M (continued) |
Title Screen
|
Movie Title/Year and Scene
Descriptions |
Screenshots
|
|
The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance (1962)
In John Ford's nostalgic and memorable last Western
with John Wayne (in a quintessential role):
- the opening scene in which elderly and revered
US Senator Ransom "Ranse" Stoddard (James Stewart) arrived in
the year 1910 in the small western town of Shinbone (either Arizona
or Colorado Territory) with his wife Hallie Stoddard (Vera Miles)
to attend the funeral of Tom Doniphon (John Wayne); he told newspaperman
Maxwell Scott (Carleton Young), in the film's lengthy flashback,
about how he had allegedly become a legend and was known as "The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
- Stoddard's look back on his past, beginning 25
years earlier when he first arrived in the small frontier town
as a young, idealistic pacifistic attorney at law
from the East Coast: ("l was just a youngster, fresh out
of law school, bag full of law books and my father's gold watch,
$14.80 in cash. l had taken Horace Greeley's advice literally:
Go west, young man, go west, and seek fame, fortune, adventure")
- and the Senator's continuing description of his
relationship with tough and rugged homesteader and gunslinger
Tom Doniphon - who had protected Ransom (famously referred to
as "Pilgrim")
from continual taunting, including caring for him after he was
beaten up by outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) during a stagecoach
robbery; when Doniphon urged: ("You better start packin'
a handgun"),
Stoddard vowed that he was non-violent, and was relying on his
law books to bring justice to the town: ("A gun? l don't
want a gun. I don't want a gun. l don't want to kill him. l want
to put him in jail")
- the character of drunken,
abusive, violent, silver-knobbed whip-wielding villain and gun-man
Liberty Valance and his conflict with Ransom - especially their
memorable confrontational restaurant scene when Valance deliberately
tripped apron-wearing dishwasher/waiter employee Ransom while
serving a steak dinner to Doniphon - who then threatened Valance: "That
was my steak, Valance!"
- the scene in which Doniphon taught Ransom to shoot
- when Doniphon deliberately splattered Ransom
with paint from one of three paint cans during target practice:
("l
hate tricks, Pilgrim, but that's what you're up against with Valance.
He's almost as fast as l am") - and Ransom's growling response
and slugging of Doniphon in the jaw that sent him to the ground: "I
don't like tricks myself, so that makes us
even"
- the climactic shootout-showdown on
the dusty street in which Valance taunted and then wounded Ransom
in his right arm; and then Valance aimed his gun and vowed: ("This
time, right between the eyes"); miraculously, Random - left-handed
- appeared to shoot Valance dead
- Doniphon's private confrontation with Ransom a few
weeks later when he informed him about the real truth of the legendary
gunfight - Ransom never shot Liberty; it was told during
a 'flashback-within-a-flashback' introduced with a swirl of smoke
from Doniphon's cigarette: ("You
didn't kill Liberty Valance...Think back, Pilgrim. Valance came
out of the saloon. You were walking toward him when he fired his
first shot. Remember?"); Doniphon
revealed how he was hidden on a side street with
sidekick Pompey (Woody Strode) when the showdown occurred; Pompey
threw him a rifle and at the exact moment of the shooting, Doniphon
killed Valance; he
had shot Liberty to sacrificially protect the love of his life Hallie
from heartbreak (knowing Stoddard would die in a face-off), and
also for the greater good of the territory poised for statehood:
(Doniphon: "Cold-blooded
murder, but l can live with it. Hallie's happy. She wanted you alive");
Doniphon was regretful for saving Ransom's life: "I wish I
hadn't. Hallie's your girl now. Go on back in there and take that
nomination. You taught her how to read and write. Now give her somethin'
to read and write about!"
- the bitter sad, and tragic result of Doniphon's
killing of Liberty Valance, allowing Ransom to take Hallie away
as his wife - the woman Doniphon had loved in silence and had
hoped to marry; a
drunken Doniphon staggered home and set his own house on fire
by tossing an oil lamp into it; it had an extra addition that
he had built - planned to be the residence for his bride-to-be
Hallie; Doniphon (and his horses) were saved only by Pompey's
intervention
- for the remainder of his
life as a politician ("Three terms as governor, two terms
in the Senate, Ambassador to the Court of St. James, back again
to the Senate, and a man who, with the snap of his fingers, could
be the next Vice President of the United States"),
Stoddard was mistakenly known as "The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
- at the
end of Stoddard's flashback after finishing the true tale about
his past, local newspaper editor Maxwell Scott (Carleton Young)
delivered a famous line of dialogue in the film's conclusion as
he ripped up his novice reporter's notes and refused to publish
the truth of the story: (Ransom: "You're
not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?" Scott: "No,
sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print
the legend")
- the complex (and melancholic) reactions of Ransom
and Hallie when the conductor on their train back to Washington
DC, after their visit, enthusiastically told them: "Nothing's
too good for the Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"
|
Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) - Beaten Up During Stagecoach
Robbery
Tom Doniphon (John Wayne)
Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin)
Doniphon Slugged to the Ground by Ransom
Doniphon's Confession About Who Shot Liberty Valance
Doniphon Setting His Own House on Fire
The Telling of Ransom's Flashbacked Tale
The Train Ride Home
|
|
The Man Who Would Be King
(1975, UK)
In John Huston's revered and rollicking adventure
film based upon the short story by Rudyard Kipling, with realistic
site locations used for remote Kafiristan (in Afghanistan) - set
at the turn of the century:
- the tale regarding the camaraderie of two British
adventurers seeking wealth: Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery)
and Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine) who
set out from Raj-ruled India
- the battle scene in which Daniel pulled an arrow
from his chest (without bleeding) because the arrow had struck his
bandolier (his
leather ammunition belt, under his clothing, stopped the arrow),
giving the impression that he was immortal and a god - a direct
descendant of Alexander the Great; he was convinced by Peachy that
he should keep up the deception that he was a god, even though it
was blasphemous: ("Supposing you
was an ignorant Kafiri. Who would you rather follow, a god or a
man? Now, we're here to conquer this country, ain't we? Well, with
you as a god, it would take half the time and half the trouble....
Blaspheming is when you take his name in vain, God Almighty's");
after Daniel asked: ("What if they found out we was having
them on?"),
Peachy replied confidently: ("Why should they? We won't
tell them")
- the ritualistic wedding scene revealing Dravot's
humanity and mortality when he received a bloody bite on the cheek
from his bride-to-be Roxanne (Shakira Caine): ("The slut bit
me") - causing an angry reaction and pursuit from the natives
("Not
god, not devil, but man!") and Peachy's assessment: "The
jig's up"; Dravot apologized to Peachy and asked for his forgiveness:
("Peachy, I'm heartily ashamed for gettin' you killed instead
of goin' home rich like you deserve to, on account of me bein' so
bleedin' high and bloody mighty! Can you forgive me?"); Peachy
responded positively: ("That I can, and that I do, Danny. Free
and full and without let or hindrance"), satisfying Dravot:
("Everything's all
right, then")
Disastrous Wedding Scene
|
|
|
- although they made a run for it, the two were caught
and surrounded - and the courageous and resolute Daniel (wearing
his crown) was forced to walk to the center of a rope
bridge high above a canyon gorge; when the ropes were cut -
he suffered a spectacular death scene, falling deep into the gorge
while singing a few bars of the inspirational and stirring 1812
Irish hymn by Reginald Heber: "The Son of God Goes Forth to War":
("...A glorious band, the chosen few, On whom the spirit came. While valiant saints
that hope they knew, And mocked the cross and flame. He met the
tyrant's brandished steel, The lion's gory mane. He bowed his head,
his death to feel, (the rope bridge was cut through, sending Daniel
plummeting down) -- Who followed in his train?")
Daniel's Death Above Gorge
|
|
|
|
- the final image of Daniel's severed head, still wearing
the crown - presented by Peachy Carnehan to the Narrator/Kipling (Christopher
Plummer) as confirmation of his tall tale - and revealing his identity
as Peachy: ("And Peachy never let go of Daniel's head...You knew
Danny, sir?...(Peachy reached in his bag) You knew most worshipful
Brother, Daniel Dravot, Esquire. Well, he became the king of Kafiristan
with a crown on his head. And that's all there is to tell. I'll
be on my way now, sir. I've got urgent business in the South. I
have to meet a man at Marwar Junction")
|
Peachy Carnehan (Michael Caine)
Delusional and Arrogant Daniel
Pronounced King
Last Scene - Daniel's Severed Head with Crown Presented to Kipling by
Peachy
|
|
The Man With a Movie Camera (1929,
Soviet Union) (aka Chelovek S Kinoapparatom, or Человек C
Kино-Aппаратом)
In Soviet director Dziga Vertov's quintessential experimental,
avante-garde film - an excellent example of a "city symphony" documentary,
and regarded as "pure" visual
cinema without a plot, action, setting or dialogue (or intertitles);
the use of radical hyper-editing techniques, variable camera speeds,
dissolves, special visual effects, stop-motion, wild juxtapositions of
images, freeze frames, split-screens, and super-imposed double exposures
- a precursor of Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and MTV videos:
- the many day-in-Soviet-life views of Moscow, Kiev,
and Odessa, of Russian workers and machines, after the arrival of
a camera man (Mikhail Kaufman) (with an old-styled hand-cranked camera
with a tripod) in a very-static and dead city, that suddenly became
enlivened and energized by his arrival
- the film's opening - an empty film theatre, where the
seats folded down by themselves, and the audience entered to watch
a film (this film!)
- the double-exposure, camera-trickery shot of a cameraman
setting up his camera atop another camera
- the fast-moving, free-association of images (over 1,700
shots and scenes of everyday life), all presented with an average
of 2.3 seconds per shot length - was wholly unprecedented in the late
1920s
Free-Association of Film Images
|
|
|
|
- the images: street scenes, close-ups of machinery,
architecture, nature, beaches and beach crowds, workers, birth/wedding/death-funeral,
static shots (a typewriter keyboard, a store window display), etc. -
some images were displayed as dissolves, split-screens, in slow-motion,
or as super-impositions or double exposures
- the best example of stop-motion were the playful views
of the tripod-camera acting anthropomorphically, by rotating its camera-head
around, and then beginning to walk away on its three legs
- the ending, including some views of the actual process
of the editing of the film by the cameraman, accentuated by the super-imposed
image of a human eye looking out of a camera lens
The Ending
|
|
|
|
Camera Trickery
Filming an Oncoming Train
Movie Camera Lens
Birth of Baby
Eyeball Reflection
Stop Motion of Anthropomorphic Camera
|

Title Sequence - a Jagged or Crooked Forearm
|
The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)
In director Otto Preminger's code-defying, ground-breaking,
powerful drama about heroin addiction - the first major Hollywood
film about the subject:
- the revolutionary, artistic opening Saul
Bass Title Credits sequence (animated) with a cut-out of a jagged, twisted and
deconstructed forearm that moved (a symbol of heroin addiction)
- the character role of Frankie Machine
(Academy Award-nominated Frank Sinatra) (known for having "arms
of pure gold")
as both a jazz drummer and a professional poker dealer (with a knack
for lucrative card-dealing) - he was also a rehabilitated prison-hospital
ex-con returning to his slummy and squalid Chicago neighborhood
- the assortment of characters surrounding Frankie's
demise into using drugs again: oily and smarmy, dandified drug dealer
Louie (Darren McGavin), Frankie's small-time hoodlum Schwiefka
(Robert Strauss) and illicit card-game manager, and Frankie's mentally-challenged
comic sidekick Sparrow (Arnold Stang)
- the character of lying and deceiving
Sophia "Zosch" Machine (an over-the-top performance from
Eleanor Parker) - Frankie's dependent, neurotic and nagging wife
- she was allegedly crippled and wheelchair bound after a car accident
(when DUI Frankie was at the wheel)
- the scene of Frankie succumbing to becoming hooked
again, when Louie told him: "Monkey's never dead dealer. The
monkey never dies. When you kick him off, he just hides in a corner
waitin' his turn" -
there were close-ups of Frankie's eyes - revealing that he had become
high
- the scene of the marathon, all-weekend poker game,
culminating with strung-out Frankie pressured to resort to cheating
- and was caught
- Frankie's devastating breakdown during a Monday audition
when he tried out to be a jazz drummer in a band
- the sensational and painful sequence of Frankie going
"cold
turkey"
("Here we go, down and dirty") after strip-club/bar hostess
mistress/friend Molly (Kim Novak) (with a heart of gold) sarcastically
challenged him: ("Why should you hurt like other people hurt?
