Filmsite's 100 Greatest Film Scenes

A controversial, reprehensible, explicitly racist, but ground-breaking, landmark American epic film masterpiece - these all describe producer/director D. W. Griffith's cinematic work. In particular, it is remarkable for its cinematic feel and spectacle of splendidly-staged Civil War battle scenes with historical costuming and hundreds of extras.

On the battlefield, eldest son Benjamin Cameron (Henry B. Wathall), known as "the Little Colonel" leads a final desperate assault against the Union command of Capt. Phil Stoneman (Elmer Clifton) and charges down a road leading his troops, in a dramatic moving-camera shot, taken from a high angle. Cameron is wounded in action when he leads a final assault carrying the Confederate flag against the Union entrenchment line.

After being hospitalized, the scene of the Little Colonel's return to his ruined home is touching and poignant - one of the greatest scenes in early film history. Weary, Ben arrives at the front fence of his home, pausing to notice its disrepair. As he stands there, "Little Sister" Flora (Mae Marsh) and other family members expectantly await his arrival inside. Ben slowly enters the fence gate and approaches the front porch. Flora bounces joyfully out of the front door - but then hesitates when she sees his anguished expression. They both feign happiness at first, and he notices the raw cotton that she is wearing. Both succumb to grateful tears and the two sadly embrace on the front porch. She guides him into the front door. From a side view, the tender hand of his mother reaches out through the door and gradually draws him inside.

[The concluding Ku Klux Klan ride - with extensive cross-cutting between the scenes to create excitement and suspense - although glorifying the role of the white supremacist group, is a justly-celebrated piece of film-making that builds the film to a dramatic climax.]

The most stunning and realistic sequence ever filmed was completely real and extremely dangerous in its finale. This is the scene of Anna Moore's (Lillian Gish) daring, last-second rescue from a moving ice floe. The young woman is ejected from the rural Bartlett home during a raging blizzard when her secret past (an unmarried pregnancy) is revealed. Delirious from the cold and blinded by the snow, she falls down and faints on a slab of ice floe in the midst of an icy river.

Lying on the ice block, her hand trails into the freezing water. As the ice thaws the next morning and breaks apart, her lifeless form is caught unconscious on moving ice-floes and is swept downstream toward a precipitous waterfall. The farmer's son David Bartlett (Richard Barthelmess) sees her floating toward the falls. Without a moment to lose, in an exciting, tense, "last minute rescue scene," he dashes out onto the wobbly icecakes and nimbly jumps from one moving, bobbing ice block to another to try to reach her before the ice jam gives way - rushing to the falls toward her death.

As Anna regains consciousness, but starts to sink into the frigid water at the edge of the falls, David finally reaches her, scoops her up and saves her, running perilously upstream (and keeping his balance) on unstable blocks of ice to reach the shore.

This film earned Harold Lloyd, the bookish, horn-rimmed glasses-wearing comedian, his nickname "the King of Daredevil Comedy." The film is best remembered for its thrilling, hair-raising climax - a reckless, 'safety last,' humorous stunt on the side of a twelve-story skyscraper above busy city streets. The scary sequence was deliberately shot with most of the camera compositions including views of the perilous drop behind him.

In the remarkable, daredevil sequences, the Boy inches his way up and climbs to the top of the twelve-story building, one hand and foot hold after the other, encountering absurdly new difficulties at every new floor - pesky, flapping pigeons who feast on nuts that have fallen on him from above, a tennis net that becomes enveloped around him, painters who thrust a protruding two by four paint platform at him, a swinging window, a clock, a rope, a vicious dog, a flagpole, a mouse which climbs up his pants leg, a photographic subject who is posing with a gun pointed at him at the exact moment the flash explodes, a revolving weather vane, and a second rope entangled around his ankle which swings him pendulum-like from the top of the building. The most-remembered obstacle is the clock. For thrilling moments, he hangs from the minute-hand of the large clock, dangling dangerously above the street as the clock-face pulls off the wall - while still wearing his glasses and a straw hat.

He finally reaches the top of the building, lands in the girl's arms on the roof, and they go off arm in arm. Our hero has proved his worth, become a success, earned the $1,000 prize money, and won the girl. Unbeknownst to the Boy, he tromps through fresh tar on the roof of the building, leaving - in four steps - his shoes and socks behind.

The tragic ending in the great salt flats of Death Valley in Erich von Stroheim's masterpiece is absolutely remarkable. Marcus (Jean Hersholt) joins a posse and pursues his old friend/dentist McTeague (Gibson Gowland), greedy for the $100 reward offered following the suspicious murder and burglary of Trina McTeague (Zasu Pitts) - and for the wife's gold coins. "McTeague was headed for the very heart of Death Valley...that horrible wilderness of which even beasts were afraid."

In the closing sequence, McTeague flees with Trina's money into the stifling heat and wasteland of Death Valley - a literal hell and a symbolic representation of the expansive, desolate terrain of McTeague's inner world.

In a protracted fight to the death in the middle of the parched desert covered with caked ground and cracked alkaline, the two men face each other and grapple together for the gold as they wrestle for control of the gun. They struggle on the white ground, until McTeague overpowers Marcus and strikes with the revolver - he clubs his one-time friend to death with the gun. Marcus lies still and bloody on the ground - yet in the midst of the life and death struggle, McTeague's left wrist has become attached to Marcus' right wrist - by handcuffs.

He turns and looks at the canvas bag (with gold coins) on the saddle of the dead mule, looks at the empty canteen, and sinks to his knees. He sits there, anchored in the deadly, pitiless heat of Death Valley, chained to the corpse of his once close friend that he just slew. He has the gold, but no water. There is only vast emptiness around him as he awaits his own death.

The most famous sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's classic is the climactic massacre of local townspeople on the Odessa steps - in a film celebrating the 20th anniversary of the failed 1905 revolution in Russia against the czar. The scene is beautifully orchestrated with a montage of close-ups of faces and objects and long-shots, all rapidly cut together and contrasted as the images build to a devastating conclusion.

Czarist troops, with drawn rifles to quell a revolutionary movement circa 1905, march down a flight of stone marble steps leading to the harbor where the people of Odessa are cheering the men on the czarist-armed battleship cruiser Potemkin at the port on the Black Sea. Successive waves of white-uniformed soldiers appear - ordered by city officials loyal to the czar to attack the riled-up citizenry. Shots ring out as they fire on the civilians, bringing about dizzying chaos as terrified people rush to flee down the steep stairs.

One woman - whose son has been shot - cradles his bloodied body in her arms and approaches the army to defy them - she stands in their elongated shadows before she too is gunned down point-blank.

A young mother is hit in the mid-section, and the force of her falling body causes her baby carriage to tumble out of control down the steps.

In a startling close-up, the lens of a woman's glasses splinters and blood gushes from her eye socket.

The scene of the parting of the American troops from a French village in King Vidor's war film is one of the most famous and memorable in cinematic history.

American doughboy Jim (John Gilbert) calls out for French peasant girl Melisande (Renee Adoree) but cannot locate her. She too hears the bugle call and sees the dust of the trucks, the horse-drawn caissons, and the running men assembling for the pull-out. Her distress and desperation rises with the suddenness of their leaving. Suddenly, she decides that she is desperately in love with Jim. She pushes her way through the massed ranks of soldiers - looking and calling out for him in the ensuing chaos and rising dust. Her frenzied search becomes more frantic and emotional as she searches for a glimpse of him to bid him a lasting farewell. Two other passing soldiers grab at her - one touches her breast, the other tries to steal a kiss.

Jim climbs into the back of a transport truck, one in a long line of battle trucks. When he finally catches sight of her, he jumps off the truck and races back - they wildly embrace and pepper each other with kisses - framed in close-up. Earnestly, he vows to return to her in the touching scene: "I'm coming back! - Remember - - - I'm coming back!" An officer pulls on Jim, and then rips them apart. The agonized, feisty French village girl hits back at anyone who would tear them from each other. As Jim is dragged into the tail end of a truck, Melisande holds on firmly to his left leg - refusing to let go. She runs along for a moment as the truck pulls away - she desperately hangs onto a chain dangling off the vehicle, trying to halt the inevitable and defy both time and fate. When she won't let go, she is dragged alongside the procession until she can't hold on any longer.

He tosses her mementos to remember him by: his wristwatch, his dogtags, and one shoe, and then sprays her with two-handed kisses. She stands and watches the truck disappear - holding his shoe to her bosom. The passing vehicles and clouds of dust envelope her - and then subside. In the middle of the road, she sinks to her knees with her head bowed.

[The realistic battle scenes in the film are also legendary, especially the harrowingly realistic battle scene of the soldiers' chilling march into enemy machine gun sniper fire at Belleau Wood.]

A legendary scene is the one in which two famished fortune-seekers during the Alaskan Klondike gold rush celebrate Thanksgiving Day dinner. In their isolated cabin, the starving Lone Prospector (Charlie Chaplin) cooks his own boot in a large pot. He takes on airs as a French gourmet at a feast.

