to take place at
the end of the performance of Arthur Benjamin's Storm
Cloud Cantata during
a dramatic clash of cymbals
- the final climactic moment when a gun barrel was
visible pointing out from behind a red box curtain in the
balcony, and the gunman's shot was accentuated by Jo's terrified
shrieking scream, causing the gunman to miss his mark and only wound
the targeted statesman in the arm, followed by the assassin's death
when he struggled with Dr. McKenna and tumbled from the balcony
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Assassin Rien Aiming His Weapon
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Jo McKenna's Scream Disrupted Gunshot
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Assassin's Death
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One of Early Title Screens
First Meeting of McKenna Family with Louis Bernard
on Bus to Marrakech
Sinister Knock at Door - The Future Assassin!
Dinner with the Draytons at Arab Restaurant
Disturbing Phone Call About Hank's Abduction
Bernard's Whispered Secret
McKenna Questioning the Younger Ambrose Chappell - On the Wrong Track
in London
The Assassin's Target in London's Royal Albert Hall:
The Prime Minister
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