Yes, so you had a dog's life with never a break. Why try to face it
like most people do? No, just roll up all your pains into one big
hurt, and then flatten it with a fix"); she promised to keep
him locked in her apartment (after bundling up all sharp objects),
to help him beat his habit (by keeping him from quivering, writhing,
and feeling cold with blankets and the warmth of her own body)
|
|
|
Friendship with Molly (Kim Novak)
|
|
|
|
Frankie Going Cold-Turkey in Molly's
Apartment
|
- the final twists - (1) the revelation that Zosch was
actually able to walk and only pretending to be an invalid, (2) the
death of Louie when Zosch pushed him to his death down the stairwell
(he had just discovered that she was a fraud, and she
feared that he would ruin her life by divulging the truth that she was
a phony), and (3) Zosch's incrimination of Frankie for the crime,
but then Zosch's suicide by throwing herself off
the balcony onto the brick street below after she had again shown
she was stringing everyone along
|
Frankie Machine's (Frank Sinatra) Return to Neighborhood

Zosch's Welcome-Home for Frankie
Shooting-Up with Louie
Close-Up of Frankie's Eyes
Marathon Poker Game
Frankie's Breakdown During Drumming Audition
Zosch Pushing Louie To His Death Down Stairwell
Zosch's Suicide
|
|
The Man With Two Brains (1983)
In director Carl Reiner's sci-fi comedy:
- the opening car interview of brilliant brain neurosurgeon
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin), a widower and the inventor
of the easy-access "Screw-Top Brain" surgery technique
explaining his choice of science for his career: ("I don't know if I was interested so much
in the science as I was the slime that goes along with it. Snakes
and frogs. And when I saw how slimy the human brain was, I-I knew
that's what I wanted to do with the rest of my life")
- the accident that claimed the life of gold-digger
Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner)
- and then Dr. Hfuhruhurr's
series of long, complicated instructions to a little-girl bystander
to call paramedics to an accident scene, who repeated or recited
back his detailed directions perfectly, and then added her own
medical diagnosis and criticism: ("ER, North Bank General
Hospital, 932-1000. Set up O.R. 6, contact anesthesiologist Isadore
Tourick, 472-2112, beep 12. Ambulance with paramedics and light
IV, D-5, and W, KVO...Sounds like a subdural hematoma to me");
incensed, Hfuhruhurr barked back: "Three
years of nursery school and you think you know it all. Well, you're
still wet behind the ears. It's not a subdural hematoma. It's epidural.
Ha!"
- the pubic-hair shaving scene in the hospitl operating
room , when Dr. Hfuhruhurr questioned his assistant orderly, who
was shaving or grooming the genital area of his patient Dolores
before brain surgery, in honor of Valentine's Day: ("- What
is that? - It's a vagina. - I know what it is. I mean, what are
you doing? - Shaving her. - This is a brain operation. - I know.
- What's that supposed to be - a heart? - Yes, sir. Clive and
I thought that since it's Valentine's Day, that... - You don't
have to shave her anywhere. We'll be using my Cranial Screwtop
method of entry into the brain. - Fine. Yes, sir. - I never wanna
see that again. I suppose if it were Christmas, you'd hang ornaments
on it.")
- Hfuhruhrr's gift of a book of poems written by
John Lilyson to his hospitalized wife Dolores Benedict, including
"Pointy Birds": ("Oh pointy birds, oh pointy pointy,
anoint my head, anointy-nointy...") - Lilyson "died in 1894.
He was the first person ever to be hit by a car"; as she activated
the mechanical bed's lower portion to rise - to bring him closer for
their lips to kiss, he lovingly spoke: ("Poor little bird. So fragile.
So naive. So childlike. So shy. So chaste. So innocent") - and they
were soon married, bedside
- the scene of seductive, gold-digging, teasing femme
fatale Dolores in a skimpy nightgown with Dr. Hfuhruhrr's
before their first anticipated night of sex together: ("Does
this do anything for you?...Good. I want our first night together
to be exciting....I hope the waiting hasn't been too hard on
you. There's something I have to tell you. This fits very snug.
And you may have some trouble getting it off me. You may have
to tear it off my body") - he was cooperatively ready: "I
can tear. I like tearing"; however, Dr. Hfuhruhurr had
frustrated reactions to her feigned illness (of debilitating
headaches) to delay the consummation of her marriage to him
(causing him to erotically tongue an X-ray of her skull, run
up walls and break doorknobs off from pent-up tension)
- the "citizen's divorce" scene during a European
business trip, when Dr. Hfuhruhurr caught his wife propositioning
a client in their Viennese hotel bedroom for $15,000 to just touch
her rear-end; after throwing the man out, he claimed that she
was ruining their marriage, and she retorted: ("Why? Because you
don't want me to work? You don't want me to earn my own money?
Have my own career?"); he asserted: ("You call this a career!...Dolores,
I'm making a citizen's divorce...By the powers vested in me, I
hereby declare our marriage null and void. E pluribus unum")
- the classic scene of widowed Dr. Hfuhruhurr driving
with his dead ("dead drunk") wife Dolores Benedict in
the seat next to him, when he was stopped by a Viennese Austrian
policeman (Warwick Sims) for speeding; he was required to pass
an impossible drunk-driving test with these instructions: ("Get
out of the car. Stretch out your arms and touch your nose with
your finger. Now walk this white line. Come back. On your hands.
One hand. Now, roll over, turn over and flip-flop. All right.
Now juggle these, do a tap dance and sing the 'Catalina Magdalena
Hoopensteiner Wallendiner' song"); Dr. Hfuhruhurr passed
and was not suspected of being drunk, but complained: "God
damn, your drug tests are hard!"
|
|
|
"Citizen's Divorce" Scene
|
Impossible Drunk-Driving Test
|
- Hfuhruhurr's love affair after he realized he could
communicate telepathically with pickled disembodied brain # 21 (inside
a jar in a Vienna doctor's laboratory), named Anne Uumellmahaye
(voice of Sissy Spacek), who at first introduced herself: ("Anne.
Anne Uumellmahaye"); he spelled it out for confirmation:
("U-U-M-E-L-L-M-A-H-A-Y-E")
- and soon, he placed a pair of wax rubber lips on her to kiss
- also the funny encounter, in his search for a body
for his 'brain' soulmate, with a dumb, big-breasted, aggravatingly-voiced
American hooker named Fran (Randi Brooks) and her reaction to being
injected with window cleaner in her behind so that he could insert
Anne's brain into her body: "I don't mind!"
- the revelation of the identity of the serial Elevator
Killer who killed Dolores: Merv Griffin (Himself) in a cameo role,
who explained: ("I've always just loved to kill. I've really
enjoyed it. But then I got famous, and - it's just too hard for
me. And so many witnesses. I mean, everybody recognized me.
I couldn't even work anymore. I'd hear: 'Who's that lurking over
there? Isn't that Merv Griffin?'")
- and the funny ending - after Anne's brain had been
transplanted into Dolores' body - in which Anne's compulsive overeating
caused Dolores' body to inflate - Hfuhruhurr sweetly overlooked
her weight problem (although he struggled to carry her over the
threshold after their wedding -- with his knees buckling) during
the end credits, with the statement: ("Merv
Griffin did not turn himself in and is at large. If you have any
information as to his whereabouts, call your local theatre manager")
|
Dr. Hfuhruhurr Explaining Career Choice
Death of Dolores Benedict
Instructions for Paramedic
Pubic Hair Shaving
Kissing Patient
Dolores - Seductive and Teasing
Licking X-ray of Dolores' Skull
Love Affair with Disembodied Brain
Fran (Randi Brooks)
Serial Elevator Killer - Merv Griffin
Ending
|
|
The Manchurian
Candidate (1962)
In John Frankenheimer's classic, paranoid
political conspiracy thriller:
- the fitful and haunting
nightmares
experienced by Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) after returning
from wartime ("Night after night, the Major
was plagued by the same re-occurring nightmare") - terrible, unconscious
memories of his experiences in Manchuria when he was subjected
to successful brainwashing; he often woke up in a cold sweat
- the famous brainwashing/dream sequence in which
Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) and then Captain Marco
and their platoon were present onstage at a ladies'
garden club auxiliary meeting in a small hotel; they had been
conditioned, programmed, and manipulated by a Pavlovian Chinese
brainwasher to imagine that they were attending a ladies' auxiliary
meeting/tea party; the images switched
between the imagined, delusionary, conditioned point of view within
the brainwashed soldiers' heads and actual reality
 |
 |
 |
Strangulation of Ed Mavole by Raymond Shaw
|
|
|
|
Raymond Shaw's Execution of Bobby Lembeck
|
- the camera began a slow, 360 degree, all-encompassing
circular tracking shot around the meeting to reveal that they
were part of a brain-washing demonstration within Manchuria - it
began with an elderly white woman, Mrs. Henry Whittaker, speaking
tediously from the stage on the topic of "Fun With Hydrangeas"
to an audience of about two dozen elderly ladies in floral hats
who were taking in the lecture on horticulture; when the camera
returned to the stage 360 degrees later after the cyclical camera
movement, a tall, bald Communist Chinese/Korean doctor-spylord
Yen Lo (Khigh Dhiegh) was actually in
charge and had taken the woman's place and voice - he introduced
the captured, passive and impotent men, all drugged and hypnotized,
who were seated in front of giant poster/photographs of Joseph
Stalin and Mao Tse Tung, and watched from an amphitheatre of
ominous-looking foreign Asians
- the sequence of puppet-master Yen Lo calmly demonstrating
Raymond's emotionless killing capacity through the technique
of programming - by instructing Shaw to "strangle...to death" with
a white scarf Ed Mavole
(Richard La Pore); the men sat placidly and bored with no emotion, while
Mavole was dutifully killed
- the odd completely positive phrase used by all
of the brainwashed Korean war veterans for describing their commander,
a Congressional Medal of Honor winner: ("Raymond
Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being
I've ever known in my life")
- the scene of a televised press conference during
which Raymond's bitchy mother Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela
Lansbury) watched her 'Josephy McCarthy-ite' husband Senator John
Iselin's (James Gregory) diminutive image on a TV monitor, a Vice-Presidential
candidate, as he provoked his rival Secretary of Defense (Barry
Kelley) for making cuts in defense spending: ("I have here
a list of the names of 207 persons who are known by the Secretary
of Defense as being members of the Communist Party...I demand
an answer, Mr. Secretary. There will be no covering up, sir, no
covering up. You are not going to get your hands on this list.
And I deeply regret having to say...")
- the similar nightmarish dreams of another young
Korean War vet - former black Corporal Al Melvin
(James Edwards) - who was also startled awake after another horrendous
dream involving the garden party; in a second demonstration,
the brainwashed Raymond
Shaw was also calmly directed to shoot - "through the forehead" -
the platoon's favorite, youngest member and "mascot" Bobby
Lembeck (Tom Lowell); so without hesitation or even a second thought,
Raymond pointed the gun at the camera - the smiling, trusting
face of the young soldier - and blew his brains out, and blood
splattered on the huge portrait of Stalin behind him
- the intriguing scene in the space between railcars
when Marco met and spoke to the mysterious, beguiling and attractive
Eugenie Rose Chaney (Janet Leigh) - during their weird,
oblique conversation, they talked about
four US states, Columbus Ohio's football team, railroad lines, and
her two names (Eugenie and nickname Rosie) - were they speaking
in cryptic code?
