The Ticket asked critics, writers, actors and film-makers to pick their top movie scenes. Some of them couldn’t stop at one ...
DONALD CLARKE - IRISH TIMES MOVIE CRITIC
DON’T LOOK NOW (1973)
The scene:The English countryside. A child in a red raincoat wanders around a pool while her brother cycles nearby. Her father (Donald Sutherland), who has been studying architectural photographs in the house, has a moment of panic after spilling liquid on his work and rushes out to find the girl drowning. He hauls her out, but it is too late, and, as he scrabbles in the dirt with the body, the mother (Julie Christie) catches sight of the appalling vista and screams.
Why I love it: A terrifying short film in its own right, the opening scene of Nicolas Roeg's best work encapsulates the succeeding two hours in one ghastly vignette.
Notable features: The red-clad figure who will later cause so many difficulties can be spotted in one of the photographs that Sutherland is examining.
Sample dialogue: "If the world is round, why is a frozen pond flat."
LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG (1964)
The scene: Christmas. A fabulously pop-art Esso station near Cherbourg. Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve), all mink coat and compromise, pulls up in a Mercedes with her wealthy husband. She realises that Guy (Nino Castelnuovo), the owner of the establishment, is the man whom she once loved and with whom she conceived her young daughter. They talk for a moment and she tentatively asks if he would like to see the girl. He declines. She drives away to the sound of Michel Legrand's indecently lush score.
Why I love it: The gorgeously melancholy final scene of Demy's masterpiece stands for all those films (Now, Voyager, Brokeback Mountain and many others) in which drab circumstance overcomes a perfect romance.
Notable features:Check out the number plate on the car. It is the same as that on the car that Guy attends in the films opening sequences.
Sample dialogue:"She's a lot like you. Do you want to see her?" Genevive asks (or, rather, sings), referring to Guy's daughter. "I think you can go," he replies.
PSYCHO (1960)
The scene: The Bates Motel. After robbing a wad of money from her workplace, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) has finally come to her senses and decided to return the dosh to her boss. Overcome with the urge to offer us a symbolic gesture, she steps into the shower and begins washing away her sins. A shadowy figure steps into the room and, to the accompaniment of Bernard Herrmann's frantic score, stabs her to death.
Why I love it:It's an obvious choice, but no other scene in mainstream cinema manages the same synthesis of avant-garde flourish and sheer visceral potency. Sadly, the second half of the film is rather drab.
Notable features: Everybody has their favourite story about the scene. Some are true: the knife is never seen touching flesh; the blood is chocolate sauce. Others are myths: Hitchcock didn't make Leigh shower in cold water; its not a body double.
Sample dialogue: “Mother! Oh God, Mother! Blood! Blood!”
GRÁINNE HUMPHREYS - Director of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
The initial list went on for pages. But after much deliberation and for one week only, here are three scenes which are presently my favourite:
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968)
I have a slight obsession with opening scenes, and this is one of the best. Remarkably similar to the opening High Noon, three bad guys wait at a station for the arrival of someones. They wait and wait, killing time, as one cracks his knuckles, another engages in a silent duel with a fly.
Leone was always more interested in the rituals preceding the violence than in the violence itself, and nowhere is this more apparent than in this beautifully shot piece of cinema. The scene finishes with the train arriving and a single harmonica-playing passenger disembarking. Charles Bronson dispatches the three men and the pattern of long, slow scenes followed by sharp gunplay is set up. Pure cinematic genius.
THIRTY FIVE ASIDE (1995)
It’s hard to pick one scene above another in Damien O’Donnell’s short film about a young boy whose father is back in prison, bullied at school and saddled with one of the worst schoolbags ever. If I had to choose a particular scene, I would go for the moment when his mother takes revenge on the bullies with the help of a cake and a carving knife.
IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000)
Arguably, one of the most beautiful films ever made. Set in Hong Kong in 1962, neighbours Chow (Tony Leung) and Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung) are drawn together when they find out their spouses are having an affair. My favourite scene is early in the film when the two meet fleetingly by chance on the apartment stairs. Shot for the most part in slow motion, once seen this wistful scene is impossible to forget.
EIMER NÍ MHAOLDOMHNAIGH - Costume designer (Becoming Jane, Brideshead Revisited, Breakfast on Pluto)
THE CRYING GAME (1992)
The scene:IRA member Fergus (Stephen Rea) has fled to London after failing to execute a British soldier. Then his former fellow paramilitary, Jude (Miranda Richardson), appears in his apartment with a new assignment.
Why I love it: When we last saw Miranda Richardson's character in the North, she had her hair pulled back and was wearing an Aran jumper. Now she's wearing a Cleopatra-style wig and a Jean-Paul Gaultier suit. She's so hard-nosed, and its just such a transformation. It's a complete character change as well, and you don't realise who she is for a moment, which provides an emotional as well as visual shock.
Sometimes actors don’t want to leave their comfort zone in terms of costume, but Richardson is an amazing actress because she’s such a chameleon; she’s willing to go that extra distance. I’ve worked with Neil Jordan since, and when I saw this film, I knew this was a film-maker who was interested in how something looks. It was very exciting.
DAVE FANNING - Presenter and critic
THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962)
The scene: The town of Shinbone is terrorised by the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) and the only person to stand up to him is rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). Newcomer Rance Stoppard (James Stewart), who has already been targeted by the outlaw, is working as a waiter in the saloon when Valance trips him up, causing the steak he's carrying to spill. Doniphon, the only man the outlaw fears, gets to his feet and says, "Valance, that's my steak!"
