Comment by pradn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pradn | Hacker News Reader

A few other "greatest" scenes in cinema:

* Isak's vision of his family picnicking at the end of Wild Strawberries (1957), where a man finds peace in his journey through the memories of his life

* Hidetora walking out his burning castle in Ran (1985) amid a battle amid his two eldest sons for supremacy, his plan to divide his kingdom among his three children having come to a disastrous end - a man realizing his children (and humanity in general) are more horrible than his naive dreams of unity could sustain.

* Two scenes in The Cranes Are Flying (1957): a montage of Veronika's beloved dying in battle (he falls as his soul seems to ascend bc the camera angle) while she goes about her life; Veronika finding out Boris is dead for sure at the train station, giving the flowers intended for Boris to the returning men and their families, and then she sees the cranes above Moscow - hope and renewal.

* In I am Cuba (1964): a martyred revolutionary, a student, is carried through Havana as the whole city stops what they're doing to honor him, solemnly, cigar-factory workers and all.

* In Andrei Rublev (1966), there's an extended sequence where a bellmaker's young son agrees to pour a bell for a local lord. You see the entire process of making the mould and pouring the metal. It has a town-fair atmosphere. But at the end, there's tremendous pressure on the young bellmaker to have the bell ring properly and have no cracks. And it does. The protagonist, the lapsed monk Andrei Rublev, regains his faith, seeing the result of the young bellmaker's hope. (I've shared this a few times on this website.)

* At the end of L'Ecclise (1962), the two lovers decide to meet the next day but they don't. Instead, we see thirty shots of the empty city - a devastating way to get to the heart of loneliness and lack of connection in modern life.

The ending of "L'Eclisse," directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, is one of the most mysterious endings in cinema. It's one of those scenes that doesn't impose a vision on you, but pulls something out of your subconscious, invites you to reflect on events that could have happened, should have happened, but didn't happen.

The two lovers never meet again after promising not only to see each other that day, but also every day thereafter.

For almost ten minutes, while we are waiting for Alain Delon and Monica Vitti to meet up, the camera points at small insignificant structures in the Roman suburbs, then at a balcony, water running on the ground, ants climbing a tree, leaves moved by the wind. A bus stops and one expects to see one of the two lovers appear, but it is only someone who looks like them.

It is a magical ending because it is not an ending, it is a fragment.

It reminded me of the ending of one of my favorite interviews. Donald Keene, the American-born Japanese scholar, was interviewed by David Pilling in the "Lunch with the FT" series. The interview closes off with a reflection by Pilling:

"Keene’s eyes are moist. He is staring past me or through me. The restaurant is still quite empty but Keene has flooded it with the memories of people, mostly long dead. He stands to leave and is helped up the narrow stairs to the city above. Down in the basement, I am left at the empty table. There is nothing, not even the wind in the pines."

As Antonioni, a director I recommend especially to Americans, who are culturally oriented toward appreciating stereotypical linear stories with unambiguous endings, said in an interview:

"What people ordinarily call the "dramatic line" doesn't interest me [...] Today stories are what they are, with neither a beginning nor an end necessarily, without key scenes, without a dramatic arc, without catharsis. They can be made up of tatters, of fragments, as unbalanced as the lives we lead."

I also cannot but recommend Antonioni's "La Notte" and its less ambiguous but still poignant ending. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

Thank you for your detailed analysis. When I saw it I think I zoned out, but that's part of it I think - the lack of anything of note that happens, the nothingness.

Of the three films in the trilogy, my favorite part is the letter-reading scene at the end of La Notte. A married woman reads a letter to her husband, who had been conspicuously philandering all night, and he asks who wrote it. She says "you". So sad, the fading of love as memory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOmEkqWnvsA

It is a terrific scene with equally terrific acting by Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni.

She tells Mastroianni of having had in her life a man, whom we saw at the beginning of the film to be at the end of his existence in a hospital bed, who loved her, wanted her, but she preferred a man, the novelist played by Mastroianni, who never paid much attention to her. It is the usual story--I loved you but you loved and preferred somebody who did not--but the stillness of the two in the grass field, the broken voice of Jeanne Moreau, and the "lost and guilty look" of Mastroianni, made it so incredibly moving.

Another brilliant scene in "La Notte" is when Mastroianni is leaving the hospital--his wife has already left because she cannot bear to see the man who was in love with her die--and he is caught by another patient, a woman who seems to have some mental problem, and the two kiss.

