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In Saving Private Ryan......no, not talking about the carnage at the opening . Towards the end of the film during a raging battle.
American & German soldiers shooting at each other in a small room. Finally two are left alive and begin fighting with bare fist & knives.
A very young soldier and an older & much stronger German.
German gets the younger American down on the floor and begins to push his knife into the kids chest. The American knows he is about to die so pleads out a desperate: "...No! No! Please wait!"
But , the big German (as he pushes the knife into the guys heart)calmly says something in German and wispers: "SShhhhh!!" ...as if he's putting the young soldier to sleep.
This scene is just absolutely devastating. Very powerful.
Steven Speilberg at his best.
I realize most all have seen this movie...but perhaps there are a few who have not. It is a must see.My discription of the knife scene of course does not even begin to convey the edge-of-your-seat anticipation & emotion taking place on film.The fact that the soldier (earlier in the film) is Jewish, gives it even more poignancy.
I just watched S.P.R. the other night.
I've seen lots of people killing people scenes, but nothing in any other film I've seen contains a scene so powerful.
Just thought I'd remind everyone of a great film.
Follow Ups:
Without doubt, Donald Southerland in "Don't Look Now!".
The sensation of life slipping through your fingers hits you
in your gut like the sensation of leaving town at the end of
"I Viteloni". That's film.Runners Up:
Bonny and Clyde in "Bonny and Clyde"
Slim Pickens in "Pat Garret and Billy the Kid".
Robert Shaw in "Jaws"
Leonard Rosseter in "The Whicker Man".
Easy Rider
Brando in "The Godfather".
The Wild Bunch in "The Wild Bunch".
Donald Pleasance in "Fantastic Voyage".
Christopher Walkin in "View to a Kill".
Kong in "King Kong", (1933 version).
For me, it was the end scene where Alec Guiness' Colonel Nicholson tries to stop them from blowing up the bridge, and the whole lot of them die right there in the river. And the bridge blows anyway.Madness, madness...
Opening sequence has mother finding very young daughter unconscious with fever. She begins to get frantic while Cage looks on. They make it to the emergency room and the mother is grief stricken as the little girl dies and her spirit joins Cage at his side while the mother continues to grieve. Powerful.
The '60s Japanese film, Harakiri.
...at point blank range in that restaurant.The suspense leading up to the shooting is terrific.
:o)
Yeah. Micheal Moore.
FWIW, I think war sucks. But...G.W. Bush is now-where as evil as his critics say he is.Just a guy as president doing what HE feels is right.
Exactly what a president should be like.
(no, I did'nt vote for Bush)Anyway....as for discussing "powerful death scenes in cinema", how about the harmless totally innocent block of Velveeta cheese Mr. Moore murdered while cutting his film.
....I'll bet Mr. Moore can F&%#@!-up a block of Velveeta!!Film, or the cinema should be for the pleasure of being entertained
....story telling...drama, excitement, etc.
Not as propaganda to remind us all how much life can suck.
We already know this.But, (unlike the Moore crowd) I'm open minded. My 18 yr. old daughter is a Micheal Moore fan. I tried to explain to her that a skill-full propagadist can make ANYone look bad. (Even Jesus, God & mother Teresa...)
But, what the hell. I'm all behind her. I'm actually delighted that my daughter is at least "aware" at her young age.Sorry to rant folks, but the pig Moore does get under-my-skin.
Think I can taste cheese....oh Jesus.
...allow us to have our propaganda!
After all "Just a guy as president doing what HE feels is right.
Exactly what a president should be like."Of course I'm sure he feels it's right for his pocket book.
n
Perhaps not the hardest hitting death scene on film, but one of the most touching...Tommy Lee Jones' Woodrow Call visiting Robert Duvall's Gus Macrae on his deathbed...and then promising to take him all that way back to Texas...Regards,
Gary
sand pebbles, cool hand luke, braveheart
excellent call on Cool Hand Luke.
...the death of both the son and the daughter...