Why I love it: This movie is in my top five of all time. Everything about it is great. But I love this scene because its three all-time greats, Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin and John Wayne, together for the first time. It's John Wayne being cool standing up for his steak, Lee Marvin being scared of him, James Stewart being James Stewart. Its impossible to describe why it works, but its just so cool.
I used to act it out in the kitchen with my brothers when we were kids. We’d take turns to be each part. But John Wayne was the best – you just had to put your thumbs in the belt of your trousers and go “That’s my steak!”
JOHN KELLEHER - Irish Film Censor
CASABLANCA (1942)
The scene:In wartime Casablanca, Morocco, a group of Nazi soldiers, including cruel Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) start singing Die Wacht am Rhein, a patriotic song, in Rick's Café Américain. Czech resistance fighter Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid) asks the club orchestra to play La Marseillaise. The musicians look to the club's owner, Rick (Humphrey Bogart). He nods, and Laszlo and the band start the song, which is taken up by other customers, drowning out the Nazis.
Why I love it:Casablanca is my favourite film without question. There are so many amazing scenes, but I have to pick this duel between the two songs.
It’s a wonderful piece of hokum but it packs a genuinely moving punch. Many of the extras were Jewish refugees and it was very emotional for them. Everything leads to it – we’ve seen all the characters; we’ve seen the nasty piece of work, Major Strasser; we’ve seem the ambivalence of Vichy officer Claude Rains; we’ve seen the cynicism of Rick. We know who everyone is and where theyre coming from, so this is a crystalisation of that.
KIRSTEN SHERIDAN - Writer and director (In America, August Rush, Disco Pigs)
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST (1975)
The scene:Maverick mental hospital patient McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) and his supposedly mute fellow patient the Chief (Will Sampson) are waiting for their electroshock therapy sessions. McMurphy offers Chief a stick of gum. Chief says thank you. A stunned McMurphy offers him more gum, to which Chief says "Ah, Juicy Fruit". Chief has been feigning muteness to deflect attention.
Why I love it: It's a bizarre, fantastic moment, and its so simple - less is sometimes more. It's such a heavy movie with such difficult themes, yet they manage to have this light and this belief and hope at the centre of it. It's not one of the most referenced or remembered scenes, but for me its one of the strongest. Ultimately, the theme of film is that the freest person in this incredibly stifling place is the one who's incarcerated there.
PAT NOLAN - Actor (Fair City, Angela’s Ashes)
THE GODFATHER (1972)
The scene:Mafia boss Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) is recovering in hospital after an attempt on his life. His war-hero son Michael (Al Pacino), who wants to stay out of the family's criminal activities, suspects another attack is imminent and frantically moves his father to another room.
Why I love it: It's a little scene, but it shows the character growing up. You can see Michael's initiative and way he thinks long before he becomes the new Godfather. The tension throughout the scene is great – you can see the wheels turning, you can see he knows there's something up, and he's following his instinct and trying to do something before it's too late. It's not the climax of the film but it's a an inkling of what's to come. I think of that scene whenever I'm in a long hospital corridor, although they could never shoot it in Ireland – there'd be too many people on trolleys.
CONOR HORGAN - Writer, photographer and film-maker (One Hundred Mornings, About Beauty)
SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959)
THE SCENE:After witnessing the St Valentine's Day Massacre, two musicians try to escape the killers by dressing in drag and joining an all-female band on its way to Miami. On the beach, Joe/Josephine (Tony Curtis) tries to seduce the luscious Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) by pretending to be Junior, an oil company heir. The ruse works brilliantly, much to the disgust of his roommate Jerry/Daphne (Jack Lemmon).
Why I love it: A screenwriter once gave me a useful piece of advice. When writing dialogue, he said, remember this – everybody lies, all the time. Rarely has this saying been more delightfully illustrated – Joe/Josephine, using a strangulated version of Cary Grant's accent, impresses a gullible Sugar with talk of Shell Oil and his yacht. (When she asks if it's big, he says: "Certainly not – with all the unrest in the world, I dont think anyone should have a yacht that sleeps more than 12.") Sugar's keen to polish up her own pedigree, letting on she's a Vasser debutante who's only playing in the band for fun. Then Jerry/ Daphne arrives and is outraged when he recognises Joe, but can't warn Sugar about Junior without blowing his own cover.
The ever-deepening layers of deceit serve to make the scene an absolute treat.
FIONA MCCANN - Irish Times columnist and arts blogger
GARAGE (2007)
The scene: It's an overcast morning after a ditch- drinking party to which Josie, the local petrol station attendant in a one-horse Irish town, was taken by his teenage assistant. A scattering of empty cans and the charred embers of a fire are all that remain in the small lean-to by the overgrown railway track.
Josie, ever-eager to do the right thing, stoops with effort to clean up the mess left behind. His hands full of empty cans, the awareness dawns that there is nowhere to put them. He looks down the railway line, where nothing moves, and slowly crosses the tracks, scattering the collected cans into the undergrowth on the other side, not two feet from where he picked them all up.
Why I love it:This is one of many scenes without dialogue in Lenny Abrahamson's fine film, the pervading silence underscoring the loneliness of its central character. There on the railway tracks, which will never take him anywhere, Josie performs another of his unseen rituals, this one stemming from a characteristic kindness that in the end is his undoing.