When he serves the shoe, he splits the sole, cutting it like a filet, and sets the smaller portion before his large companion Big Jim McKay (Mack Swain). Big Jim greedily switches the plates to get the upper portion of the shoe. The Prospector delicately chews on the lower sole part, treating it like a delicacy as he picks his way through the leather - he treats the laces like spaghetti, coiling them about his fork. He daintily sucks the nails, like they were the bones of a game bird.

[The famous dancing dinner-roll scene in the same film rates highly.]

The frightening, eerie moment that the mad Erik (Lon Chaney, Sr.), the horribly disfigured phantom of the opera, is unmasked and shows his "accursed ugliness" is in Universal's definitive silent horror classic. The phantom is in love with Christine Daae (Mary Philbin), a soprano understudy at the Paris Opera.

After he has professed his "love triumphant" for her, and while he is playing the organ in the opera house, she fearfully creeps up behind him and hesitantly rips off his mask, revealing his grotesque face - artfully-applied makeup shows round, darkened eyes, jagged decayed teeth, flaring nostrils, and a corpse-like visage.

She screams in horror and falls to her knees and cowers below him as he threateningly points at her.

In a visually simple scene, one of the most famous and memorable moments in cinematic history, Johnnie Gray's (Buster Keaton) girlfriend Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) has just shunned and rejected him as a coward when she learns from her brother that "he didn't even get in line...He's a disgrace to the South." She rebuffs and spurns him after he has been rejected as a soldier, not knowing that he will end up as a civilian engineer in the Civil War effort.

Johnnie sits down dejectedly on the connecting, driving bar between the wheels of his huge locomotive. When the engine starts up and begins to move forward, his unmoving, dwarfed frame is carried along on the crossbar, brought up and down three times in a series of arcs, before he suddenly realizes what is going on - a perfect image for the complex emotional feelings he is experiencing.

As the train passes into the roundhouse (train shed), he solemnly expresses astonishment, sadness, and amusement.

The most famous of all talkie sequences after almost three decades of film silence is Al Jolson's first spoken words. After singing a full-throated rendition of Dirty Hands, Dirty Face (Jolson's first musical performance in the film) about the joys of having a young son, his song is received enthusiastically by the audience.

Jack Robin (Al Jolson) raises his hand and stops them (in his first spoken words on screen), speaking some of the most famous lines of dialogue in film history:

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You ain't heard nothin' yet. Wait a minute, I tell ya, you ain't heard nothin'! Do you wanna hear Toot, Toot, Tootsie!? All right, hold on, hold on. [To the band leader] Lou, Listen. Play Toot, Toot, Tootsie! Three choruses, you understand. In the third chorus I whistle. Now give it to 'em hard and heavy. Go right ahead!"

Jack entertains the cabaret crowd with a rousing rendition of Toot, Toot, Tootsie, including a wide variety of creative whistle sounds.

In Fritz Lang's expressionistic, utopian view of the 21st century future, visually-cinematic images foreshadowed the development of future science-fiction films and other diatribes of dehumanized Labor versus Capital.

In the visual melodrama, it is the year 2026 - a Dickensian 'best of times, worst of times.' Total oppression and manipulation of the masses is wielded by the unquestionable power of the leisurely few. Nameless, amorphous, exploited battalions of uniformed, underground workers are viewed in stylized shots. Black-garbed and unidentifiable, they trudge sullenly to their laborious tasks and alternate their work shifts, day after day in mechanical routines, amidst enormous pounding pistons of machinery, moving/rotating gears, power stations, gauges and dials, and valves and levers.

The down-trodden, ant-like slave laborers in the labyrinthine catacombs of the Underground City support the minority elite ruling class of the "chosen few" in the upper futuristic world of skyscrapers, elevated trafficways and aeroplanes.

[The scene of the life-like vitalization-transformation of an android female robot by mad scientist/inventor Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is stunning. Maria (Brigitte Helm) is pursued in the catacombs by Rotwang's glaring flashlight, kidnapped, made captive, and brought to his alchemist laboratory so that he can give the false, evil robotic duplicate the "girl's likeness." Luminous rings circumscribe and travel vertically over the robotic figure, spreading Maria's life and circulatory system into the machine and replacing the robot's inhuman mask with her human face.]

In the darkness of night, the dazed, bewitched husband, a married farmer (George O'Brien) is smitten and in sexual thrall to the passionate, wicked city woman/vamp (Margaret Livingston) in the erotic seduction scene in F. W. Murnau's masterpiece.

After hearing a whistle signal and without a word to his light-haired wife (Janet Gaynor), he leaves without touching his dinner. He secretly meets his tempting mistress on the edge of the misty, swampy marshes in a memorable sequence. Under a gigantic full hazy moon which reflects on the water and shines through the haze, she waits for him, silhouetted against the moon.

The supernatural spell and erotic charm of the city woman seduces him - she steals his sanity and soul. The seductress tempts him, visualizing for him how to murder his wife by drowning: "Tell me. You are all mine? Sell your farm...come with me to the City."

#13A
King Vidor's film is a caustic, bitter denunciation of the illusionary American dream. The hero of the film eagerly arrives in the big city, convinced of the promise of success - on-location work reflects the nitty-gritty of the metropolis.

One of the most majestic, fluid shots in this silent film masterpiece - one of the greatest impressionistic tracking shots in all of cinematic history - begins at the street level and smoothly travels up the flat outside surface of a stone wall of a multi-windowed skyscraper, one of many in New York City.

Suddenly, the office building rises and straightens up, and transports the viewer directly into one of its hundreds of windows - all looking exactly alike.

#13B
In a dissolve, the camera slides through the window into the building's interior, into a large room filled with a monotonous criss-crossing of rows of hundreds of identical office desks and hundreds of office workers. The criss-crossing of geometric rectangles on the exterior of the building are replicated inside. The juxtaposition suggests that the workers are just as lacking in individuality as the skyscraper's windows.

The camera sweeps across the infinite sea of anonymous, business-attired, insurance company paper-pushers until it zooms in on our hero - one of many wage-slaves lost in the sea of desks.

He is seated amidst hundreds of other obedient and cowed clerks. Another faceless victim of the city, John Sims' (James Murray) desk is labeled (in closeup): "John Sims 137."

In the unforgettable final moments of this film, just before the "all quiet on the western front" armistice and with all of his comrades gone, soldiers are bailing water out of a dilapidated trench. The faint sound of a harmonica can be heard.

Paul (Lew Ayres), a young German soldier, is sitting alone, daydreaming inside the trench on a seemingly peaceful, bright day. He is exhausted by terror and boredom.

Through the gunhole of his trench, he sees a beautiful lone butterfly that has alighted just beyond his reach next to a discarded tin can outside the parapet. He begins to carefully reach out over the protection of his bunker with his hand to grasp it, momentarily forgetting the danger that is ever-present.

As he stretches his hand out yearning for its beauty, a distant French sniper prepares to take careful aim through a scope on a rifle. As he leans out closer to the fragile butterfly and extends his hand, suddenly the sharp whining sound of a shot is heard. Paul's hand jerks back, twitches for a moment and then goes limp in death.

All is silent and quiet. The harmonica tune stops.

A blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) with restored sight recognizes and realizes that her benefactor is the vagabondish, funny-looking Tramp (Charlie Chaplin). Earlier, the Tramp 'stole' the same money he had once been given by a millionaire (Harry Myers) -he snatches the wad of money, gets away from the police, and rushes to the girl's home. Into her hands, he places all the money for rent and for a sight-restoring operation, even giving her $100 that he had saved in his pocket for himself. As he bids her farewell, he tells her that he will be going away for awhile. She again mistakenly believes, in her blindness, that he is her millionaire benefactor.

After the Tramp has been released from prison following nine months of imprisonment, he ambles down the street and passes a flower shop where he sees the former blind girl through the shop window - now miraculously able to see. She has been watching and giggling at the comic/tragic figure through the flower shop window. He is transfixed with wonder and joy and he grins at her with a melting smile - but he also realizes how she wouldn't recognize him. She turns and makes an ironic comment to her grandmother inside the shop: "I've made a conquest!" - but she cannot imagine that he is her Prince Charming.

The film's most simple, moving, eloquent and poignant finale is filled with melancholy and pathos. Although the Tramp tries to walk away and evade her, she stops laughing and pities him. Determined to help him, she calls him back and outside the shop, in a sympathetic act of charity, offers him a fresh white rose to replace the tattered, wilting one he picked up from the gutter. She also offers him a coin that she has just taken from the flower shop register. When she takes his hand and puts the coin in the palm of his hand, it suddenly dawns on her who he is. With her acute, sensitive sense of touch, she recognizes the familiar feel of his hands. As she runs her hand up the ragged fellow's coat from his shoulder to his face, she realizes that he is her mysterious benefactor - a shabbily-dressed little vagabond who raised the money for her operation.

They recognize and see each other for the first time, reunited, face-to-face, the Tramp feeling many emotions at once - shame, fear, bravery, pain, tentativeness, love, bliss and joy. At first, she appears slightly dismayed - he looks so completely different from what she expected - and then she is moved. The Tramp smiles and his eyes light up when she recognizes and accepts him for who he is. The Flower Girl asks: "You?" The Tramp nods in assent and smiles shyly, and then points to his eyes: "You can see now?" The Flower Girl nods and her smile widens: "Yes, I can see now." She grasps his hand to her breast.