Cetaele (aka Bob)
When Captain America is slain by the rednecks after coming back to the aid of Hopper's character. One of the reasons the film became such a cultural and box office phenomenon, I believe, is the final scene. The power isn't in the acting, it's in the message it sends.
ah
there was a scene with a buch of kids/men playing pond-hockey and one of the men falls thru the ice. he's floating around under the ice struggling for life while the others are trying to hack thru the ice with their hockey sticks and skates. Finally there is an image of the guy dead, face-up under the ice.This freaked me out bigtime when I first saw it as a teenager- because every winter we played alot of pond-hockey. I remember me and the freinds I saw it with were a little hesitnant to play for a while.
n
nt
Edward G. Robinson in "Soylent Green"...with the beautiful nature movie playing...
The Godfather :
1. Luca Brasi - I'll never forget those bulging eye balls.
2. Carlo - "uh oh better get Macco" for that car windshield.Both by the garrote .
...no one has mentioned "The Passion"--I have not seen the movie, but I would have thought someone might have considered that as a possibility--at least from what I have heard about the movie.I would also add the scene in "Life is beautiful" where the father is killed--even though we don't see it.
Cetaele (aka Bob)
But Roy Cohn's (Al Pacino) death and the attendent Kaddish with
Meryl Streep as the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg was extraordinary in
"Angels in America". Roy Cohn was an asshole but he was mourned by
those present. Reminded me of Dylan's "Only a Hobo". Regards,J.R.
At this point in my life, I have to say the knight's death in the Seventh Seal. Some may argue "But you see no deaths in that seen". It is true, one only sees the reaction of the characters to the fact that death is eminent. I feel this makes the scene much more personal. One's own personal feelings about death would present themselves only at that moment just prior to the fact, such as we see in that scene. Death itself would not exist in consciousness, and is not shown in the movie. Thus for me, it is the knight's reaction.Sorry for the length and if I've upset anyones religious ideals. To each their own.
Chris
...and everyone in the theatre gasped, laughed, stood up, and applauded.
n
Eastwood has just shot the man who cut up a whore in town. The bleeding man crawls behind a rock, his life ebbing away. He begs for water. But his partners can't help him -- they're pinned down by Eastwood's trio. Finally, Eastwood -- who hasn't felt great about shooting this guy -- can't take it anymore: "Get him a drink of water, godammit!" he yells.
The bombadier death in Catch 22, the death of Masala after the chariot race in Ben Hur, the beating and burial alive of Joe Pesci
in Casino.
Steve
Manuel's(Spencer Tracy) death in "Captains Courageous" gets to me every time.
The denoument of "Spy Who Came in from the Cold"
...in any film I have seen, is in "The Godfather, part III", when Al Pacino´s daughter (Sofia Coppola) is shot and dies in her father´s arms, who then shouts the loudest, most scaring silent scream, expressing an unfathomable pain and despair...That silent scream has haunted me for years, and I still think it is the most powerful expression of pain, despair, impotence and solitude in the presence of death ever to be felt and shown in any screen!
Regards
BF
I found it false, and "movieish"". Pacino was SO much better before "Scarface" than he was after. Yelling and screaming such easy and debased acting curencies.
...if you look at that scene again, you´ll see how it is the climax towards which no small part of the film has been growing: Corleone´s doubts and remorses, his approach to the Catholic Church, his change when he meets the Pope-to-be (Raf Vallone), his confession and absolution..., and how then, when he hints a possibility of redemption, everything goes downhill, with his past life´s errors chasing him mercilessly, and hitting him where it hurts most, leaving him empty and in total despair.You say "yelling and screaming", while I say that his silent scream, those long seconds, which seem to never last, during which his whole inner world falls apart while he is unable to voice his deepest pain, until he finally shouts it out, is something you, or I, could try for a whole life to imitate, and never be able to do: its silence sounded so scaringly true, deep and moving that not even the dumbest one in the audience was able to make the slightest whisper.
Look at the drawing (Munch´s "The Scream") and tell me if you find it equally false and "movieish": maybe we see things so differently that we should simply agree to disagree.