- the transition from Senator Iselin's use of a bottle
of Heinz 57 Varieties ketchup bottle at dinner on his steak to his
public testimony in the Senate in the next scene that there were
definitely 57 card-carrying Communists in the Defense Department
- Marco's reaction when he saw Chunjin (Henry Silva)
at Shaw's apartment door - Chunjin was an
"Oriental gentleman" who served with Shaw in the Army and was now
Shaw's houseboy - Shaw
suddenly recalled recessed memories that Chunjin was the guide who had led
the platoon into an ambush, and they engaged in a lengthy karate
fight
- in the Jillys NYC bar sequence, Shaw heard the
triggering words: "Why don't you pass the time by playing a
little solitaire?" - and after asking for a deck of cards,
he turned over the Queen of Diamonds at the same time that he coincidentally
overheard another conversation: "Why
don't you go and take yourself a cab and go up to Central Park and
go jump in the lake?"
- and Shaw, now an automated,
brain-washed zombie, proceeded to carry out the order in the middle of winter
- at the costume party/ball at the Iselin's summer
house on Long Island, the opening image of a large American flag
suddenly having caviar scooped from its star pattern by Senator
Iselin (dressed as Abe Lincoln)
- the brilliantly-photographed, late-night assassination
sequence of Raymond's killing of his own father-in-law (Iselin's
political rival for VP) - left-leaning Senator Thomas Jordan (John
McGiver) (standing in front of the refrigerator, he bled milk from
a punctured milk carton instead of blood) and of his own new wife
Jocie Jordan (Leslie Parrish)
- the scene in which Marco attempted to de-program
Shaw by fanning an entire deck of 52 Queens of Diamonds in front
of his face: ("So the red Queen is our baby. Well, take
a look at this, kid. Fifty-two of them. Take a good look
at 'em, Raymond. Look at 'em...The links, the beautifully-conditioned
links are smashed. They're smashed as of now because we say so, because
we say they oughta be smashed. We're bustin' up the joint, we're tearin'
out all the wires, we're bustin' it up so good all the Queen's horses
and all the Queen's men will never put ol' Raymond back together again.
You don't work anymore. That's an order. Anybody invites you to a game
of solitaire - you tell 'em: 'Sorry, buster, the ball-game is over!'")
- the sequence of Shaw's corrupt, monstrous and perverse
maternal figure, Mrs. Iselin, with an insatiable lust for power,
describing the task and arrangements for him while seated next to
Jocie's giant Queen of Diamonds costume - his mission was to assassinate
the Presidential nominee Benjamin K. Arthur (Robert Riordan) during
the political convention - a catastrophe that would advance Raymond's
step-father's political career and pave the way for a legal takeover
of the White House; as a symbol of her sincerity and love, she held
both sides of his face with her claw-like fingers while smothering
him with kisses on his forehead and right cheek - she ended with
a seductive, incestuous warm kiss on his lips
Mrs. Iselin's Corrupt and Lustful Power Over Raymond
|
|
|
|
- the final climactic sequence during the political
rally-convention in Madison Square Garden with Shaw disguised as
a priest, carrying a sniper rifle, and positioned in an upper,
unused spotlight booth at the convention center - and Marco's desperate
sprint to the top of the arena to prevent an assassination in the
making - arriving too late to prevent Shaw from firing on his own
step-father and mother (whether it was because of Marco's 'deprogramming'
effort or because of his own realization of his parents' evil was
left unclear); he then donned his own Congressional Medal of Honor
around his neck, and spoke to a stunned Marco who had just arrived
("You
couldn't have stopped them, the Army couldn't have stopped them.
So I had to");
he turned his rifle on himself and suicidally blew his brains out
- Marco witnessed the blast (offscreen)
- the dissolve from the gunshot blast to crackling
lightning/thunder claps at
film's end - an epilogue, when Marco looked out a rain-spattered
window, and then read from a History of the US Army book filled
with citations for other heroic Congressional Medal of Honor winners,
including his own posthumous citation of bravery for Shaw's sacrifice
in stopping the Iselins; Marco pondered on the meaning of Shaw's
life/death: ("Made
to commit acts too unspeakable to be cited here by an enemy who
had captured his mind and his soul. He freed himself at last and
in the end heroically and unhesitatingly gave his life to save his
country. Raymond Shaw. Hell! Hell!")
|
Major Marco's Nightmares
Brainwashing Sequence
Televised Press Conference - Mrs. Iselin Watching
Husband on Monitor
Blood Splatter on Stalin Poster
Shaw's Train Conversation with Rosie
Heinz 57 Ketchup Varieties Transition
Marco's Karate-Fight Confrontation with Chunjin (Henry
Silva)
Raymond
("Go jump in the lake")
Assassination of Senator Jordan
Marco's Attempt to De-Program Shaw
Climactic Scene at Political Rally
Marco's Epilogue
|
|
Manhattan (1979)
In co-writer/director Woody Allen's classic comedy,
accentuated by Gordon Willis' exquisite soft-focus B/W cinematography,
shot in 35 mm Panavision:
- one of the greatest cinematic opening
montages ever with George Gershwin's music ("Rhapsody in
Blue")
accompanying the beautiful black-and-white photography of New York
City by day and then night (including fireworks) starting with the
skyline, then buildings and streets
- the character of television author/joke writer
Isaac ("Ike") Davis (Woody Allen) who delivered a voice-over
monologue/narration of his various failed attempts and five versions
of "Chapter
One"
of his planned novel he aspired to write, ending with: ("'Chapter
One. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his
black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat.'
Oh, I love this! 'New York was his town, and it always would be'")
- Isaac's meeting with neurotic Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton)
at an Equal Rights Amendment fund-raising event at the Museum of
Modern Art (MOMA), and later after a date, taking an after-hours
cab ride home, stroll, and conversation on a park bench (silhouetted)
against the sight of the 59th Street Queensboro Bridge - to the
sounds of the Gershwin tune: "Someone
to Watch Over Me"
- the famous one-liners: Mary: "I'm
beautiful, I'm bright and I deserve better!"; and Isaac: "I
think there's something wrong with me because I've never had a relationship
with a woman that's lasted longer than the one Hitler had with Eva
Braun"
- the opening Elaine's restaurant scene, when Isaac
bragged about his handsome, more provocative appearance with a cigarette
to his date - 17 year-old high-school student Tracy (Oscar-nominated
Mariel Hemingway): ("I
know I don't smoke. I don't inhale because it gives you cancer,
but I look so incredibly handsome with a cigarette, that I can't
not hold one. You like the way I look?...Gettin' through to ya,
right?");
when Tracy left for a few moments, Isaac continued: ("I'm older
than her father. Can you believe that? I'm dating a girl wherein
I can beat up her father. That's the first time that phenomenon
ever occurred in my life")
- the carriage ride scene with Tracy through Central
Park, when Isaac told her - after kissing her: ("You're...you're
God's answer to Job. You know, you would have ended all, all argument
between them. I mean, he would've pointed at you and said, you know:
'I do a lot of terrible things but I can also make one of these.'
You know? And then Job would've said: 'OK, well, you win.'")
- the heartbreaking malt-soda shop scene when Isaac
suggested breaking up with his radiant girlfriend
Tracy: ("Listen, I don't, I-I
don't think we should keep seeing each other...Because I think you're
getting too hung up on me, you know? 'Hung up on me.' I'm
starting to sound like you when I talk.... You can't be in love
with me. We've been over this. You're a kid. You don't know what
love means. I don't know what it means. Nobody out there knows what
the hell's going on.... but you're 17 years old.
By the time you're 21, you're gonna have, you'll have a dozen relationships,
believe me, far more passionate than this one")
- Isaac's film-ending
"why is life worth living" dictation into his tape recorder
(he mentioned jazz, sports, and entertainment heroes such as Groucho
Marx, Willie Mays, Louis Armstrong, and concluded with the smile on
Tracy's face): ("My idea for a short story about, uhm, people
in Manhattan, who, uh, are constantly creating these real, unnecessary
neurotic problems for themselves, 'cause it keeps them from dealing
with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe. Uhm,
let's, uh, well, it has to be optimistic. All right, why is life worth
living? That's a very good question. Uhm, well, there are certain
things I-I guess that make it worthwhile. Uh, like what? Okay. Uhm,
for me, ah, ooh, I would say - what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing.
Uh, uhmm, and Willie Mays, and uhm, uh, the Second Movement of the
Jupiter Symphony. And uhm, Louis Armstrong recording Potatohead Blues.
Uhm, Swedish movies, naturally, Sentimental Education by Flaubert,
uh, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra. Uhm, those incredible apples and
pears by Cézanne.
Uh, the crabs at Sam Wo's. Uhm, Tracy's face...")
- his breathless run through NY streets to stop his
(now) eighteen year-old drama student/girlfriend Tracy's departure
by plane for London to study at the Academy and their romantically
poignant and touching final scene when the young lover consoled
Isaac with the bittersweet line that ended the film: ("Six
months isn't so long. Everybody gets corrupted. You have to have
a little faith in people")
- the concluding shot of Isaac's face with a wry,
resigned smiling expression (a farewell version of The Tramp's (Charlie
Chaplin) expression in City Lights (1931)),
followed by a reprise of the opening montage featuring the skyline
from dawn to dusk to Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue"
|
Isaac's Acquaintance with Mary Wilke
Park Bench Scene
Isaac with 17 Year-Old Tracy in Restaurant
Central Park Carriage Ride
Soda-Shop Break-Up Sequence
"Why is Life Worth Living"
Tracy's Departure: "You have to have a little faith in
people"
Isaac's Concluding Smile
|
|
Manhattan Murder Mystery
(1993)
In Woody Allen's hilarious comedy - his ode to The
Thin Man (1934) and Rear Window
(1954), again reuniting Allen with frequent star Diane
Keaton:
- the middle-aged couple of Larry (Woody Allen) and Carol Lipton (Diane
Keaton) - a married New York couple, whose lives were energized
by the 'mystery' death of their neighbor Lillian House (Lynn
Cohen), the wife of Mr. Paul House (Jerry Adler); Carol had been
stalking Paul in a movie theater and claimed to have discovered
a motive - that he might be running off with a young pretty actress
named Helen Moss (Melanie Norris): ("He was with this young
model type, and they were talking about money....So, that's the
motive")
- in a late-night scene at 1 am, Larry commanded
his hyperactive wife, who wanted to investigate and enter their
neighbor's apartment by using a key, to go back to bed: ("I'm
telling you, I'm your husband. I command you to sleep!. Sleep!
I command it!...I command it! Sleep!"); she counter-argued,
with obsessive, 'Nancy Drew'-like suspicions that the non-mourning,
cheerful husband Mr. House had murdered his wife Lillian: ("Larry,
all I can tell you is, if this had been a few years ago, you would
have been doing the same thing. 'Cause if you recall, we solved
a mystery. Yep, we solved a mystery once. Remember? It was the
- it was the noises in the attic mystery")
- the scene of their sneaky visit into Paul's apartment,
where Larry was frantic with worry, while Carol looked for clues
and said: ("I think something's very strange, here.... I think
the whole thing is really sinister")
- the many funny, acerbic one-liners by Larry: ("I've
reevaluated our lives! I got a 10, you got a 6!", "There's
nothing wrong with you that a little Prozac and a polo mallet can't
cure!",
and "Jesus, save a little craziness for menopause!")
- the funny moments when a hotel elevator stalled and
Larry suddenly became very panicked: ("I'm-I'm-I'm a-a world-renowned
claustrophobic...I don't like this, I don't, I don't...It's easy
for you to say, but I can't breath, I'm phobic...I'm not panicking,
I'm not panicking, I'm...I'm just gonna say the rosary, now...Oh,
I don't know, I don't like this...I'm running over a field, I see
open meadows. I see a stallion. I'm a stallion...There's
a cool breeze passing over me. I see grass. I see dirt...Let's
go, my life is passing in front of my eyes. The worst part of it
is, I'm driving a used car")
- and then, their shocking discovery
of a corpse - Lillian's body - inside an emergency exit panel above
them, with her arm dangling down: ("Oh,
my God. It's her....Oh,
Jesus! Claustrophobia AND a dead body - this is a neurotic's jackpot!")