As someone who has sometimes found himself inexplicably lost in the tourbillon of events--why am I doing this? This makes no sense!-- the scene was able to describe what I felt and saw in those bizarre moments.

Beautiful, thank you! It’s been a while, I don’t remember the layer of her old lover dying at all.

Stellar acting by doing of the best of that era.

doing -> some

- The opening long shot in Touch of Evil with the ticking clock building suspense.

- The final scene in La Haine is devastating.

- The final scene of Sweet Smell of Success for pure cynicism.

- Pretty much all of The Wages of Fear for suspense, but if I have to hold up some scenes: 1) the confrontation in the restaurant; 2) the platform scene; 3) the boulder scene; 4) the Blue Danube scene.

- The raw emotional impact of the final confrontation in Secrets & Lies.

The NYT has a series of "Anatomy of a Scene" videos. These are mostly not very notable scenes, but it's still interesting to see what goes into them:

https://www.nytimes.com/column/anatomy-of-a-scene

I do wonder if my response to La Haine has been tempered by me seeing the movies that came after it and were even more blunt and raw. It's a fantastic watch none-the-less.

Thank you, I'll have to watch the other films you mentioned. :)

- The Anakin and Padme picnic scene in Attack of the Clones

No other scene in the history of movies has made me contemplate my life choices and the choices of others to that degree. I believe that is what Lucas was aiming for in the next film, but it really hit right there like a mallet to a rubber chicken launcher.

Andre Rublev's ending is immaculate.

Miller's Army of Shadows (1969) was the the first time I saw on film how it might be to know you are about to die. I can only find an unsubtitled version: the German officer tells the French resistance protagonist that he has a chance if he runs and gets to the back wall before being shot by the machine guns- he'll live to be executed another day. At first he refuses but survival kicks in and he runs believing he will be shot in the back at any moment. I urge you to watch the film in entirety to experience the intensity of the scene, alone doesn't do it justice. The first time I saw this it was like it was in slow motion, after so much had already happened in the film.

https://youtu.be/LJtTPzrDtkM

> * In I am Cuba (1964)

That is the funeral scene with that long shot in a single take where the camera "floats" up, and that back in 1964. Impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuLkJ4m-mc

Discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28953167

It's a technical marvel, but also perhaps a rare case where a long shot matches both the physical environment (the camera floats along a street, long as the long street) and the emotion (slowness, somberness).

This is a very good collection. Especially The Cranes Are Flying. I like the very last scene in Seven Samurai where they're looking at the funeral mounds of the 4 dead samurai. Shichiroji says to Kambei - once again, we both survive! Its quite amazing how the four talented young samurai are killed in battle and finally the two geezers who survived the previous battle by keeping their wits about, manage to survive yet again.

Seven Samurai has one of the most bone-chilling scenes of horror of any movie I've ever seen:

> an old lady crosses the screen holding a rake.

By itself it's simple, almost meaningless, yet in context...

You are a scholar, sir.

I ran the Google Cinema Club for 10 years, and I held up the flag for films like this. I'd rather show a good movie with lousy attendance than a shit movie that everyone likes.

I'm embarrassed to admit we only showed Wild Strawberries out of all those (many other Kurosawa flicks, though). Ran was just too long for a movie that started at 7:00 pm, while people had a last shuttle to catch.

A few of these (I am Cuba, The Cranes are Flying) have only recently been restored and publicized so maybe they weren't available as well back when you ran the club. :)

I work in the Google NYC office, and there's even a fairly large new screening area (floor 6). But I think office-based clubs and such are practically dead because of remote work. Maybe they'll come back.

I was in touch with Janet Traub (I think I got that name right) who was hoping to start a NYC club, but I don't think she ever did.

I have to admit I've never even heard of those two flicks.

It's okay. :) They were known only in niche film circles because there was hardly a good print, restoration, or subtitled-version available for decades.

No such Janet Traub at Google at the present. :)

Ran is absolute feast for the eyes. I've never been so absorbed by a film as the first time I watched it. Just the whole openings sequence with boar hunt is instantly mesmerizing. And the fall of the castle at the end was just was electrifying.

The Andrei Rublev bell scene is forever embedded in me.

Every time I am working on something complex I ask myself: will it "ring" in the end?

> * In I am Cuba (1964): a martyred revolutionary, a student, is carried through Havana as the whole city stops what they're doing to honor him, solemnly, cigar-factory workers and all.

One of the best takes ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuLkJ4m-mc

David Thewlis in Mike Leigh's Naked [1] ?

1. https://youtu.be/N90sl94g7PE

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