The Tramp, anguished and ecstatic at the same time, stands frozen as he holds his finger to his mouth and places the gift of the flower between his teeth and clenches the stem with his teeth - it is a simple, meaningful gesture. The truth is revealed - she can 'see now' through his pretense - nothing more can be said. Their social roles are now reversed in this face-to-face encounter - his identity has changed from a benevolent millionaire to a vagabond, impoverished Tramp.

She has turned from a poor, blind girl into a prosperous beautiful woman. With one of the most staggering shots ever filmed - a closeup of the Tramp's face and smile, she identifies him.

The ethereal closeup of his radiant, smiling face fades to black.

In a remarkable creation sequence in the watchtower during the raging storm in James Whale's horror classic, Dr. Frankenstein (Colin Clive) has rigged an apparatus to take the artificial body on a moveable platform to the opening at the rooftop of the tower where it can be electrified by a lightning strike. The astonished witnesses and onlookers watch and hear the defiantly mad, zealous Dr. Henry Frankenstein's theatrically convince his audience of his work: "Quite a good scene, isn't it? One man crazy - three very sane spectators." With startled eyes, they witness the bizarre experiment in horror.

Dr. Frankenstein and Fritz (Dwight Frye) roll down a blanket (from head to foot) covering a white-shrouded, lifeless corpse. Then, they roll back the white sheet (from foot to head), revealing a monstrous, fabricated cadaver underneath. Amidst the crackling of transformers, dynamos, and electrodes, with Fritz's help, the table is moved to the rooftop, where it is repeatedly struck by lightning, to harness the awesome energy of the storm. Lightning flashes, and electric arcs jump from machine to machine, jolting a charge of life into the inanimate monster strapped to the operating table.

Finally, the immense platform-table is then lowered back down into the laboratory. At first, there is no sign of movement or life - nothing seems to have happened and the creature fails to respond. But then, the creature's bare right hand that is hanging free twitches - a promising sign that the Monster (Boris Karloff) is coming to life. Dr. Frankenstein hysterically shouts: "Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive....It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive! Oh - in the name of God. Now I know what it...["feels like to be God" - this phrase was censored and removed]." A mad and uncontrollable Henry is restrained as his cries are drowned out by lightning bolts, howling winds and thunder.

[Another of the film's most powerful, poignant, and horrifying scenes: The Monster attempts to make friends with Maria (Marilyn Harris), a young girl who plays by the bank of a lake - she is not repelled by his hideous appearance and invites him to play. She takes his hand and leads him to the side of the lake. With child-like innocence, he smells a daisy flower she has given him and a smile lights his face. After they kneel next to the water, Maria hands him some flowers to join her in a delightful game of throwing them into the pond. One by one, they toss flowers onto the surface of the lake, watching the petals float. When the Monster's few flower blossoms are gone, he puzzles for a moment at his empty hands, and then innocently and ignorantly picks up a screaming Maria. He enthusiastically throws her in the water - expecting that she, too, will float like the flower petals. She flounders and splashes in the water and quickly sinks and drowns. As he staggers away from the lake, the Monster seems to express some confusion and remorse, shaking and wringing his hands and possibly perceiving the horrible thing he has done.]

One of the most vividly remembered, misogynistic, and vicious scenes in film history is the breakfast scene in this definitive and early gangster film. It is one of the single-most cruel acts ever depicted in a film. A life of crime has made the character cruel and hardened.

In cocky gangster Tom Power's (James Cagney) apartment, he walks sleepily to the breakfast table in his striped pajamas. He is in a foul mood, bored, grouchy and irritable after a demanding phone conversation. Tom has grown tired of his relationship with moll girlfriend Kitty (Mae Clarke). At the table, she greets him without a smile. When he asks her for a beer for breakfast, she talks back.

Tom: "Ain't you got a drink in the house?"
Kitty: "Well, not before breakfast dear."
Tom: "I didn't ask you for any lip. I asked you if you had a drink."
Kitty: "I know Tom, but I-I wish that..."
Tom: "There you go with that wishin' stuff again. I wish you was a wishing well, so that I could tie a bucket to ya and sink ya."
Kitty (provokingly): "Maybe you've found someone you like better."

He looks down, makes a nasty grimace, and then impulsively picks up a grapefruit half from his plate and contemptuously pushes it into her face to end their relationship. She looks down, physically and painfully hurt and emotionally embarrassed by his crudeness.

Choreographer Busby Berkeley choreographed/directed some of the most elaborate films and production numbers ever, including this one - his most extravagant fantasy film.

In most of these unique films, emphasis was on large extravagant (sometimes outlandish) musical numbers and sets. He used his chorus girls not as individuals but as parts of large, attractive geometric patterns moving with precise choreography. The images could be animated tiles in vast, ever-shifting mosaics, fanciful geometric patterns or cascading designs. Often, he would use his legendary cinematic "top view" shot to capture the kaleidoscopic views. He dressed the girls up in preposterous costumes, sometimes as coins or musical instruments, or the chorus girls would wear next to nothing but wisps of gauze.

There were three large production numbers:

the eight minute Honeymoon Hotel features a Jersey City, NJ hotel with staff members who wink at the arrival of a honeymooning couple. The hallways contain only young amorous couples wearing skimpy nightgowns and pajamas. Eager bridegrooms share a communal bathroom before bedding down. House detectives wonder why everyone is registered there by the name of Smith.
the second ten-minute extravaganza By a Waterfall is an amazing geometric number featuring a gigantic waterfall covered with scantily-clad bathers who dive and slide down the rocks, an aquacade of over 100 swimmers shot both from above and underneath its glass sided aquarium, and a revolving, human water fountain.
the final ten-minute sequence, Shanghai Lil, involves theatrical producer/sailor boy Chester Kent (James Cagney) searching for his girl Shanghai Lil in a stylized Oriental bar and nightclub populated with Chinese prostitutes. He finds the black-wigged girl (Ruby Keeler), in a scene inter-mixed with a brawl involving sailors, marines, civilians, and chorus girls. In the patriotic finale, he joins the marching troops, and groups of top-photographed performers create the Stars and Stripes, an image of FDR, and an American eagle.

In this seminal backstage musical, when green, chorus-girl understudy Peggy Sawyer (Ruby Keeler) is brought out of her dressing room, director Julian Marsh (Warner Baxter) delivers immortal lines to his terrified, open-mouthed performer in the wings just before she goes onstage to take the place of opening night star Dorothy Brock (Bebe Daniels) - his last-minute instructions:

"Now Sawyer, you listen to me and you listen hard. Two hundred people, 200 jobs, $200,000, five weeks of grind and blood and sweat depend upon you. It's the lives of all these people who have worked with you. You've got to go on, and you have to give and give and give. They've got to like you, they've got to. Do you understand? You can't fall down. You can't, because your future's in it, my future and everything all of us have is staked on you. All right now, I'm through. But you keep your feet on the ground and your head on those shoulders of yours and go out - and Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star."

Peggy is pushed on-stage for her debut leading appearance.

The final moments of this film contain some of the most familiar and memorable of all images and sequences in film history.

Atop the Empire State Building, Kong clutches Ann (Fay Wray), the girl whose blonde beauty touched his heart. He places her on a ledge and then roars in defiance at the planes which are strafing him with machine gun fire. A squadron of fighter biplanes swirl around him in an attack to shoot him down, as he swats at them like irritating mosquitoes, but he cannot reach them. The perspective of the diving, sweeping planes takes the viewpoint of the pilots. He flinches as machine gun bullets rip into his body. Kong sends one careless pilot to a fiery death by snatching him out of the sky.

After a vicious attack into his throat and body, he is weakened and knows that he is dying. He touches his chest, and then looks at the blood on his fingers from a chest wound. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. He gently picks Ann up one last time to look at her with affection. Then, he returns her to the ledge and strokes her gently with his fingertips. After another volley of bullets into his throat, his head droops and his body sways and staggers - he is barely able to hold on.

When he loosens his hold from the building he silently plunges to his death to the street far below. Tragically, Kong is no longer an object of terror and fear, but of pity.

Following a classic abdication scene, Swedish Queen Christina (Greta Garbo) renounces her throne and duty in favor of love and romance, after her subjects rebel at the thought of her marrying a Spaniard who would become king. She agonizes over her decision: "Evidently, my people who are said to love me, do not wish me to be happy."

In the bleak finale, after Spanish envoy Don Antonio (John Gilbert) tragically dies in her arms on the deck of her sailing ship, she is exiled from Sweden forever but she optimistically muses: "The wind is with us." As the sails bloom out, she moves to the bow of the ship and stands mutely as a figurehead. A lengthy, lingering zoom-in and close-up shot of her beautiful face conveys a blankly enigmatic, immortal, Mona Lisa look as she unblinkingly faces her destiny.

[Another unforgettable sequence: Before a flickering fire, she eats grapes meltingly in the flickering firelight with Don Antonio during their passionate, clandestine love affair.]