Regards
BF
Except that her acting was so terrible in the film that the audience was silently cheering her demise. She ruined the second half for me and was outclassed by all around her. It's good that she turned to directing.
(nt)
;^D
1. Agree with the scene selected in "All Quiet on the Western Front"
2. "Godfather". Don Corleone's death being chased in the garden by his Grandson (an improv, by the waty)s understatement. Far mor moving than all the carnage before and after.
3. Brando's death (again) in "Last Tango" (a partial improv).
4. Though I detest the sentimental staging, the underlying philosophy in the death of "Lord Jim".
5. And for a movie derived from a play, Becket's death in "Becket".There are others in this vein, all quiet, not histrionic and moving for that reason.
Of course the audience for both is/was primarily kids, but these would probably be a couple with the biggest impact on the audience.
The difference between death and a movie death is you can always walk out on the movie, demand your money back or at least give it a bad review.
Even so . . . it is the commonplaceness, the unexpectedness and the ease of violent, unexpected death that the movies (or plays, for that matter) never get.
I can think of two which came as complete suprises when the occurred.1. Blade Runner - Leon gets shot
2. Miracle Mile - Two cops at the gas station
c
nt
a
nt
nope
For me it's the final moments in "Greed".
agafg
Saving Private Ryan takes a lot of beatings largely for the bookends right at the beginning and the scene at the end. Foreigners hate it because America is viewed as taking credit for the war - and of course there is the anti Jew and or anti-Spielberg crowd that hates it before they walk in to see it. Of course I'm from Canada and we're not represented and it didn't bother me...Speilberg is making a film about an American platoon not an allied forces platoon - silly arguments people make.I didn't love the movie when I first saw it and I'll tell you why. The opening battle sequence wore me out - it was probably the most brutal war seqeunce and best ever filmed. After that sequence I felt the rest of the movie was rehashed war cliche.
BUT, I bought the movie on DVD and watched it again - this time around I was able to expect the opening war footage and follow the story along - and historically there is a lot of subtle shots in here to the American GOvernment of the time - the whole notion of risking a platoon to save one guy seems ridiculous if you don't know the history of the American gov't during the 1940's really through the 1950's. It is highly plausible they would have done soemthing like this for propaganda purposes. The psychological story of the language expert who is a "coward" - is he really? The Hanks character is well drawn and believable because of the fact that he's not John Wayne. After a third view the film gets better again - a few shots at the Nazis. We do get standard characitures but given the time constraints that's acceptable.
But I have to say that Schindler's List had absolutely shocking death secenes that seemed more real than any other film I've seen on the big screen. Makes The Pianist look like a cartoon. The female engineer who states that "it will take more than that" and several other sequences in the streets are brutal. The amazing thing about it is it manages not to resoprt to having to be as graphic as it could have been - the imagination can fill in the blanks and is more effective when a director does this.
Spielberg lays off sentimentality and was surprisingly ahead of some of the formost historians on the subject. He manages to keep it as hands off and surprisingly objective. He also tries to embody post war Schindler's life of feeling guilty for not having done more into a close to final sequence where he reveals that guilt that he could have traded the car for more lives. Some didn't like that scene but it was a truthful account of post war Schindler who did feel guilty that he wasted so much money and could have saved lives - that guilt turned him into a pennyless drunkard. Critics missed this writing it off to Spielberg being sentimental but it was actually a way to let the man's after war voice enter the film. Some said that Spielberg caved in and felt compelled to explain Schindler's motivations. But of course we know his motivation was based on guilt which was set-up earlier - you wonder that some of these nut job critics were even paying attention. Of course those are from the inconsequential no name critics trying to buck the established praise to make a name for themselves - their name should have moron somewhere in the middle of it.
SPR deserves a second chance - despite the little set-up and grave-yard sequence - which can be overlooked - this is one of the best war films made.
the scene where the (French/Belgian?) soldier is dying in the trench has my voteGrins
That off-camera (implied) death scene is one of the most effective ever presented in a motion picture, IMHO.AuPh
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