- the character of sultry writer Marcia Fox (Anjelica
Huston) who helped Larry, Carol and single playwright friend Ted
(Alan Alda) devise a trap to ensnare Mr. House
- the clever recreation of the climax of The
Lady From Shanghai (1948) in the back of an old revival
theatre (the characters reenacted the mirror scene - life imitating
art - as it played behind them on the screen); when House's
spiteful paramour-accomplice and loyal assistant Mrs. Gladys
Dalton (Marge Redmond) appeared, confronted him with a gun,
and shot him for being brushed aside: ("Hello
Paul. Didn't you expect me?...You made a lot of promises to
me, over the years. And then, you decided to dump me for that
young model...It's late for excuses...I'm aiming at you, lover.
Of course, killing you is killing myself...But you know, I'm
pretty tired of both of us")
Re-Enactment of Mirror Scene - Shooting of Mr. House
by Mrs. Dalton
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- the concluding scene of Marcia's recap of the entire
mystery to Ted as they left police headquarters - the first dead body
belonged to Lillian's rich sister, who bore a passing resemblance
to Lillian but was not her twin - she suffered a heart attack while
visiting them and the Houses claimed that she was Lillian - but
then House double-crossed and killed Lillian, so he could run off
with the young model-actress Helen: ("Oh,
listen. I'll give it to you one more time. Mrs. House had a sister
who moved to England many years ago. She changed her name when she
married. Her husband died. She moved back to New York recently, a
very, very rich widow, but a recluse. Mr. and Mrs. House knew they
weren't in her will. They have her over to dinner, she accidentally
keels over. I guessed right there. She has a reasonable resemblance
to her sister, so they fake it. Pretend Lillian House died. They cremate
the sister. Lillian checks into a fleabag joint and for several
weeks she pretends to be her sister, closing her accounts, liquidating
her assets, accumulating big money. What she didn't realize was
that her husband was two-timing her with Helen Moss, this pretty
model. So, he decides not to cut her in and go off to, I don't know
--- with his mistress and, uh, keep all the dough. So, he kills
Lillian. He cremates her, or pours molten steel all over her or
something, and, uh, that's when we came along and tripped him up...Mrs.
Dalton? She covered for him. She loved him. Not that she dreamed
he was a murderer")
- the final exchange after the mystery was solved,
when Larry and Carol were walking down a NY street discussing where
they would go for dinner and talking about some of their mutual
jealousies, when Carol happened to mention their friend Ted: (Larry: "You've
got to be kiddin'. Take away his-his-his elevator shoes, and his
fake sun tan and his capped teeth and what do you have?" Carol: "You!" Larry:
"Right! I like that...")
|
Larry and Carol Lipton
Larry's Claustrophobia in Elevator
Discovery of Dead Body
Ending: Larry and Carol on NY Street
|
|
Manhunter
(1986)
In Michael Mann's original version of Red Dragon -
the prequel to The Silence of the Lambs (1991):
- the skin-crawlingly creepy prologue in which a
hand-held videocamera "stalked" a family and then cut
to titles shortly after one of the victims awakened in her bedroom
- the character of retired FBI forensic expert Will
Graham (William L. Petersen - later starring in CSI onTV)
who vividly described a macabre crime scene (by entering the mind-set
of the killer), including details of the killer's features: ("blonde
hair, strong, size 12 shoe imprint, blood AB positive")
- the scene of Graham's tense
interview with the first incarnation of "insane" Dr.
Hannibal "Lecktor"
(Brian Cox) in a stark, antiseptic, harshly-lit white cell where Graham
was reminded when Lecktor asked:
("Do you know how you caught me? The reason you caught me, Will,
because we're just alike. Do you understand? Smell yourself")
- the 'eureka moment' profiler Graham had about the
serial killer's modus operandi as he climbed a tree outside
the Jacobi house: ("When night came, you saw them pass by their
bright windows. You watched the shades go down, and you saw the
lights go out one by one. And after a while, you climbed down and
you went into them, didn't you? (shouting) DIDN'T YOU, YOU SON OF
A BITCH! YOU WATCHED THEM ALL GODDAMN DAY LONG!! That's why houses
with big yards")
- the character of tall, crazed, near-albino serial
killer Francis "Tooth
Fairy" Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) with a cleft-palate and scraggly
white hair, and wearing a ladies' sheer stocking mask over his head
and eyes - who ambushed pushy tabloid reporter
Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang) in an underground parking garage, and
then forced Lounds to watch a slideshow -
beginning with a painting of William Blake's The
Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Rays of the Sun,
with further pictures of his transformed female victims (Mrs. Leeds,
Mrs. Jacobi); he delivered a scary speech: ("Before me, you are a
slug in the sun. You are privy to a great becoming, and you recognize
nothing. You are an ant in the afterbirth. It is your nature to
do one thing correctly, tremble. But fear is not what you owe me.
No, Lounds, you and the others, you owe me awe")
- the spectacular murder scene - when Lounds was set
ablaze in a wheelchair and rolled down a steep underground parking
garage ramp towards the camera - and died later in a hospital
Murder Scene of Freddy Lounds
|
|
|
- the sexually-charged scene in which Dollarhyde
took a blind, fiercely independent lab technician co-worker Reba
McClane (Joan Allen) to feel an anesthetized tiger
- Graham's scene with his son Kevin (David Seaman)
while grocery shopping when he had to answer questions about his
job and what he did for a living (including how he had been inducted
into a mental institution due to his association with Lektor): ("I
tried to build feelings in my imagination like the killer had so
that I would know why he did what he did, because that would help
me find him...But after my body got okay, I still had his thoughts
going around in my head")
- the climactic scene in which Graham explosively
burst through a glass doorway to save Reba from the Tooth Fairy,
as Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida throbbed rhythmically;
Graham revived and emptied his gun
with six shots into Dollarhyde, who fell down dead on the kitchen
floor, with his blood spread out under his body (like the wings
of the demon in the Blake painting)
- the concluding scene when Graham returned to his
Florida home after the nightmarish ordeal had ended, to see his
pretty blonde wife Molly (Kim Greist) and admit: "I thought
I had to work things out and call you after." She responded: "I
thought I wouldn't wait"; they stood at the ocean shore together,
as he asked about the turtles: "How many of them made it?" - as
Red 7's tune "Heartbeat" played
|
Dr. "Lecktor" in Cell
Serial killer Francis "Tooth Fairy" Dollarhyde
(Tom Noonan)
Kidnapped Reporter Freddy Lounds
Reba with Tiger
Graham's Murder of Dollarhyde
Graham with Wife Molly
|
|
Marathon
Man (1976)
In John Schlesinger's paranoid suspense thriller:
- the early scene of the Parisian hotel room attack
on Henry "Doc" Levy (Roy Scheider), a globe-trotting,
covert American government agent (in a group known as "the
Division") working
to foil aging, fugitive, ex-Nazi war criminals; while standing on his
balcony with a view of the Eiffel Tower, Doc was garrotted
from behind by an assailant, but was able to fight off his brutal
attacker and break his neck
- the character of Dr. Christian Szell (Laurence
Olivier), who was known for selling stolen contraband diamonds
for his own profit (derived from gold taken from Jews' teeth during
WWII when he was at Auschwitz, known as "The White Angel,
Der Weie Engel, due to his white hair")
- the break-in scene, when doctoral student
Thomas "Babe" Levy (Dustin Hoffman), "Doc's" brother, was
taking a bath in his tub in his NYC apartment, when two mysterious
intruders entered - he screamed for help, but was
seized, dunked head-first into his bathtub, and abducted
- the first session of death
camp dentist Szell's sadistic, grim torture of "Babe", in a window-less
room, when he calmly asked the baffling
question:
"Is it safe?", unrolled a collection of probing, ominous-looking
dental instruments, and began to torture him; "Babe" stubbornly refused
to divulge any information; after causing intense pain, Szell applied
a dab of a medicinal liquid on his little finger to the affected tooth:
("Is it not remarkable? Simple oil of cloves and how amazing the results.
Life can be that simple; relief - discomfort. Now, which of these
I next apply, that decision is in your hands, so, take your time and
tell me. Is it safe?")
Dr. Christian Szell: "Is it safe?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- the second session of interrogation, when Szell
spoke about how "Doc" had possibly relayed information to "Babe"
before his death, and he would now use further torture to extract
assurances of safety: ("Your brother was incredibly strong. Strength
is often inherited. He died in your arms. He travelled far and
in great pain to do that. There has to be a reason....Please don't
worry. I'm not going into that cavity. That nerve's already dying.
A live, freshly-cut nerve is infinitely more sensitive, so I'll
just drill into a healthy tooth until I reach the pulp. Unless,
of course, you can tell me that it's safe"); "Babe" screamed as
the pain increased and then passed out; Szell spoke to his thugs:
"He knew nothing. If he'd known, he would have told. Get rid of
him"
- the scene of Babe's marathon run-escape across
town to get back to his Manhattan apartment
- the confrontation scene in a country house between
"Doc's" double-agent boss Peter Janeway (William Devane), "Babe's"
duplicitous girlfriend Elsa Opel (Marthe Keller), and Janeway's
agents, ending with everyone shot and dead except for "Babe"
- the scene of Szell's return to NYC from his hideout
in Uruguay, South America, in order to retrieve a valuable cache
of diamonds, when he was recognized by a jewelry shop assistant
clerk (an Auschwitz survivor and former victim) in a Jewish section
of town, although Szell claimed his name was "Christopher
Hess";
as he calmly but quickly left the shop and walked down a Manhattan
street, he was also identified by a Jewish woman, who spoke out
and cried after him: ("I know that man. It can't be Szell?
Szell. Szell! Szell! Szell! My God! Stop him! Szell! Stop Szell!
It's Szell. Der Weie Engel! Der Weie Engel is here. Oh, my God.
Stop him. Stop him! Der Weie Engel! Der Weie Engel. He has to
be stopped. My God! He gets away. Der Weie Engel is here! Szell.
Stop him! Oh, please help me. He's a beast. He's a murderer. You
must stop him. Oh, my God, there he goes! He's getting away!...Der
Weie Engel is here! Stop him! Stop him! I will stop him! I will
stop him! The beast! The beast!") - as she ran after him
into the street, she was struck by a taxi, but continued to cry
out, as he ducked away in the crowd
- however, the shop-owner had
been following and tapped Szell on his shoulder: ("I know
who you are, you murderer. I know who you are!"); he was
swiftly slashed across the throat by Szell, who then fled in a
taxi from the scene
- the final scene - Babe's confrontation with Szell
in NYC's Central Park, when he told the ex-Nazi diamond hunter that
he could keep whatever diamonds he could swallow from his briefcase:
("You can keep as many as you can swallow...Yeah, swallow, eat.
Essen...I'm not joking. Essen!"); when
Szell taunted and accused Babe of being weak: ("You'll have to
shoot me. Come on. Shoot. You won't. You can't. You're too weak. Your
father was weak in his way, your brother in his, now you in yours.