In the most-remembered and funniest sequence, headstrong heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) and out-of-a-job newspaperman Peter Warne (Clark Gable) compare hitchhiking techniques to try to attract a ride.

First, Peter confidently brags about his expert knowledge with a detailed lecture on the three proper and correct ways that common people hail cars while thumb hitchhiking: "It's all in that ol' thumb, see?...that ol' thumb never fails. It's all a matter of how you do it though." As he demonstrates his teachings in real action as cars come by, she lies down on the top rail of a fence in an uncomfortable position, watching him but not convinced of his ability. He tries the first method ("a short, jerky movement like this - that shows independence") on a sole car, but it fails and the car drives right on by.

When he tests method number two ("a little wider movement - a smile goes with this one"), they watch over a dozen cars on the country road leave them in their dust without even slowing down as Peter tries every variation of thumb-wagging in his repertoire. Method number three also fails ("When you're broke and hungry and everything looks black. It's a long sweeping movement"). Peter thumbs his nose at the last car - his infallible methods with all three thumb-wagging techniques are totally unsuccessful and he is quickly deflated and defeated.

So Ellie offers to give it a try, demonstrating her superior hitchhiking technique, but he mocks her proposal to do better. Without using her thumb at all, she provocatively raises her skirt above the knee, exposing a shapely, stockinged leg. Her technique is immediately effective and the next car screeches to a halt. She asks for a little credit for her alternative thumb-less method: "Aren't you going to give me a little credit?...Well, I proved once and for all that the limb is mightier than the thumb."

[The other most famous sequence of the film is the "Wall of Jericho" bedroom scene in the autocamp.]

The highlight of director George Stevens' is the classic, tragically funny, disastrous dinner-party scene. The aspiring title role character Alice Adams (Katharine Hepburn) hopelessly wishes to rise up above the low-social prominence of her vulgar, poor family. To impress a rich new suitor Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray) at a stylish dinner party at her own home - in the wilting heat - she fiercely wishes to make a good impression by having conned Arthur into believing that her folks are well-to-do. She has fictionalized her life to him and forced everyone in her family to pretend that they are something other than themselves.

The slovenly, gum-chewing and drunk part-time black servant Malena (Hattie McDaniel) has been coached to make it a first-class event, but she valiantly makes a mess of things. With her maid's cap falling off her head, she serves caviar sandwiches - in slow-motion - as an appetizer. After forcing open the stuck dining room doors, Malena inelegantly announces: "Dinner is served."

Alice's father Virgil (Fred Stone), whose shirt front keeps popping open, responds: "Well, that's good. Let's go see if we can eat it." Although it is a sweltering, humid night, they have hot soup as a first course. The soup plates are removed before the diners are finished. Ill-at-ease and sweating profusely, Arthur plays with his sweetbreads course, but politely compliments the hosts. Alice chatters and smiles away, trying to make a good impression. The brussel sprouts, which have smelled up the house, are thrust at everyone. Having forgotten the maid's name, Virgil calls "Here you" when he requests water to drink.

With tears in her eyes, Alice asks Arthur: "A penny for your thought. No, I'll pay more," and offers him a "poor, little dead rose" as further payment. Obviously, she knows that he has seen the reality of her bumbling, cloddish family, but he replies: "I'm afraid I haven't any." Tremulus and vulnerable from worry, she pleads as she wipes her tears: "Will you ever forgive us...for making you eat such a heavy dinner?...You can run on home as soon as you like."

This Marx Brothers' musical comedy has one of the most celebrated scenes in all screen comedy - the classic, slapstick crowded stateroom scene. Seedy entrepreneur and swindler Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx) sails to New York on the S. S. Americus with the New York Opera Company to represent his interests toward wealthy dowager Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont). On board, Driftwood finds himself in Suite # 58, a telephone-booth-size stateroom on the cruise ship.

When the steward attempts to cram a steamer trunk into the cozy room, Driftwood asks: "Wouldn't it be simpler if you just put the stateroom in the trunk?" He is aghast to see three stowaways, Fiorello (Chico), Riccardo (Allan Jones), and a sleeping Tomasso (Harpo) curled up in the bottom drawer of the trunk - they pop out into his tiny compartment. To keep them quiet, he steps into the hallway and places an order with the steward for meals - supplemented by additional orders for food items from behind the stateroom door.

A persistent procession of people from the ship's staff parade into the tiny shoebox cabin no bigger than a closet: two chambermaids to make up the room, an engineer to turn off the heat, a manicurist to trim Driftwood's nails, the engineer's large assistant, an inquiring young woman wandering around for her Aunt Minnie and asking to use the phone, a determined, gum-chewing, cleaning washwoman to mop up, and the stewards with the meal order.

Each of the occupants that are entangled together must find space in a nook or cranny of the miniscule stateroom. The grande dame, Mrs. Claypool shows up in her finest costume and opens the door, letting loose the above-mentioned in an avalanching torrent of bodies into the corridor.

[The other classic scene in the film is "The Party of the First Part" contract scene and the line about a "Sanity Clause".]

The dancing partnership of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, stretching over seven years for RKO Studios, has produced a priceless number of memorable dance duets. Most film afficionados consider it (their fourth film) to be their finest film together.

In a centerpiece solo, Astaire dances the sensational Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails number as part of the second act of his London show - it is the quintessential tuxedo-clad dance, backed by a top-hatted, tuxedoed, male chorus line.

Together, the duo performs the romantic adagio Cheek to Cheek. He breaks into song in mid-sentence: "Heaven, I'm in Heaven. And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek. When we're out together dancing, Cheek to Cheek..." First, they dance in the company of others on a crowded dance floor and then dance/drift across a bridge to a deserted, circular ballroom area. All alone in a dreamlike setting, they perform a romantic dance together.

Dale's ankle-length gown, (the most famous of all Rogers' dance dresses), light, ice-blue satin covered with ostrich feathers, sheds as they whirl around. Beautifully, they stretch out an arm to each other (his left, her right), leading to her twirling spin into him. Briefly, they repeat their earlier tap-dancing routine from the bandstand, performing side by side. Several times she bends deeply backwards in his arms during their choreographed dance, surrending to his seductive, luring attraction. Mixed with standard ballroom dance positions, they also leap and turn boldly, separate, spin, and then return "cheek to cheek."

After a climactic ending with a full orchestral burst, the dance ends as they come to rest against a wall. They affectionately gaze at each other, while Jerry slowly twiddles his thumbs.

In Charlie Chaplin's last 'silent' film, he battles technology.

The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) has a disastrous, nightmarish lunch at a food-eating machine (another most-memorable sequence) - a mechanical, automated, aerodynamically-styled, silent feeding machine which features a revolving table, an automaton soup plate, an automatic food pusher, a revolving low and high gear corncob feeder, and a hydro-compressed sterilized mouth wipe.

Back at his factory worker job in the late afternoon after rejoining his co-workers on the assembly line, his job is to tighten bolts on an endless series of machine parts - he is a small cog in the factory. The key to successful nut-tightening is to perform his movements and tasks with clocklike tempo and precision. From his work station on the assembly-line, he holds wrenches in both hands to tighten nuts on a long stream of steel plates carried on the conveyor belt production line. The boss has ordered production increases: "Section 5 - give 'em the limit," so the conveyor belt is sped up - a hilarious, frenzied scene as he makes an heroic effort to keep up.

Under the strain of the job, he finally goes beserk, slowly driven insane by the assembly line. He literally lies prone on the belt and is dragged, swallowed and eaten up by the whizzing wheels, gears, and cogs of the monstrous machine. His body snakes its way through the gears until the production line's direction is reversed and he finally emerges free - coughed out of the machine. He has gone completely crazy and insane.

[The film's final image of the Tramp walking into the sunrise is indelible.]

There are few romantic tragedies that capture the funereal death scene as well as this exquisite film.

The 19th century Parisian courtesan, Marguerite 'Camille' Gautier (Greta Garbo), a notorious, kept-woman with an avaricious life of self-indulgence and frivolity succumbs to consumption in the presence of the handsome, young Armand Duval (Robert Taylor). The prolonged scene commences with the confinement of the dying Marguerite on her bed. Her weakened, wan face is framed by her pillow - she rallies to get out of bed when she learns her lover has come. The vulnerable woman gets out of bed and painfully makes her way to a chair. There, her nurse brings her camellias to pin to her lap, and brushes her hair. Rapturous, impatient, and hoping to look perfect, Camille begs: "I'll be beautiful again when I'll be well again, won't I?"

In an exquisite, classic deathbed scene, she makes a great effort to stand and greet Armand as he enters. Her eyes and face are joyous and bright for their reunion. But in moments, she is exhausted and debilitated - he sweeps his fragile love into his arms as she falls. He babbles to her about his reaffirmation of love and promises to stay with her forever - now that he understands her love-as-renunciation. He plans for their happy future together, beginning with a trip to the country where she can get well. She gains sustenance and power from his ardor and support. Marguerite falters however - she goes limp and cries that she isn't strong enough.

After he calls for the doctor, places her in a chaise and kneels at her side, she experiences sadness for a love that she has lost forever in the temporal world. But she's not self-deluded - her death will release them from an untenable relationship into a more spiritual, mystical relationship: "Perhaps it's better if I live in your heart, where the world can't see me. If I'm dead, there'll be no staying of our love." She signals death when her eyes burst open once. She crumbles and falls lifeless, but remains tranquil with a gentle smile on her face. Armand looks at her and notices she has already passed away. He is horrified that this is the end. He buries his face on her breast, weeping. The film ends with a final fade-out, close-up shot of Marguerite's lovely, radiant face - imperishable in death.

[Only the deathbed scenes in Dark Victory (1939) and Wuthering Heights (1939) come close to equaling this scene - see below.]

At the conclusion of this film, after bidding her departing husband Dr. Steele (George Brent) goodbye, and also comforting her sorrowful best friend Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald), a dying Judith (Bette Davis) enters her house - and at the foot of the stairs, she tells her maid Martha (Virginia Brissac): "I'm going up to lie down now." Feeling her way along, she starts climbing the stairs - one last time - she stops midway to embrace and say goodbye to her two dogs Daffy and Don. She haltingly climbs further toward her bedroom, kneels and offers a final prayer by her bedside.

Martha has followed her and pulled the blind on the window, shutting out the rays of sunlight. Judith asks: "Is that you, Martha?" She eases herself onto her bed and lies down, telling her housekeeper to be dismissed, without hysterics: "I don't want to be disturbed." Martha covers her with a comforter and then respectfully leaves the room and closes the door. Judith triumphantly and victoriously faces the end alone and dies in a dignified manner.

A camera frames a close-up of Judith's sightless, staring face and then slowly blurs out-of-focus, signifying the end of her vision - and death. A heavenly chorus of voices accompanies her entrance into the void.

Heathcliff (Laurence Olivier) runs up and sneaks into Cathy's (Merle Oberon) bedroom, where together they share one of the most memorable, luminous deathbed scenes ever filmed. They pledge their enduring, undying love and become reconciled after so many years of mutual unhappiness and bitterness. They passionately hug and kiss each other, finally revealing their truest emotions to each other:

Cathy: "Oh, Heathcliff. Oh how strong you look. How many years do you mean to live after I'm gone? Don't, don't let me go. If I could only hold you until we were both dead. Will you forget me when I'm in the earth?"
Heathcliff: "I could as soon forget you with my own life, Cathy, if you die."
Cathy: "Boy, Heathcliff. Come. Let me feel how strong you are."
Heathcliff: "Strong enough to bring us both back to life, Cathy, if you want to live."
Cathy: "No, Heathcliff, I want to die."
Heathcliff: "Oh Cathy, why did you kill yourself?"
Cathy: vHold me. Just hold me."
Heathcliff: "Oh, and love comfort you. My tears don't love you, Cathy. They blight and curse and damn you!"
Cathy: "Heathcliff, don't break my heart."
Heathcliff: "Oh Cathy, I never broke your heart. You broke it! Cathy! Cathy! You loved me! What right to throw love away for the poor fancy thing you felt for him, for a handful of worthiness. Misery and death and all the evils that God and man could have ever done would never have parted us. You'd be better alone. You wandered off like a wanton, greedy child to break your heart and mine."
Cathy: "Heathcliff, forgive me. We've so little time."

Heathcliff vows to stay with Cathy as her strength ebbs. He hears her claim that he was always the only man she ever loved. She asks that Heathcliff pick her up: "Take me to the window. Let me look at the moors with you once more, my darling. Once more."

Heathcliff carries her in his arms to the window, where they look out on the moors and the Crag where they played together as children. Before slumping into his arms after breathing her last breath, they make a pact to be together for eternity. She promises to wait for him there in death until they are reunited again one day: "Heathcliff, can you see the Crag over there where our castle is? I'll wait for you 'til you come."

#28A One of the most famous and popular films of all time is director Victor Fleming's Civil War epic. Against the sweeping, panoramic drama of the war is the passionate, tumultuous story of Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and the dashing, charming Charlestonian Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).

She is forewarned about him when he is first noticed as the "nasty dark one" with a "most terrible reputation" standing alone at the foot of the staircase during the Wilkes barbecue at the Twelve Oaks plantation. Dressed in an elegant black suit, Butler exchanges a cool, challenging stare with Scarlett. She notices him undressing her with his eyes: "He looks as if - as if he knows what I look like without my shimmy."

#28B Another powerful scene during the war evokes irrevocable feelings: Scarlett races to the enormous open-air 'hospital' of Atlanta's railroad depot to find Dr. Meade to assist in Melanie's (Olivia de Havilland) delivery. A close-up of Scarlett's face shows her horrified reaction to what she sees. She picks her way through thousands of wounded and dead Confederate soldiers strewn around the railroad depot, in one of the classic, most incredible and memorable scenes ever filmed. In the spectacular moving crane shot, the camera slowly pulls back to show more and more of the defeated and crippled army in the hot sun. It finally comes to rest on a close-up of a torn and tattered Confederate flag which waves defiantly and bravely over the remnants of the army, a vivid representation of the death throes of the Old South.

[And lastly, the scene of Rhett Butler's exasperated parting from Scarlett at their front door. Scarlett asks: "Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?" Without sentimentality, (in a daring, almost-disallowed taboo line), he cooly responds for the last time: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"]

The greatest rousing adventure tale and film of all-time is George Stevens' classic, based upon Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name - a tribute to a courageous water carrier (Sam Jaffe) who accompanies British Army veterans in India as they battle against a fanatical, murderous Indian cult in the late nineteenth century. In the film's stirring and poignant ending, Gunga Din - who longs to be a regimental bugler, but has been mortally wounded by a bayonet, gathers all his courage and strength and crawls painfully to the top of a domed tower. There, with his last ounce of stamina, he blows a warning from a bugle to warn approaching British troops that they are about to be ambushed at the entrance to a rocky pass.

As he finishes giving his warning, a bullet hits him, and he slumps - the final sounds from his bugle are ones of his fading death before he expires and falls from the tower. In the epilogue, the loyal, lowly water-boy is praised and admired by a colonel for his deserved heroism as one of the "honored dead," and he is posthumously appointed as a regimental corporal. The last stanza of Kipling's poem is read as tribute: "...Though I belted you and flayed you, By the living Gawd that's made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

The film ends with a superimposed image of a proudly smiling and saluting Gunga Din, fully costumed in a British soldier's uniform.

The classic filibuster scene at the conclusion of Frank Capra's film has to rank as one of the most-finely acted sequences ever recorded.

After almost twenty-four hours of filibustering, with an agonizingly, pathetically hoarse voice but also with an indomitable spirit, a weary, pleading Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) has a few more exhortations for the Senators who have returned to the Senate chamber. In an extraordinary metaphor emphasizing the Capitol Dome high above him, Smith imaginatively suggests re-positioning the lady of the Dome back to an ethical center where she belongs: "And it's not too late. Because this country is bigger than the Taylors or you or me or anything else. Great principles don't get lost once they come to light. They're right here. You just have to see them again."

When baskets, wire barrels, and bundles of stacks of 50,000 "Taylor-made" phony telegrams from Senator Paine's (Claude Rains) state are brought in and deposited in the front of the Senate chamber, Paine holds up a fistful, telling Smith that they all demand that he yield the floor and give up his filibuster.

In one of the most powerful scenes ever filmed, Jefferson staggers forward in disbelief to look at the telegrams, pawing through them and desperately looking for some evidence of support. In a symbolic crucifixion stance, he grabs two large fistfuls and holds them out. In a hoarse voice, he turns toward Senator Paine and delivers an impassioned speech, accusing Paine face-to-face of betraying his ideals. Then with heart-stirring courage, Smith finishes his heroic speech with the immortal eloquent words: "You think I'm licked. You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked, and I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these, and the Taylors and all their armies come marching into this place. Somebody'll listen to me. Some..."

Smith faints and collapses on the floor, dumping a basket of telegrams over onto himself. His supportive friend Saunders (Jean Arthur) screams from the gallery. With a strained look on his face, Senator Paine rushes from the Senate floor toward the vestibule/cloakroom as Smith is treated. Two or three shots ring out, and Paine is seen struggling with other Senators. They prevent him from killing himself, as he screams in a public confession that he is unable to live with his guilt-ridden conscience any longer: "I'm not fit to be a Senator. I'm not fit to live. Expel me! Expel me! Not him."

Conscience-stricken and in a fit of remorse, Senator Paine re-enters the Senate floor and admits that everything Smith said was true, exonerating him and the American political system.

In director John Ford's first modern Western, John Wayne began his fertile acting partnership with the director (in his first major western role) with the inspired, legendary scene of his first appearance - in a role that made him famous and launched him as the most durable Western hero.