You are all so predictable"), they fought and Szell fatally fell
down a circular metal staircase onto his own knife blade as he went
to retrieve the diamonds, and then tumbled into the water
|
Garrotting of "Doc" Levy in Paris
Abduction of "Doc's" Brother "Babe" in NYC
Death of "Doc's" Double-Agent Boss Peter Janeway
(William Devane)
Dr. Szell Recognized on NY Street
Szell's Slashing of Shop-Owner's Throat
Final Scene: "Babe" vs. Dr. Szell in Central Park
|
|
March of the Penguins (2005,
Fr.) (aka Le Marche de l'Empereur)
In the highest grossing nature documentary ever made
(up to its time), Luc Jacquet's Oscar-winner for Best Documentary
Feature, with awe-inspiring visuals of the icy continent of Antarctica,
and beautifully narrated by
Morgan Freeman:
- the opening narrated line: ("There are few places
hard to get to in this world. But there aren't any where it's
harder to live") - about the fight for survival by Emperor penguins,
as they live in the center of the harshest place on Earth
- Antarctica
- the miles-long penguin march and their awkward,
waddling-walking when not flopping on their bellies to slide forward
on the hardened snow, to return to the breeding grounds for the
mating season, about 70 miles away: ("To get there, they will walk
day and night continuously, sometimes for a week. It is a long,
dangerous and seemingly impossible journey, and some of them will
not survive it")
- the clumsy, perilous ballet of handing off eggs (later
hatching chicks) between parents, and the difficult
efforts of the male penguin parent to keep the fragile penguin
egg warm to ensure its incubation over a long period of time: ("As
soon as the egg appears, it is instantly hidden from the cold. The
tiny beating heart within the shell cannot survive much more than
a moment's exposure to the freezing air. From now on, the couple
has but a single goal, keeping their egg alive. The hungry mother
must return at once to the sea to eat. But before she leaves, she
must entrust the egg to its father. Some, young couples perhaps,
are too impulsive or rushed. And within moments, their affair comes
to an end. They can only watch as the ice claims their egg and the
life within it. This couple's partnership is now over. The long
march in vain....And now begins one of nature's most incredible
and endearing role reversals. It is the penguin male who will tend
the couple's single egg....it is the father who will shield the
egg from the violent winds and cold")
- the graceful underwater swimming by the female penguins,
who return to the water to eat ("to fill their empty bellies")
- the crowd-pleasing sequence of a young chick reunited
with its mother for the first time: ("To find each other in the
enormous crowd, the penguins must rely on sound, not sight. As they
circle, the returning mothers trumpet loudly and wait for their
mates to call back. The sound is deafening, and yet, somehow, each
of them will hear their mate's song. The couple has found one another.
The mother sees her chick for the first time. And, at last, the
family is together")
The Young Emperor Penguin Chick
|
|
|
|
- the view of the adolescent
penguin chicks learning to walk, and then diving into the water
-- (in voice-over): "Going
home for the first time"
- the film's final voice-over line: ("And
they will march just as they have done for centuries, ever since
the Emperor Penguin decided to stay, to live and love in the harshest
place on Earth")
|
Warming The Penguin Egg
The Penguin Parents
Underwater Swimming
|
|
Margie (1946)
In Henry King's Technicolored, nostalgic and sentimental
romantic comedy (with some musical numbers) - a Fox box-office smash
about the coming-of-age of a teenaged girl in the Roaring 1920s; it
was told in flashback from a generation later - with the tagline: "Youth
was 'Flaming!' Everyone danced the 'Charleston!' College boys sat on
flagpoles... and gulped goldfish! 'Sheiks' toted their 'Shebas' in 'Tin
Lizzies!' 'Flappers' rolled their stockings...and rouged their knees...
and the whole nation was singing":
- the opening sequence: an uninterrupted tracking shot
from outside a house, through an open window and into the attic,
where post-war, middle-aged housewife Mrs. "Margie" MacDuff
(Jeanne Crain) shared her life as a teenager with her daughter Joyce
(Ann E. Todd), who had just located Margie's photo album - emphasizing
past crazes such as sitting on a flagpole or eating live goldfish
(Joyce to her mother: "Tell me all about the crazy and idiotic things
you did when you were my age")
- the beautiful flashback transition from 1946 back to
1928, the social milieu of Mrs. MacDuff - when the soundtrack
paired Rudy Vallee's singing of 'My Time is Your Time' (on a wind-up
Victrola phonograph in the attic, a hit song from the late 1920s)
- back to the same song that was playing in two past instances:
(1) from a speaker on a Herbert Hoover ("The Great Engineer")
campaign truck in 1928, and (2) from the singing voice of Marybelle
Tenor (Barbara Lawrence), Margie's popular, blonde, leggy and fashionable
neighbor girlfriend, who was in front of the school waiting for her
popular boyfriend - letter-sweatered, raccoon-coated and dim-witted
Johnny 'Johnnykins' Green (Conrad Janis)
Transition From Victrola to Herbert Hoover Truck
|
|
|
- the introduction of the character of the bookish,
innocently boy-crazy, shy-bashful, and accident-prone Central High
School student Marjorie 'Margie' MacDuff (Jeanne Crain also) in Ohio,
almost always in pigtails or a knit stocking cap and sailor suits - with the
continuing embarrassing problem of Margie's bloomers falling down (with
broken elastic) at inopportune moments - after school, in the school
library, during ice skating, and at the Senior Prom
- the disinterest of Margie toward her bumbling boyfriend
- same-aged
nerdy, poetry-writing suitor Roy Hornsdale (Alan Young in his film
debut), while she was developing a crush (with other girls) on her
new handsome French teacher Professor Ralph Fontayne (Glenn Langan),
who was interested in the school's pretty librarian Miss Isabelle Palmer
(Lynn Bari)
- the scene
of Margie's debate (Central High vs. Polytechnic High) of US foreign
policy in the late 1920s, about whether the US should keep or remove
its US Marines from Nicaragua - and her passionate argument that freedom
was more valuable than American capitalism (selling Nicaragua American
plumbing to raise their standard of living): "Ladies
and gentlemen, would you turn in liberty for a bathtub? Would you?...Don't
let the flag of the United States mean bathtubs and plumbing instead
of liberty to the people of South America"; she concluded that the
Marines should be removed from the Latin American country, after
which she was wildly applauded, especially by her widowed, mortician
father Angus MacDuff (Hobart Cavanaugh) and her Grandmother McSweeney
(Esther Dale)
- the ending
scene with Margie heartbroken that Roy became sick and couldn't take
her to the Senior Prom, followed by the mix-up about who would be taking
Margie to the dance - Mr. MacDuff had been recruited to surprise her,
although Margie was misled into believing that Fontayne would be taking
her (instead, he was taking the school librarian Miss Isabelle Palmer);
although initially disappointed that Fontayne wouldn't be taking her,
she was overjoyed to learn that her father would accompany her; at
the dance, however, Fontayne told her as they danced: "Between
you and me, Margie, I'd rather dance with you than anyone in this
room...I said, I'd rather dance with you than anyone in this room
- and I meant it...Anyone!"
|
|
|
Senior Prom
|
Margie's Date: Her Father Mr. MacDuff
|
Dancing with
Mr. Fontayne
|
- the film's plot surprise - as the film returned to
the present -- Margie's husband was Mr. Fontayne, the Central High's
current principal, and in the newspaper's headlines, Angus MacDuff
was announced as the new Ambassador to Nicaragua
|
Opening Tracking Shot
Mrs. MacDuff and Daughter Joyce
Young 'Margie' MacDuff
(Jeanne Crain)
Marybelle and Johnnykins
Prof. Fontayne with Isabelle and Margie
Debate: "Would you turn in liberty for a bathtub?"
Plot Twist at End: Mr. Fontayne Was Mrs. MacDuff's Husband, and
the Principal of Central High
Angus MacDuff = Ambassador to Nicaragua
|
|
Marius (1931, Fr.)
In director Alexander Korda's romantic comedy, characterized
by the authentic-sounding vernacular dialect and rolling Southern France
accents, with a story adapted from Marcel Pagnol's 1929 stage play;
it was noted as the first installment of Marcel Pagnol's Fanny (or
Marseille) trilogy (followed by Fanny (1932) and Cesar
(1936)):
- the title character: restless and unfulfilled 22 year-old
Marius (Pierre Fresnay) living in the port city of Marseille, helping
his doting and overbearing widowed father - bar owner Cesar Olivier
(Raimu); Marius had two conflicting loves:
(1) a troubled romance with
18 year-old childhood sweetheart Fanny (Orane Demazi, scriptwriter
Pagnol's wife), the daughter of the local widowed fishmonger Honorine
Cabanis (Alida Rouffe), who ran a shellfish (cockles) concession,
and
(2) Marius' adventurous and yearning desire to travel and sail away
("a
madness for the sea") from his provincial community
- Marius' jealous dilemma when
Fanny announced that she would marry the 50 year-old recently-widowed
Honoré Panisse (Fernand Charpin), a lonely yet prosperous,
local sailmaker
- the comic bridge card-game sequence (full of obvious
cheating, for instance: "You break my heart!"), starting with four
card players, including Cesar
and cuckolding ferryboat captain Félix
Escartefigue (Paul
Dullac), with the famous accusatory quotes: "You'd treat an old school
chum like a cheat?...If friends can't cheat, why bother to play?", and
"The French Navy tells you to go to hell"
- in the highly-dramatic ending, the self-sacrificing
Fanny, who had become engaged to Marius but realized that he was unhappy,
encouraged him to leave on a ship for an extended expedition, and
then distracted his father while the sailing vessel was departing
from the Marseille harbor
Marius' Departure From Fanny
|
|
|
|
Marius' Romance with Fanny
Marius with Father-Bar Owner Cesar Olivier
Bridge Card-Game
|
|
The Mark of Zorro (1940)
In director Rouben Mamoulian's adventure-swashbuckler
(a remake of UA's silent 1920 version with Douglas Fairbanks) about
"El Zorro" ("The Fox") - a defender of the rights of the people:
- the opening prologue beginning with the title card:
"MADRID - when the Spanish Empire encompassed the globe,
and young blades were taught the fine and fashionable art of killing" -
to introduce the character of foppish dilettante and aristocrat
Don Diego Vega (Tyrone Power), learning the arts of swordsmanship
and riding before being called to return to his homeland (Mexican
California)
- the character of the tyrannical and corrupt Don
Luis B. Quintero (J. Edward Bromberg), the ruling Alcalde, who
had ousted power and deposed wealthy rancher Don Alejandro Vega
(Montagu Love), the father of Diego Vega
- the placard in Los Angeles' village square, posted
and signed by a masked outlaw known as El Zorro ("The Fox") -
aka Diego de Vega (by day), threatening the new corrupt ruler:
("SPECIAL
NOTICE: To All Men in the District of Los Angeles. Be it known
that Luis Quintero is a Thief and an Enemy of the People, and
Cannot Long Escape My Vengeance - ZORRO")
- the character of Quintero's beautiful niece
Lolita Quintero (Linda Darnell) - the love interest of black-costumed,
dashing and masked Zorro by night; after dancing together, she told
him: "I never dreamed dancing could be so wonderful" - but he
responded that he was fatigued
- the thrilling, magnificent fencing-dueling scene
between Zorro and cruel villain Capt.
Esteban Pasquale (Basil Rathbone), the governor's henchman; it was
one of the best swashbuckler fights of its kind in cinematic history;
when Zorro pierced Pasquale's chest and he fell back against a wall,
he dislodged a framed picture, and revealed a "Z" etched in the
wall earlier by Zorro - the Mark of Zorro
Deadly Sword Duel Between Zorro and Capt. Esteban
Pasquale
|
|
|
|
- the sequence Diego's concluding escape from jail
(where he was soon to face a firing squad) after being arrested
by Quintero for the death of Capt. Pasquale, and his leadership
of a successful peasant/soldier rebellion, and the re-instatement
of Alcade power to Diego's father
|
Introduction of Foppish Dilettante Don Diego Vega (Tyrone Power)
Placard in LA Square Signed by Zorro
Zorro's Tell-Tale Sign
Zorro with Lolita Quintero (Linda Darnell)
After a Dance
|
|
Marlowe (1969)
In Paul Bogart's version of private detective Philip Marlowe,
an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1949 source novel "The Little Sister",
with James Garner in a pre-The Rockford Files role:
- the opening title sequence, using
a dynamic camera aperture motif related to the plot, and Orpheus'
upbeat jazzy performance of the theme song: "Little Sister"
- the twisting path that sardonic, private eye sleuth
Marlowe (James Garner) followed - in a tale about a set of incriminating
photographs of a love affair between popular TV sit-com actress Mavis
Wald (Gayle Hunnicut) and transplanted Brooklyn mob-gangster Mr.