As Ringo Kid, an outlaw who is seeking revenge for the murder of his father and brother by the Plummers, he is first seen 'holding up' the stagecoach (with an assortment of characters) on its way to Lordsburg. Along the way after rounding a turn, a rifle shot is heard, and a tracking shot zooms in (losing focus for a moment) for a large clear closeup of Ringo Kid standing tall from the perspective of the moving stagecoach. The camera rapidly tracks in on his face. Ringo is twirling and re-cocking his Winchester rifle in one hand, shouting out: "Hold it!", while holding his saddle in the other hand. He is standing in the middle of the desert by the trail, stranded without a horse. Ringo is wearing a paneled, placket-front shirt with a neckerchief, and jeans with its pants legs rolled up outside of the boots.

[The stirring chase across the salt flats at the film's conclusion, with dare-devil stunts performed atop charging horses, is equally momentous.]

In the much-beloved film is the indelible image of Dorothy (Judy Garland), her dog Toto, the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) who needs a brain, the Tin Woodsman (Jack Haley) who desires a heart, and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who desperately wants courage. They break into spirited song as they link arms and dance through the woods singing: "We're Off to See the Wizard" - this single film sequence has been irrevokably imprinted on everyone's consciousness.

With the Wicked Witch of the East's ruby slippers on her feet, Dorothy is off to seek advice on the best way home from the all-powerful Oz, the ruler of the Emerald City. Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) gazes into her crystal ball high up in her broken down castle to follow their progress. With the captain of her evil crew of wicked monkeys at her side, she cackles gleefully. She concocts sorcery and other menacing elements to take possession of the ruby slippers. Her plan is to cause sleep-inducing flowers in a poppy field to poison them: "Now my beauties. Something with poison in it I think. With poison. But attractive to the eye and soothing to the smell. Poppies. Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep. Sleep. Now they'll sleep."

[Other scenes qualify as tie-breakers: Dorothy's singing of her beloved, haunting and plaintive, but immortal song "Over the Rainbow." Dreaming, yearning and wistfully longing for a trouble-free, fascinating, far-away world beyond her home-land, she strolls from a bale of hay (which she leans on), to an old wheel (which she pulls on), to a discarded buggy (which she and Toto sit on) as she sings. Or the Wicked Witch's memorable death scene, as she is reduced to a puddle of vaporous clothing in front of everyone, crying out: "You cursed brat. Look what you've done. I'm melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness." Unforgettable.]

Charlie Chaplin's first talking picture contains one of filmdom's most splendid pantomime sequences. At the time of Hitler's rise to power, Chaplin played both a Jewish barber and the dictator of Tomania, Adenoid Hynkel.

As Herr Hynkel, uniformed in his Hitler-like outfit in his imperial office, he performs an "emperor of the world" ballet/dance with a giant, balloon-like globe of the world which he hopes to dominate. He approaches the globe, holds his hands out delicately to surround it, and imagines himself possessing and caring for it. Hynkel removes the globe from its stand and raises it aloft - he spins and balances it with one hand, while letting go with a sick, maniacal laugh. He sends it sailing into the air over his head - it floats from one hand to the other and back.

As it drifts down, he gives it a light rear kick with his heel and it soars toward the high ceiling in the room. When it descends, he bounces it upwards with his head - his hands are interlaced in front of his waistline. When it floats down again, he lets it bounce and then adoringly catches it in his outstretched arm. He sizes it up for a moment, and then repeats the kicking action and the head-bounce. After a few more gentle tosses as he moves toward his desk, he catches the globe. While reclining on his back on the top of his desk, he swiftly kicks it into the air. When it descends a second time, he twists slightly and projects it upwards with two gentle bounces off his fanny. He catches it once more, spins it, and stares lovingly at it.

After more tosses, he leaps onto the top of his desk, sends it aloft, jumps to the floor in front of the desk, and grabs it on the way down. As he holds out the conquered world, it suddenly explodes in front of his face - he holds up the tattered rubber rag - all that is left of his world. Distressed, he whirls away, puts his head on his desk, and with his back to the camera, he bursts into tears.

This is the most-honored film in all of film history, with many sequences or images worthy of a mention.

One of its greatest sequences is at the end of the film, when the secret of the word "Rosebud," the last word uttered by Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) before he died, is finally revealed.

The camera pulls away from the basement floor to show the incredible accumulation of Kane's acquisitions over a lifetime. Then, the camera slowly glides over years and years of his pitiless pieces of material goods and collected art objects, looking like a broken jigsaw puzzle, a deserted skyscraper city, or a metropolis when photographed from high above. There in the piles of possessions are:

iron bedframes
an open, wooden toybox (with a few dolls and a picture of Kane around the time of his first marriage)
a pile of old newspapers wrapped in twine
a photograph of Kane as a boy with his mother
a snow sled (which is picked up by a workman)

Kane's life appears as a disjointed collection of failed energy to productively use resources.

In the basement beneath Xanadu, workers clear away the vast array of junk and articles. A workman is sorting and crating his possessions near an incinerator, a blazing furnace where items are thrown that are considered junk. The worker with the sled in his hands is told by Raymond, the butler, to "throw that junk" into the flames of the incinerator to be consumed, along with an accumulation of other possessions. The sled, the one that young Charles played with when he was with his father and mother early in the film, is an enduring and beautiful symbol of Kane's life.

The name "Rosebud" (and its decorative flower) is briefly seen on the sled in a close-up before flames lick the wood, the heat warps and blisters the paint of the wooden surface, and it is consumed by the flames. The "Rosebud" sled is a momento from Kane's childhood with his mother, a childhood that was interrupted by the opportunities wealth and fortune bestowed upon him. He rammed Thatcher (George Coulouris) with the sled when he was forcibly taken away to New York to be raised in more affluent surroundings. The sled symbolized the innocence, beauty, and love that he lost, the love that eluded him - a dying man's memory of a childhood possession that held special meaning.

Preston Sturges' sophisticated romantic comedy is a battle of the sexes highlighting the painful, antagonistic terrors of sexual passion and seduction. The sexual comedy is the story of a sophisticated, card-sharp, Eve-like temptress who takes advantage of an innocent, vulnerable, snake-loving man - a literal Garden of Eden fable.

Charles Pike (Henry Fonda), a snake-expert is the obvious next target of calculating cardsharks and con artists Jean (Eugenia) Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck) - appropriately nibbling on an apple - and her father "Handsome" "Colonel" Harry (Charles Coburn) Harrington.

The memorable scene of his seduction in Colonel Harrington's cabin is one of the most satirically sexy scenes ever filmed. As they enter the cabin, the naively-innocent adventurer remarks on the overpowering presence of her perfume - he's "been up the Amazon for a year" where "they don't use perfume." Wearing a black, exposed-midriff outfit, Jean invites him, her Prince Charming, to pick out a pair of evening "slippers' for her to wear. She points to a compartmented shoe bag with fifty pairs of shoes, seducing him with suggestive lines as she leans back on the trunk flirtatiously: "The shoes are over here. Because you were so polite you can pick them out, and put them on, if you like..."

After he has shyly chosen an appropriate pair of evening slippers, she sits down and crosses her nyloned leg in front of him - revealing her evening gown slit to her knees. She elegantly dominates him, suggesting that he put the slippers on her feet. He clumsily gets on one knee in front of her, with his face almost touching her kneecap. Charles' vision blurs as he reels dizzyingly in front of her and takes ahold of her foot. While holding onto her leg and fiddling with her shoe strap, he distracts himself from her allure by explaining how he is a snake-enthusiast and a beer heir nicknamed Hopsie.

As he finishes putting on her 'slippers,' he finally admits how he is smitten with her and bursting with desire from the powerful aphrodisiac of her perfume. He attempts to make a pass at her: "You see, where I've been, I mean up the Amazon, you kind of forget how, I mean, I haven't seen a girl in a long time, I mean, there's something about that perfume..." He leans forward to kiss her, but she holds him back: "Why Hopsie, you ought to be kept in a cage!"

At the conclusion of John Huston's seminal film noir, tough detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) utters the definitive byline for all Hollywood films. As the mysterious and duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) is led away to the hallway's elevator by a detective, Spade asks: "Well, shall we be getting down to the hall?" Police Sergeant Tom Polhaus (Ward Bond) delivers one of the film's final lines when he lifts up the heavy black statuette as they are leaving the room: "It's heavy. What is it?" Spade responds while touching the bird:

"The, uh, stuff that dreams are made of."

The detective makes a puzzled response: "Huh?" Spade takes the statuette from Polhaus' hands and walks to the stairs. In a memorable parting close-up, Brigid is tearfully being taken away, waiting in the elevator for the gates to close. The steel cage is pulled in front of her like the bars on a cell, framing her frightened, motionless, lonely face in the bars of the gate. The outer door shuts and the elevator drops from view - she disappears down the elevator shaft to her fate. Spade takes the stairs with Polhaus. The case is closed.

[Another unforgettable sequence is the one in which Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) feverishly unwraps the newspaper-shrouded bird, gazes upon it, and then anxiously scrapes and chips at its surface with his penknife - wildly realizing that the bird is a fake.]

#36A
The finale of one of the most beloved films ever made (by Michael Curtiz) is justly celebrated.

The romantic drama ends in the dense airport mist and fog, after American cafe proprietor Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) says goodbye to the only woman he has ever loved, the luminous Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) with her Resistance leader husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). For Rick, no sacrifice is too great - he touches her cheek with one finger after delivering one of the film's most famous speeches:

"Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Not, now. Here's looking at you, kid."

He also kills the sinister German Nazi/Gestapo commander Major Heinrich Strasser (Conrad Veidt) who is trying to apprehend them. The crafty Chief (Prefect) of police Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) is sympathetic toward Rick and ultimately lets him off the hook by commanding his men: "Round up the usual suspects."

#37B
Then, in the fog, they watch the plane leave the ground for neutral Lisbon. Renault offers Rick a way out of Casablanca - the cafe owner is willing to accept the transit letter, but not in exchange for cancelling their wager. Rick walks off with Captain Renault across the wet runway, as they discuss what they might do together with the 10,000 francs [$300], the payment due on their earlier bet over whether or not Laszlo would ever get out of Casablanca.

The closing in the fog brings another great classic line [dubbed in later] as Rick tells Renault that they have forged a new alliance as they head off for an uncertain future together: "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Their new partnership is underscored with the sounds of La Marseillaise, earlier sung in a classic scene in the cafe (and led by Laszlo) as a statement of solidarity against the Germans.

The famous cigarette trick occurs in a tale of love between Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis), a middle-aged, withdrawn spinster from a wealthy Boston family who is transformed from an ugly duckling into a beautiful, self-assured woman, and a handsome, unhappily-married, suave European named Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid). During a South American cruise, Charlotte discovers life and love when she meets him and they fall in love and have an affair.

In their famous scenes, cigarette smoking becomes a sensual act. In the final scene of the film, he asks Charlotte once more: "Shall we just have a cigarette on it?" She responds breathlessly: "Yes, sir," holding out an opened cigarette box. He takes two cigarettes and puts them in his mouth, lights them both, and then hands one over to Charlotte.

The film ends with Charlotte's most memorable line on the balcony. Although she knows Jerry will never leave his wife, they have found something far more enduring and happy:

"And just think, it won't be for this time only. That is if you'll help keep what we have. If we both try hard to, to protect that little strip of territory that's ours...Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars."

As the music swells, the camera moves between them and ascends above the trees to a starry night sky.

The agonizing, breath-taking, harrowing death sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller is a terrifying, suspenseful bit of film-making.

After a cross-country chase, suspected saboteur Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) has confronted the real fifth columnist Frank Fry (Norman Lloyd) on the top of the Statue of Liberty - on its torch held high above the water of New York harbor. Windblown against a cloudy sky, Fry loses his balance and falls over the side of the railing - he bounces once and is left clinging to the space between the immense base of the thumb and the forefinger that compose the concrete hand of the statue.

Kane climbs down to rescue the spy - he half-crouches and has one hand wrapped around part of the base of the torch. With his free hand, he can only reach and clutch Fry's coat jacket sleeve near the wrist. As Fry perilously hangs there clinging for his life and perspiration beads appear on his forehead, the sleeve begins to tear apart at the seam where the arm joins the shoulder. The saboteur literally dangles by a thread.

As the split widens, Fry's terror-stricken face notices that his entire coat jacket will soon separate. He cries out: "Quick, the sleeve, the sleeve!" And then his arm slips suddenly out of the sleeve - in a disorienting, downward view from Kane's perspective, Fry falls away through space and drops to his death many feet below. His face contorts, his body rotates awkwardly, and his screams become fainter as he approaches the ground.

The spirited, spunky and domineering acting performance of James Cagney as song and dance man George M. Cohan in this biopic is unbelievably rousing.

Especially in the title number, George, as horse jockey Johnny Jones - the Yankee Doodle Boy himself, stands on a pedestal next to a race horse, and is soon surrounded by long-gowned, glittering dancers/singers. He sings the film's classic, all-time favorite title song: "Yankee Doodle Dandy":

"...I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy, A Yankee Doodle, do or die; A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, Born on the Fourth of July. I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart, She's my Yankee Doodle joy. Yankee Doodle came to London, Just to ride the ponies, I am that Yankee Doodle boy."

As the chorus is sung, the limber song and dance hoofer George struts back and forth across the stage with a stiff-legged gait, bent forward with a straight upper torso. His high, straight-toed kicks, jerky convolutions (like a unwieldy marionette), a bit of bouncing, twirling, tap-dancing, and other assorted, arrogant movements make the dynamic, vigorous dance number come alive. The side walls of the immense stage become part of his dance floor as he walks up them to make his turns.

In George Stevens' part screwball comedy, part romantic comedy, wartime Washington housing shortages force the prim, working bachelor girl Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur) to rent out some of her apartment space. An elderly, match-making gentleman Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn), a "retired, well-to-do millionaire" in Washington for business, rents out half of her apartment, and then sub-lets his half to clean-cut young aviation expert Army Sergeant Joe Carter (Joel McCrea), in Washington on special duty.

One balmy evening, Joe accompanies room-mate Connie home - she is provocatively dressed in an off-the-shoulder black lace evening dress, with a string of white pearls around her soft neck, and her hair is decorated with a white flower. On the way she turns a streetcorner and nearly walks into one of many kissing couples on the sidewalk. As they talk about his family, he keeps taking off and putting on her wrap, putting his hand on her bare shoulder, and taking her arm in his. When she asks about his girlfriends, they almost kiss in a shot framed between two small tree trunks, but then she resists and pulls away and asks: "Are you afraid to get married or something?" As he embraces her, they collapse on the front steps of their shared apartment.

In their famous courtship scene on the front steps, she speaks about her plans for her own marriage and her future with her fiance, an older man, forty-two year old ("a safe and sane age") government official - her stuffed-shirt boss, Charles J. Pendergast (Richard Gaines): "I consider myself a very lucky little lady...being engaged to Mr. Pendergast." All the while, he is amorously embracing her, caressing her, and fondly touching her hands, arms, and shoulders - she vainly attempts to ignore his advances. She holds out her engagement ring for his approval and he responds by kissing her wrist. Connie becomes visibly distracted and her voice cracks when he admires and then nuzzles her bare neck. "Well you see, that's the way with those older men like Mr. Pendergast. A girl gets to appreciate their more mature..." He passionately kisses her on the lips - when he releases, she finishes the sentence: "...viewpoint."

She pauses, looks away for a second, and then takes the two sides of his face with her hands and boldly kisses him back - harder. But then, she realizes that they are getting too involved - she stands and politely states: "I've gotta go. Good night, Mr. Carter." He responds: "Good night, Miss Milligan." She ascends the stairs into the building and shuts the door. He begins walking away and then sheepishly remembers that he is leaving his own apartment: "I almost forgot where I lived." Connie holds the door open for him.

As they bed down in adjacent rooms - shot from outside in a frame split by the wall between them, they discuss how uncomfortable and restless they are, and Joe finally admits: "I love you, Connie" and she responds likewise: "I love you more than anything in the world."

The startling movie debut of 19 year-old Lauren Bacall was in Howard Hawks' loose adaptation of the Hemingway novel. She held her own as Marie Browning, a self-reliant, tough, insolent, no-nonsense romantic partner to boat Captain/privateer Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart).

Morgan first meets the young, sultry, and stranded American in the doorway of his room in the hotel/nightclub's upstairs hallway. She has appeared from her rented room across the hall from his. In her first husky, sexy lines to him as she leans in the door, she makes a simple, deadpan request for a match, but it sounds like an erotic challenge: "Anybody got a match?" He tosses her a box of matches and she aggressively lights the flame, looking at him with her wide expressive eyes. She flings the used match backward out the door, tosses the box of matches back at him, and turns and leaves without any emotion: "Thanks."

Later, at the beginning of one of the screen's most famous seductions, Slim sits on his lap. Before kissing the seated man for the first time, she acts the aggressor role as they engage in flirtatious sexual repartee. Her verdict of his kissing talent requires a second kiss. Then, after kissing him again, he appears baffled. She suggests to her passive partner as she stands: "It's even better when you help."

When this remark doesn't immediately work and produce a satisfactory reaction, she propositions him midway from leaving his room with other famous lines, delivered with a calculated coolness: "You know, you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. (She opens his door and pauses.) You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together - and blow." He continues to remain seated in his chair, smoking a cigarette. After she has left, he makes the sound of a cat-call whistle - and then chuckles to himself.

The home-coming scene is marvelously-filmed - it captures the four long years of separation between middle-aged serviceman Al Stephenson (Fredric March) and his wife Milly (Myrna Loy).

The touching, wordless homecoming scene commences when he rings his apartment's doorbell, and quickly cups his hand over the mouths of his two grown children to silence them. Son Rob (Michael Hall) and daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright) stand in amazement - overjoyed to see him. From the distant kitchen, his wife's voice asks about the unexpected visitor: "Who's that at the door, Peggy? Peggy? Rob? Who is...?"

Al's apron-clad wife suddenly stops placing dishes on the table and intuitively guesses her husband has finally come home. In a long-held shot with Al's back to the camera, she spatially appears at the end of the hallway corridor with arms half-outstretched. Both stand frozen to the ground - and then silently, slowly, move into each other's arms across the vast void. His children watch from afar as their parents share a long embrace.