Sonny Steelgrave (H. W. Wynant), taken for blackmail purposes by Orrin
Quest (Roger Newman) (revealed to be Mavis' brother)
- the alleged plot - a missing persons case: Marlowe
was hired by young blonde Kansas girl, Midwesterner Orfamay Quest
(Sharon Farrell), to find her missing brother Orrin Quest
- the off-screen ice-pick neck stabbings of two men -
the drug-addicted 'Infinite Pad' flophouse hotel Manager (Warren Finnerty)
in the lobby, and low-life, toupeed con-man Grant W. Hicks (Jackie
Coogan) in his room in the Hotel Alvarado [Spoiler:
Orrin, who was a hotel guest, was the alleged killer]
- the three-way split-screen sequence, of Marlowe on
crossed telephones speaking to his DMV office girlfriend Julie (Corinne
Camacho) (on the right), and a photo-processing camera store clerk
(Jason Wingreen) (on the left)
- the revelation that Orfamay Quest was actually the "little sister"
of Mavis [Spoiler: Both Orfamay and Orrin were planning to blackmail
their sibling Mavis with the photographs]
- the office trashing scene - when destructive karate
expert/bodyguard Winslow Wong (Bruce Lee in his first appearance in
a Hollywood film, speaking English), Steelgrave's thug, appeared
in Marlowe's office and offered pay-off money to withdraw from the
case - that Marlowe refused; then he began punching and kicking out
walls, a clothes-rack, the door glass, the overhead light shade fixture,
an entire bookcase, and Marlowe's desk
Office Trashing Scene by Wong
|
|
|
- the death of Wong on a restaurant balcony on a skyscraper,
when Marlowe called him gay, then sidestepped and grabbed a ladder
on a support column, while Wong went over the side and plummeted to
the street far below
- the sequence of the attempted ice-pick murder of a
drugged and groggy Marlowe by lethally-wounded Orrin Quest, who had
been shot (off-screen) a few minutes earlier by drug-dealing child
psychologist Dr. Vincent Lagardie (Paul Stevens) [Note: Lagardie had
drugged Marlowe with a spiked hallucinogenic cigarette]
- the scene in Steelgrave's luxury home overlooking LA,
where Marlowe found Mavis with a gun, and Steelgrave dead in a nearby
chair, although Marlowe concluded that Mavis had been framed and was
not-guilty (Marlowe concluded that she was innocent - she claimed
to be protecting her sister - because no gun residue was on her hand;
the likely killer was a friend of Mavis' named Dolores); Marlowe attempted
to make Steelgrave's murder look like a suicide to protect Mavis'
reputation
- the Union Station (downtown LA) sequence of Marlowe
and Orfamay talking at a lunch counter, when he told her about ice-pick
killer Orrin's death by gunshot, and all the other nefarious plots
occurring - with a woman seated between them
- the vicious fight between Mavis and Orfamay in Marlowe's
ransacked apartment, ending with Marlowe sending the treacherous
Orfamay back to Kansas: ("Kansas is due East"); Orfamay had
known about her brother Orrin's blackmailing scheme and wanted to stop
him for his own safety
- the final scene in a LA strip club: Marlowe's questioning
of blonde-wigged exotic stripper Dolores Gonzáles
(Rita Moreno), Mavis' old friend, and Orrin's partner-in-crime - as
she was performing a sexy half-naked strip-tease on stage (at LA's Club
Largo on Sunset Blvd.), and confessing her involvement; from backstage,
Marlowe figured out that Dolores was Lagardie's ex-wife from Brooklyn
when she admitted: ("The streets are paved with
forgotten husbands") - and then deduced that she was Steelgrave's
moll before being dumped for Mavis [Spoiler: the jealous Dolores was
Steelgrave's killer!]: (Marlowe: "It had
to be somebody that knew both Steelgrave and Mavis. Somebody who could
come and go in her apartment as they pleased. Who had access to the
gun Steelgrave gave her. It comes up you!" Dolores: "Like
I said, Mavis is a nice girl, but why should she get all the goodies?" Marlowe:
"You went to a lot of trouble." Dolores: "And there's
nothing you can do about it, is there, unless you want to destroy
her? And you wouldn't do that, would you? You dream of those great
big eyes of hers")
- the shocking murder of Dolores - to Marlowe's
horror as he was phoning the police department in the club; Dr. Lagardie,
in cahoots with mobster Steelgrave, shot her from the left wing of
the stage, and then committed suicide backstage
|
Marlowe (James Garner)
Incriminating Photographs of Mavis with Steelgrave
Split-Screen Phone Conversation
Death of Wong
Conspirator Dr. Vincent Lagardie (Paul Stevens)
Ice-Pick Killer Orrin's Death in Marlowe's Arms
Fight Between Orfamay and Mavis - Two Sisters
Strip-Tease by Dolores Before Being Shot to Death
|
|
Marnie (1964)
In Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller - a tale
of sexual perversity and obsession - and a 'sex mystery' with the
questioning tagline: "Would
his touch end Marnie's unnatural fears or start them again?"
- the opening title credits - a slide-show
of 19 cards, revealed as pages turning from the right of the screen
to the left
- an initial set of four brief sequences
cleverly and economically introduced clues to the main character's
identity and appearance: (1) the camera trailed behind a dark-haired
woman with a yellow plastic-leather handbag (under her arm), who
was carrying one suitcase while walking down an empty, outdoor
train station platform, (2) the witnessing of the theft of $10,000
from an office safe - discovered empty - by tax consultant Sidney
Strutt (Martin Gabel), who yelled out: "Robbed! Cleaned out!
$9,967!"
- presumably taken by his pretty female employee Marion Holland
- who had not provided references, (3) again, a rear view of the
alleged female thief walking down a hotel corridor (with a bellhop
carrying lots of packages of recent purchases of clothing) and
into a room; she packed up two bags of luggage (one to discard
evidence of her old identity, and one with her new clothes and
possessions), and replaced her old Social Security ID card (Marion
Holland) with a new and different fake Social Security card (Margaret
Edgar); she washed the black dye from her hair in the sink, and
revealed her natural blonde hair with a closeup of her face -
memorably seen for the first time - as she tossed her hair back,
and (4) she deposited her old suitcase in a transportation storage
locker and discarded the key down a drain
|
|
|
Yellow Plastic-Leather Handbag
|
Theft of $10K from Sidney Strutt's Safe
|
|
|
Fake IDs
|
Marnie Washing Black Hair Dye Out
|
- in a few short moments, the title character Margaret
'Marnie' Edgar (Tippi Hedren) had been introduced as a blonde
con artist, liar and compulsive thief (kleptomaniac)
- the second main character
-- wealthy widower and playboy Mark Rutland (Sean Connery), was
the owner of a Philadelphia publishing firm where Marnie was hired
as a typist; during her romantic involvement with Mark, Marnie
was experiencing nightmares, severe panic attacks (occurring during
a thunderstorm), and a phobic fear of the color red; after Mark
discovered Marnie's theft of funds from his company, he strangely
blackmailed her into marrying him
- in
a much-debated rape scene, Marnie's
newly-wed husband was with her during
their honeymoon cruise to Fiji; he kissed her, ripped off her
nightgown (the silky garment fell to her feet), embraced her,
laid on top of her on the bed and took her (his face filling the
entire screen); the sexually-frigid Marnie stared upward in a
frozen, paralyzed catatonic state - completely lacking any passion
or emotion, but then the scene cut away to a porthole
Marnie's Nightmarish Flashback to Childhood Murder
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- the sequence of the traumatically-recalled nightmarish
flashback - Marnie's recollection when she described the source
of her deep-seated problems occurring during a thunder and lightning
storm; as a young 5 year-old (Melody Thomas
Scott), she had witnessed her 20 year-old prostitute mother Bernice
Edgar (Louise Latham) attacked by sex partner and pedophile sailor
(Bruce Dern); the client had begun to kiss and molest young Marnie
("Make
him go, Mama. I-I don't like him to kiss me. Make him go, Mama!"),
and Bernice had tried to protect her daughter; when her mother
screamed out: "Marnie, help me," young Marnie defensively
delivered a blow to his head with a fireplace poker ("I hit him,
I hit him with a stick, I hurt him") - and murdered him ("There,
there now"), and crimson blood ran down the white T-shirt of the
mortally-wounded seaman; Marnie's mother was the one who took the blame
and stood trial for the self-defense murder
- these events were revealed to be the source of all
of Marnie's phobias, prudishness, recurring nightmares and fear
of the colors red and white - she was desperate for love, but couldn't
allow a man to be intimately close to her; she had subconsciously
attempted to 'repay' (with monetary gifts) her mother for standing
up for her, although she had almost entirely erased the memory of
the killing; mentally-ill, cheating, lying and disturbed Marnie
had secretly feared that she wasn't loved, and would never be loved
or have children, so she compensated by stealing and cramming robbed
goods into her purse or suitcases (a symbol of her empty womb)
- while comforting Marnie, her mother also
confessed how Marnie had been
conceived at the age of 15, after having sex with a boy named Billy
in exchange for his basketball sweater;
she steadfastly vowed her love for Marnie by adopting her
- in
the conclusion, Mark provided assurances when he spoke to Marnie
to convince her to think more highly of herself, and not regard
herself as a cheat, a liar and a thief: "Marnie,
it's time to have a little compassion for yourself. When a child,
a child of any age, Marnie, can't get love, well, it takes what
it can get, any way it can get it. It's not so hard to understand";
he also vowed to help defend her, told her that she wouldn't go
to jail, and that they would work out their mutual marital problems
|
Much-Debated Rape Scene with Husband Mark Rutland (Sean
Connery)
Start of Nightmarish Flashback
Aftermath of Revelations
Reconciling with Mark
|
|
The Marrying Kind (1952)
In George Cukor's bittersweet marriage comedy/drama:
- the tale of two middle-class New Yorkers -- Florence
(Judy Holliday) and Chet Keefer (Aldo Ray in his film debut) and
their marriage difficulties
- the initial, revelatory and reflective flashbacks
of the ups and downs of their relationship while in divorce court
(in various "he said/she said" scenes), encouraged by
the court's Judge Anne B. Carroll (Madge Kennedy)
- the flashback of the life-changing, tragic Decoration
Day family picnic scene in which Joey (Christopher Olsen), their
six-year-old son, accidentally drowned in a park pond while nearby,
an oblivious Florence was singing on a ukelele to her husband - "How
I Love the Kisses of Dolores" - the scene returned to the courtroom
where Florence began to sob uncontrollably
|
|
Discovery of Accidental Drowning
|
Courtroom
|
|
Ukelele Song: "How I Love the Kisses of Dolores"
|
|
Marty
(1955)
In director Delbert Mann's Best Picture-winning heartwarming
romance drama:
- the scenes of overweight butcher Marty's (Ernest
Borgnine) recurring conversations with friend Angie (Joe Mantell):
Angie: "What
do you feel like doing tonight?" Marty: "I don't know,
Ange. What do you feel like doing?"
- the scene of Marty's classic phone conversation
with a potential date: ("Oh, hello there. Is this Mary Feeney?
Hello, there. This is Marty Pilletti. I-I wonder if you recall
me. Well, I'm kind of a stocky guy. The last time we met was in
the RKO Chester. You was with a friend of yours, and I-I was with
a friend of mine, name of Angie. This was about a month ago")
- but then realizing that he was receiving the typical brush-off,
he gave up: ("Why, I know it's a little
late to call for a date, but I didn't know myself till - yeah, I know.
Yeah, well, what about - well, how about next Saturday night?
Are - are you free next Saturday night? Well, what about the Saturday
after that? Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well, I mean, I understand that.