The heavy-handed, lusty western epic from David O. Selznick's production ends with an unforgettable climax of dirt, death, blood, and lust. Its orgasmically-tinged finale helped earned the film its nickname: "Lust in the Dust."

The sultry half-breed Pearl Chavez (Jennifer Jones), who has created enmity between two brothers in the McCanles family, trails the spoiled, lecherous, vicious, undisciplined, swaggering no-good Lewt McCanles (Gregory Peck).

The final notorious scene is the climax of all their confrontations together amidst a rocky outcropping.

When the depraved Lewt appears in the rocks at a long distance from her, Pearl takes aim and shoots her lover to end their passionate love-hate affair. She shows immediate remorse, thinking he's dead. But he is still alive, although wounded in the leg. He fires back, calling her a "double-crossin' bobcat." Pearl is still drawn to him, re-cocking her gun and moving forward. As she approaches, Lewt shoots Pearl in the chest, sending her into the rocks and rubble. Satisfied that he has killed her, he says: "I guess that does it," but then feels twinges of regret that he has shot his beloved, calling out "Pearl, hey Pearl!" The ex-lovers continue their bloody shoot-out in the hot desert sun and Lewt is shot in the stomach.

Seriously wounded, she drags herself over the rocks and up the side of the mountain toward her dying lover, spouting blood and shouting threats. Dying, Lewt asks Pearl to join him so that they can expire together: "Please, I gotta hold ya just once more before...I love ya. I love ya. Hurry, hurry. Hurry honey." In their final moments, she cries out for him: "Lewt, Lewt, hold on. Wait for me," and lustfully crawls toward him. They bloodily embrace and mercifully die in the dust in each other's arms.

As they die, the camera pulls back until they are lost in the landscape under the blazing, hot sun and under the massive face of Squaw's Head Rock.

This film features the most famous role and peak performance of WWII's GI "love goddess" - the beautiful, alluring, and provocative pin-up Rita Hayworth - with her sleek and sophisticated eroticism, lush hair and peaches and cream complexion.

In an early sequence in the film, crippled Buenos Aires casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready) introduces his new exuberantly healthy American wife to second-hand casino manager Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), the film's femme fatale, in one of filmdom's best-known film entrances. He asks: "Gilda, are you decent?" She responds innocently: "Me?" as she gives a long, sensual look at Johnny, and pulls up one side of her strapless dress. "Sure, I'm decent." The hedonistic, flirtatious, auburn-haired Gilda (Rita Hayworth) has returned from their honeymoon. In her first screen appearance as she throws back her head, she responds sexily and sends her thick mane of hair flying.

The film's most memorable scene occurs later - it is Gilda's bawdy, sexy casino performance/glove striptease while singing the torchy number "Put the Blame on Mame, Boys." The lyrics of the song, filled with double entendres, describe a dangerous, threatening kind of woman who is often blamed - unfairly - by men. Following Mundson's supposed death, Johnny replaces him as her emotionally-abusive husband in a continuing love-hate relationship - another complicated, hateful marriage.

She fights back in the only way possible - with a defiant, drunken sexual exhibition that doubles as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Swathed in a black satin dress displaying bare upper arms and shoulders, her dance is deliberately designed to shame, humiliate and infuriate Johnny in public. As she sings, she beckons with extended arms toward the lusting men in the audience and peels off one of her long, elbow-length black gloves - keeping the casino audience (and viewers) in suspense - wondering whether the strapless gown will remain suspended on her frame.

Receiving accolades and encore-applause, Gilda flings her second glove toward the hungering audience. As she starts to shed her strapless dress, she entreats the men for assistance: "I'm not very good at zippers, but maybe if I had some help." She is dragged away from the stage to prevent further embarrassment.

#46A
Frank Capra's classic contains some of the greatest movie moments ever recorded. The phone conversation sequence has some of the most unforgettable moments of the film.

Small town Bedford Falls residents George Bailey (James Stewart) and Mary Hatch (Donna Reed) share the same earpiece extension, squeezed together, listening and talking on the same phone. George is very conscious of her being close to him, and resists his close proximity to her. He is romantically attracted and cannot deny that he loves her, but such an admission would mean remaining in Bedford Falls, where he has been forced to stay against his will and give up his other dreams.

In a long closeup of them ear-to-ear, they listen to old friend Sam Wainwright (Frank Albertson) who tells George: "Well, George Bailey-ofsky. Hey, a fine pal you are! What are you trying to do? Steal my girl?" Mary is unable to go to a different extension, because her mother is listening on the upstairs extension. Sam offers George a 'get-rich-quick' job in his new business, telling him of the bright future in plastics. But Sam wonders if George is available, cheerfully mocking him: "It's the biggest thing since radio and I'm lettin' you in on the ground floor."

All the while, George squirms and tries to contain himself, standing so close that he can smell Mary's hair. Sam tells Mary to encourage George with the offer: "Will you tell that guy I'm giving him the chance of a lifetime? You hear - the chance of a lifetime." She looks upward at him and with her lips almost on his lips reinforces what Sam has said in a whisper, but she is almost unable to say the words: "He says it's the chance of a lifetime."

The phone suddenly drops to the floor, and instead of grabbing and embracing Mary with a kiss, George holds her fiercely by the shoulders and violently starts shaking her, passionately protesting that he doesn't want to get married: "Now, you listen to me! I don't want any plastics, and I don't want any ground floors, and I don't want to get married - ever - to anyone! You understand that? I want to do what I want to do. And you're...and you're..." Then he runs out of words. She responds by crying helplessly, silently, and then George all of a sudden reverses himself and pulls Mary to himself in a fierce embrace: "I...I...Oh, Mary...Mary..."

George overcomes his resistance to her and starts to kiss her, passionately, all over her face, holding her intensely. Their undeclared love for each other overwhelms both of them. Mary's mother turns from her eavesdropping on the stairway, running away shocked: "Oh dear, oh dear!"

#46B
In the miraculous heartwarming finale, a rejuvenated George Bailey ("the richest man in town") is surrounded by all of his friends and associates in his home next to the Christmas tree to sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Auld Lang Syne. All of his friends have contributed to pay his rent, and he is toasted by his returning war-hero brother Harry (Todd Karns): "A toast...to my big brother, George. The richest man in town."

He and Mary glance at the handwritten inscription by angel Clarence (Henry Travers) in the front of the book Tom Sawyer ("Dear George: - Remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings! Love Clarence").

Zuzu (Karolyn Grimes) also notes how an ornamental bell is ringing on the Christmas tree: "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings" (signifying Clarence's promotion to an angel with wings).

Director Alfred Hitchcock's blackish romance/espionage thriller is known for having at the time of its production "the longest kiss in film history." The director circumvented the Hollywood code limiting a kiss to three seconds by interrupting the couple's kiss every three seconds - they never once break their embrace.

The famous marathon kissing scene lasts almost three minutes - it occurs between government agent Devlin (Cary Grant) and the playgirl daughter of a convicted Nazi spy Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). It begins with a medium closeup shot and as they kiss and embrace on her apartment's balcony above a Rio beach.

As the camera pulls in for a closer shot of their faces, they rapidly alternate passionate, clinging kisses and whispered endearments, first on the balcony, and then continuing with nibbling bites and nuzzling hugs as they walk from the balcony to the telephone.

During the middle of their lengthy embrace and love scene, Devlin calls his hotel and checks for his phone messages, while she tells him that they have "a very strange love affair." Afterwards, they proceed arm in arm to the front door. All the while during the seduction, they discuss dinner, hold on to each other, and carry on a conversation.

One of the greatest visual effects in cinematic history is the famous, visually intriguing Crazy House/Hall of Mirrors scene at the climax of Orson Welles' film noir classic.

The setting for the sequence is the deserted funhouse/amusement park closed for the season, where itinerant Irish adventurer/sailor Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles) awakens, trips a mechanism in the "Crazy House" ("for a while there, I thought it was me that was crazy") and careens down a long, serpentine zigzag slide past a thirty-foot high dragon's mouth halfway down. At the bottom is the Hall of Mirrors where he finds blonde femme fatale Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) - she confesses her guilt to him.

The Hall of Mirrors (the Magic Mirror Maze) is constructed with myriad mirrors - huge distorted closeups mingle with multiple fragmented images. A moment later, her brilliant, but crippled husband-lawyer Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) arrives walking with his cane - his image is multiplied a dozen times in a series of vertical panes. As they confront each other, shooting at multiple likenesses of each other, the screen erupts into a kaleidoscope of smashed glass, cracked and chipped pieces of mirror, and shattering bits of their images. Their aim is confused by the mirrors which break into splinters during the wild shooting as one fake image splinters and another replaces it.

At its climax after the panes have been blasted away, both Bannister and Elsa are mortally wounded and face each other across a scene of shattered glass. The camera films at ground level, next to Elsa as she agonizes over her death on the floor, and Michael abandons her to die as she cries out:

"Give my love to the sunrise...Oh Michael, I'm afraid. Michael! Come back here. Michael. Please. I don't want to die. I don't want to die!"

As he leaves, the revolving exit gate makes a death rattle as it rotates.