Yeah. Yeah")
- Marty's frustrating confession to his widowed Italian
Catholic mother, Mrs. Theresa Piletti (Esther Minciotti), who
kept pressuring him to get married: ("Ma, sooner or later,
there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some
facts. And one fact I gotta face is that, whatever it is that
women like, I ain't got it. I chased after enough girls in my
life. I-I went to enough dances. I got hurt enough. I don't wanna
get hurt no more. I just called up a girl this afternoon, and
I got a real brush-off, boy! I figured I was past the point of
being hurt, but that hurt. Some stupid woman who I didn't even
want to call up. She gave me the brush. No, Ma, I don't wanna
go to Stardust Ballroom because all that ever happened to me there
was girls made me feel like I was a-a-a bug. I got feelings, you
know. I-I had enough pain. No thanks, Ma!...Blue suit, gray suit,
I'm just a fat, little man. A fat ugly man...Ma, leave me alone.
Ma, whaddaya want from me? Whaddaya want from me? I'm miserable
enough as it is"),
but then he relented: ("All right, so I'll go to the Stardust
Ballroom. I'll put on a blue suit, and I'll go. And you know what
I'm gonna get for my trouble? Heartache. A big night of heartache")
- the realistic depiction of the developing relationship
between Marty and wallflower Clara (Betsy Blair) at the Stardust
Ballroom, where she had been abandoned by her own date
- Marty's empathic reactions to like-minded Clara,
including admitting that he cried all the time: ("I cry a lot too.
I'm a big crier...I cry all the time. Any little thing. All my brothers,
my brothers-in-law - they're - they're always telling me what a
good-hearted guy I am. You don't get to be good-hearted by accident.
You get kicked around long enough, you get to be a - a real professor
of pain. I know exactly how you feel. And I also want you to know
that I'm having a very good time with you right now and really enjoyin'
myself. You see, you're not such a dog as you think you are"),
and then he repeated his assertion about her, and referred to his
own rejections and ugliness: ("Dogs
like us, we ain't such dogs as we think we are")
|
|
|
With Clara at Stardust Ballroom:
"Dogs like us, we ain't such dogs as we think
we are"
|
Late Night Conversation About Marty's Butchering
Profession
|
Clara's Rejection of Marty's Good-night Kiss
|
- the painful sequence of Clara's rejection of Marty's
good-night kiss after their evening together, and his response to
her: ("All right, all right, I'll take ya home. All I wanted was
a lousy kiss"), but then she smoothed his feelings by admitting
that she liked him: ("I'd like to see you again - very much. The
reason I didn't let you kiss me was because I just didn't know how to handle
the situation. You're the kindest man I ever met. The reason I tell you
this is because I want to see you again - very much. I know that when you
take me home I'm just going to lie on my bed and think about you. I want
very much to see you again")
- the concluding sequence of Marty's courageous and
defiant defense of his love for Clara to his friends: ("You
don't like her. My mother don't like her. She's a dog. And I'm a
fat, ugly man. Well, all I know is I had a good time last night.
I'm gonna have a good time tonight. If we have enough good times
together, I'm gonna get down on my knees. I'm gonna beg that girl
to marry me. If we make a party on New Year's, I got a date for
that party. You don't like her? That's too bad")
- and his promised phone call to Clara for another
date, in a phone booth, as he shut the door on his friend Angie
as the film ended: ("Hello...Hello, Clara?")
|
Marty With Angie: "What do you feel like doing tonight?"
Marty Phoning Mary Feeney For a Date
Marty's Mother Mrs. Piletti - "A big night of heartache"
Marty's Defense of Clara to Angie
Ending Sequence: Marty: "Hello...Hello Clara?"
|
|
Mary Poppins (1964)
In Disney's fantasy adaptation of the beloved P. L.
Travers children's books with an Oscar for Best Original Score,
with an amazing blending of live action with
animated cartoon characters - and audio animatronics (the robin)
- winning a Special Effects Academy Award:
- the title sequence
in which Mary Poppins (Oscar-winner Julie Andrews in her film
debut) sat on a cloud over London with her talking parrot-headed
umbrella while applying makeup, and then was summoned to the Banks
household after the children wrote their own advertisement for
a kind and sweet nanny: ("Wanted, a nanny for two adorable
children...(sung) If you want this choice position, have a cheery
disposition...Rosy cheeks, no warts, play games, all sort. You
must be kind, you must be witty, very sweet and fairly pretty,
take us on outings, give us treats, sing songs, bring sweets...")
- Poppins
dropped down to 17 Cherry Tree Lane to be the new Banks family
nanny, by entering in at the window (the children exclaimed: "It's
her. It's the person. She's answered our advertisement. Rosy cheeks
and everything") - about 20 minutes into the film
- the character of Mary's love interest - the carefree
Cockney sidewalk street artist (screever) Bert
(Dick Van Dyke)
- the jump into a chalk sketch on the pavement that
took Mary, Dick and the Banks children into a cartoon world, where
they sang the catchy classic tune about a nonsense word:
"Super-califragilistic-expialidocious"
- the poignant singing of "Feed the Birds" (pigeons)
by Mary - with Jane Darwell (in her final screen appearance) as
the old bird woman at St. Paul's Cathedral
- the manic, fireworks-filled rooftops dance "Step
In Time" by Bert and his fellow chimney-sweeps - a huge Irish
jig dance number on rooftops while
dodging fireworks and cannon-blasts
- the scene in which stodgy father Mr. George W. Banks
(David Tomlinson) told off his bank founder boss, the ancient
Mr. Dawes, Sr. (also Van Dyke): "Go fly a kite!"
- the other memorable songs including "Chim-Chim-Cher-ee"
(which won the Best Song Oscar), "A Spoonful of Sugar" and
the triumphant finale: "Let's Go Fly a Kite"
|
"Super-califragilistic-expialidocious"
"Chim Chim Cheree"
"Step in Time"
"Feed the Birds"
"A Spoonful of Sugar" (With Anamatronic Robin)
|
|
M*A*S*H (1970)
In director Robert Altman's subversive and irreverent
anti-war comedy set in Korea in 1951, with the dark humor of bloody
wartime surgeries and other pranks and shenanigans in the 4077th
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH):
- "Suicide is Painless" - the anti-war
film's theme song playing on the soundtrack during the opening
credits sequence, including scenes of blood-spurting surgery with
casual dialogue carried on by the iconoclastic doctors (Captain
Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Captain "Trapper" John
McIntyre (Elliott Gould)), and their golf-playing on the helicopter
landing pad
- the scene of Hawkeye and Trapper saving the life
of a Korean infant in Tokyo
- the celebrated scenes of the pranks played by the
members of a free-wheeling camp, including listening in to uptight
chief nurse Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan's (Sally
Kellerman) love-making tryst with hypocritical tee-totaler Maj.
Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), while a microphone was hidden under
their cot picking up their voices: (Frank asserted: "God meant
us to find each other,"
she enthusiastically opened her blouse: "His will be done,"
and then invited him: "Oh, Frank, my lips are hot. Kiss my hot
lips"), and wisecracking surgeon Trapper John McIntyre's decision
to broadcast everything on loudspeakers over the camp's PA system:
("We have got to share this with the rest of the camp")
- the practical joke of pulling up pulling away the
front tent wall flaps of her shower stall and exposing her to an
audience of jeering spectators while 'Hot Lips' was taking a shower
with everyone lined up as spectators - to determine if she was a
natural blonde or not (a $20 bet), and her hysterical complaint
to commanding officer Lt. Col. Henry Blake (Roger Bowen) (who was
in bed with one of the nurses), including 'Hot Lips' threat to resign:
("This isn't a hospital! lt's an insane asylum! And it's your
fault because you don't do anything to discourage them!...Put them
under arrest! See what a court-martial thinks of their drunken hooliganism!
First, they called me Hot Lips, and you let them get away with it!
And then you let them get away with everything! And if you don't
turn them over to the MP this minute, l-l'm gonna resign my commission!")
- the scene of surgeon Hawkeye asking questions of
Major Burns ("Does that big ass of hers move around a lot,
Frank, or does it sort of lie there flaccid? What would you say
about that?...Would you say that she was a moaner, Frank?...Seriously,
Frank. I mean, does she go ooohhh or does she just sort of lie there
quiet and not do anything at all?...) - causing him to go "nuts";
Burns was
placed in a strait-jacket, and forcibly removed from the unit
by a military police Jeep -- (a recording of a Japanese lady singing
a 'Sayonara' song was broadcast throughout the camp:
"The time has come for us to say Sayonara, My heart will always
be yours for eternity l knew sometime we'd have to say Sayonara...l'll
remember our romance until the day that l die, l'll see your face
ln the moon and stars in the sky")
- the company dentist Walter "Painless Pole" Waldowski's
(John Schuck) mock 'Last Supper' scene and phony funeral during
his assisted suicide (with a full guitar-accompanied rendition of
the film's theme song: "Through early morning fog l see visions
of the things to be, the pains that are withheld for me, l realize
and l can see. That suicide is painless, it brings on many changes,
and l can take or leave it if l please. The game of life is hard
to play, l'm going to lose it anyway. The losing card l'll someday
lay, so this is all l have to say, that suicide is painless..."),
as a cure for his temporary erectile dysfunction, by taking a black "suicide" capsule
for "certain death": ("Now then, you've all come
here to say your final farewell to ol' Walt here... Dear ol' Walt.
You know, l got an idea that maybe it's not such a final farewell
after all. l think maybe ol' Walt's goin' on into the unknown to
do a little recon work for us all. Huh?")
- the climactic slapstick inter-M*A*S*H football game
against a rival unit, in which "Hot Lips" cheered with
pom-poms and gasped: "Oh my God, they've shot him" when
the end-of-quarter gun went off, and the unique closing credits
of the cast, read by the loudspeaker announcer - and ending with "Goddamn
army" - and "That is all"
|
Bloody M*A*S*H Surgeries
Major Houlihan:
"Kiss my hot lips"
Hawkeye's Questioning of Major Burns
Last Supper Scene: "Suicide is Painless"
Football Game: "Oh my God, they've shot him!"
|
|
Masculine-Feminine (1966, Fr.)
(aka Masculin Féminin)
In Jean-Luc Godard's New Wave romantic drama of sexual
politics, taglined: "A Swinging Look at Youth and Love in Paris
Today!" -
a peek at the city's youth culture in the mid-1960s, alternatively inter-titled:
"The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola" - told in 15 chapters,
episodes, or vignettes:
- the two main characters in a developing romantic and
sexual relationship in Paris - Paul (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a
self-indulgent, idealistic, rebellious, left-wing pseudo-intellectual,
21 years old, angry, unstable, and a skeptical anti-Vietnam War protester,
pro-Communist and labor activist, with Madeleine Zimmer (Chantal Goya),
a self-centered, vain ingenue model and aspiring pop singer who cared
little about world affairs, but more about shopping, magazines and
looks
- the sequence titled: "INTERVIEW WITH A CONSUMER
PRODUCT"
- a lengthy interview scene (filmed for 6 1/2 minutes in an unbroken
take in front of a window) in which unidentified teen idol named Miss
19 (Elsa Leroy, the real-life 'Miss 19' - the winner of a glamour
teen magazine contest), displaying her extreme ignorance about politics
and world events; she answered off-screen questions proposed by a
misogynistic Paul (who was employed by an opinion poll); he painfully
grilled her about cultural issues (i.e., socialism, birth control):
"Do you think socialism still has a future?...What is socialism
to you?...Do you know what birth control is?...Do you know practical
ways not to have kids?...Can you tell me where there are wars going
on now?"
- the ménage à quatre between Paul,
Madeleine, and her two roommates Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert) and Catherine
(Catherine-Isabel Duport) - all co-habitating together
- the cameo appearance of Brigitte Bardot, seen in a
cafe reading a movie script for her next film
- the sequence titled: "MIS-PROJECTION" - Paul,
Madeleine, and her two roommates' attendance at a Swedish film (a
parody of Bergman's The Silence (1963, Swe.)), where Paul spoke
(in voice-over): "At
movies, the screen would light up, and we'd shiver.
But more often, we'd be disappointed, Madeline and I.
The images seemed old and flickery. Marilyn Monroe had aged terribly.
We were sad. This wasn't the film we'd imagined, the perfect film
each of us carried within, the film we would like to have made, or
perhaps even to have lived"
- during the screening, Paul ran to
the outside entry to the projection booth, where he complained about
the projected film's aspect ratio, and the erotic content of the subtitled
movie
Movie Screening
|
|
|
- the dilemma of Madeleine's unwanted pregnancy, forcing
Paul to lose his life when he jumped or fell from a building window
to his death
|
Paul
(Jean-Pierre Léaud)
Madeleine Zimmer (Chantal Goya)
Paul's Interview with Teen Idol Miss 19
Co-Habitation
Brigitte Bardot
|
|
The Mask (1994)
In Charles Russell's live-action comedy (with CGI-effects)
reminiscent of Tex Avery's best cartoons:
- Jim Carrey's tour-de-force of animated zany-ness,
in a dual role as the mild-mannered and nerdy bank teller Stanley
Ipkiss, and - after donning a magical mask - his metamorphosis
into a zoot-suited (in bright yellow), green-faced, flamboyant
and manic super-hero tornado and lady-killer, with the style
of Tex Avery cartoons of the 40s
- the scene of Stanley's first jaw-dropping sighting
of bank customer Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz in her screen debut)
after entering the lobby from a rainstorm
Views of Bank Customer Tina Carlyle
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- and then Tina's second entrance as a sexy blonde
night-club singer at the Coco Bongo Club that caused Stanley to
drool over her (with his eyes popping, mouth/jaw dropping and tongue
hanging out), and motivated him to engage in a frenzied, drum-accented
dance ("Let's
rock this joint") with her - to the sounds of Cab Calloway's "Hi
De Ho"
- during the physically-impossible
dance sequence in the Coco Bongo nightclub, Stanely's smooch, when
he leaned her down, gave her a toothy and lascivious grin, and descended
for the kiss, shot in close-up
|
|
- Stanley's scene-stealing dog Milo (Max, a Jack
Russell terrier)
- with lots of quotable lines and familiar one-liners,
such as: "OOO, somebody stop me" and "SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-MOKIN!",
or sight-gags ("Sorry, wrong pocket"
when he pulled out a condom)
- the image of Stanley with gigantic guns pulled out
- a la Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry with
referential humor: "You gotta ask yourself one question. 'Do
I feel lucky?' Well do ya? Punks!"
- the image of Stanley with gigantic guns pulled out
- a la Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry: "You
gotta ask yourself one question. 'Do I feel lucky?' Well do ya?
Punks!"
|
Entrance at Coco Bongo Club
Stanley's Reactions
|
|
The Mask of Zorro (1998)
In Martin Campbell's action-filled film about the
legendary masked swordsman and outlaw:
- the scene in a training circle inside a cave where
nobleman and master Don Diego de la Vega (aka Zorro) (Anthony
Hopkins) was training Mexican thief-outlaw Alejandro Murrieta
(Antonio Banderas) to duel and be his apprentice or successor
as the new Zorro, to seek revenge against his rival and corrupt
enemy, governor Don Raphael Montero (Stuart Wilson), for the
killing of his wife: ("Do you
know how to use that thing?...This is going to take a lot of work.
This is called a training circle. The master's wheel. This circle
will be your world, your whole life. Till I tell you otherwise,
there is nothing outside of it....There is nothing outside of
it!...As your skill with a sword improves, you will progress to
a smaller circle. With each new circle, your world contracts,
bringing you that much closer to your adversary, that much closer
to retribution")
- the humorous confessional scene, in which Don Diego's
beautiful grown-up daughter Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who
was taken as a young child by Montero and raised as his daughter,
thought she was confessing her sins to a padre in the "house
of the Lord",
although Alejandro was posing inside the booth and listening to
her 'impure thoughts' about himself: ("Forgive me, Father,
for I have sinned. It has been three days since my last confession....I
have broken the Fourth Commandment, padre...I
dishonored my father...Well, I try to behave properly, the way
my father would like me to. But I'm afraid my heart is too wild...I
had impure thoughts about a man. I did. I think he was a bandit
or something. He wore a black mask...His face was half-covered,
but something in his eyes captured me....I felt warm and feverish...Yes,
lustful. Forgive me"); Zorro assured her: ("Senorita,
you have done nothing wrong. The only sin would be to deny what
your heart truly feels. Now, go")
- the scene of the provocative dance at Montero's
hacienda between Elena and Alejandro (posing as visiting nobleman
Don Alejandro del Castillo y García), and afterwards, his
words to an apologetic Don Raphael Montero: ("Well, that
is the way they are dancing in Madrid these days. Excuse me, Don
Rafael, I need to catch my breath. Your daughter is a very spirited
dancer...She is young and impulsive, but her beauty is beyond
compare. And she has her father's commanding presence")
- the action-packed sword-play scene in the hacienda
between Alejandro - dressed as Zorro (who was attempting to steal
a gold-mine map), Montero, and many of his guards, including right-hand
man Captain Harrison Love (Matt Letscher)
- the classic moment that Alejandro/Zorro, during
his escape from the hacienda, used his sword to seductively duel
against and undress Elena, who was attempting to acquire Montero's
map for him; before they began their duel, she bragged about her
sword prowess: ("I have had the proper instruction since
I was 4");
after some swordplay, he stripped her of her top with a few swipes
of his sword after warning:
"Don't move" - and then after she covered herself,
he asked: "Do you surrender?"; when she replied: "Never, but I
may scream" - he joked: "I understand. Sometimes I have that effect"
- and she hungrily accepted a kiss from him as his reward
for winning
Swordplay to Undress Elena
|
|
|
|
- the conclusion, in which Alejandro/new Zorro and
Diego/old Zorro both found their revenge against their enemies:
Alejandro defeated Love by impaling him through the mid-section
with his sword and then showering him with heavy gold bars, while
Diego killed Montero by causing him to be dragged behind a wagon
off a tall mining platform to his death, but then he found himself
mortally wounded
|
Don Diego de la Vega (aka Zorro)
(Anthony Hopkins)
Training Circle
Apprentice Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas)
Confessional Scene of Elena's Impure Thoughts
Provocative and Spirited Dance
Seductive Swordplay with Elena
Impalement of Captain Love
|
|
The Masseurs and a Woman (1938, Jp.) (aka
Anma to onna)
In writer/director Hiroshi Shimizu's light, slow-paced,
hour-long drama about 'blind' human interactions among guests and workers
at a resort spa:
- the opening sequence of the main characters: two
eccentric, blind masseurs - Toku (Shin Tokudaiji) and Fuku (Shinichi
Himori), hiking up a mountain road toward
a resort spa, where they worked during
the high season (spring and summer); they made an enjoyable game of
keeping track of the number of people that passed
- the sequence of their first brush with a mysterious
and enigmatic Tokyo guest - an unnamed female client credited as Michiho
Misawa (Mieko Takamine), who was driven by in a carriage on the road;
Toku noted: "A nice woman aboard...A Tokyo woman....She smelled
of Tokyo"
- in the town: the two groups of hiking students (one
entirely male, one female)
- and the street scene when Toku (again with his extra-sensory
skills) stopped, turned, and wordlessly identified the Tokyo female
as a city inhabitant by her perfume smell as she walked by him
Toku's Identification of Michiho by Smell
|
|
|
|
- Toku's fascination with the "strange woman" Michiho,
but also his suspicions that she was responsible
for a rash of thefts at the resort after her arrival; to protect her
from police checking all of the inn guests, Toku warned
her ("Run! They're looking everywhere for you...It's a dragnet...You
can't stay here. Hurry!"), grabbed her and ran away with her
(the camera angle was on their shuffling, running feet at an increasingly
faster tempo)
- the revelation scene when he accused her of being the
thief: ("I knew from the start. Tokyo lady, you may fool those
who can see. But you can't fool me. Though blind, I've been watching
you. It's been hard. Run, quick! Go somewhere I don't know. When the
thefts occurred at Whale Inn and Goddess Inn, I tried hard to trust
you. The more I tried to trust you, the more certain I became of it.
So please run to somewhere I don't know"); she revealed that
she wasn't the thief, but was a fugitive from her lecherous city patron: "You're
making a terrible mistake...The whole thing is ridiculous. But I appreciate
your kindness. So I'll talk. I ran away from Tokyo to these mountains.
But not because of what you said...I got disgusted with my patron.
No, I should say, I felt sorry for his wife and daughter. I'm sure
he's looking for me. He'll look everywhere for me. That's how he is.
That's why footsteps frighten me. Your eyes that could not see were
too keen. You see too well....You tried to help me run away, I appreciate
it...I'll run somewhere. My lecherous patron won't find me. I'll keep
running";
he sank to his knees and bowed his head to apologize for the false
accusation
- in the
conclusion, Michiho boarded a
carriage to depart from the resort - there were two quick cuts: her
look back over her left shoulder, and a view of Toku's sad face under
his umbrella; he ran down to the end of the street where the carriage
had turned right, and then he stopped; there was a paradoxical,
shaky, hand-held POV, unusual traveling shot from his perspective
as he followed (with his blind eyesight) the carriage as
it turned left around a bend in the road - for
one last goodbye glimpse (the film's final image)
|
Blind Masseurs: Toku and Fuku Hiking Up Mountain Road
Michiho in Carriage
Two Groups of Hikers
Toku and Michiho Running Away (Low Camera Angle)
Accusatory and Revelation Scene
Michiho's Departure
|
|
The Master (2012)
In Paul Thomas Anderson's well-crafted, visually-compelling,
intelligent, R-rated psychological drama, that spawned considerable controversy
for its similarities to the leader of the Church of Scientology, L.
Ron Hubbard:
- the gripping scene of an informal
technique called
"processing" proposed by the "Master": Lancaster
Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the opportunistic,
charismatic cult leader of "The Cause," to be used
on sex-obsessed, rogue drifter Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix)
- a series of lengthy, free-association sessions (that required
one not to blink) to help relive past traumatic events and eliminate
toxicity, negative emotional impulses, and inner turmoil; the
series of disturbing psychological questions seemed to conquer
Freddie's past traumas and exorcise his demons in a frightening
way
- the startling scene of Freddie's twisted, zany, hallucinated
sexual dream-fantasy - of Dodd singing and dancing among many naked
(full-frontal) female disciples at the Philadelphia home of one of
the Master's devotees
- the concluding scene between Dodd and Freddie, when
Dodd offered an ultimatum to Freddie - to remain and be devoted to
"The Cause," or to leave it forever and
never return; Freddie was silent - an implicit answer that he would
leave; Dodd also added that if Freddie could figure out
a way "to live without serving a master" - it would be a first: ("Free
winds and no tyranny for you? Freddie, sailor of the seas. You pay
no rent. Free to go where you please. Then go. Go to that landless
latitude, and good luck. For if you figure a way to live without serving
a master, any master, then let the rest us know, will you? For you'd
be the first person in the history of the world...If you leave here,
I don't ever want to see you again. Or you can stay... If we meet
again in the next life, you will be my sworn enemy, and I will show
you no mercy");
before Freddie left, Dodd serenaded him with the 1948 popular song:
Slow Boat to China
|
|
- in the final scene, during sex with Winn Manchester
(Jennifer Neala Page) whom Freddie had just met in an English pub
- after asking her "processing" questions, Freddie
told her part of a line he had earlier heard from Dodd: "You're
the bravest girl I've ever known. (pause for laughter) Now stick it
back in, it fell out" (the film's last line of dialogue)
|
"Processing" of Freddie by The Master
Freddie's Hallucinated Sex Dream-Fantasy of Dodd
The Final Scene
|