Best opening/closing scenes in movies

[Rojo]

It doesn't have the grandeur of The Searchers but Rio Bravo is terrific. In contrast to High Noon, that presents the people as cowardly, Rio Bravo is most democratic -- a super great New Deal American movie.

[Mutaman]

It doesn't have the grandeur of The Searchers but Rio Bravo is terrific. In contrast to High Noon, that presents the people as cowardly, Rio Bravo is most democratic -- a super great New Deal American movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuA...yer_detailpage

[Rojo]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uuA...yer_detailpage

Great scene, especially the German? dub, But you're either up too late or too early.

[757690]

The Candidate - 1972

"What do we do now?"

[Rojo]

I don't know how I could I forget this. The end of The Third Man. I guess this won't be impressive for those that haven't seen the movie. Yes, Orson Welles is great, but I think people forget how great Joseph Cotton was. Here a love triangle of Cotton, Trevor Howard and Alida Valli is (un)settled with cool detachment. I love Valli's walk just by the camera and Cotton's little bit of "ah phooey" as he tosses his match.



The Third Man might be the British movie ever. The irony isn't that it features two Americans in lead roles, it's that it's largely about America after the War. Cotton (Holly Martens) is a Western pulp writer, clever enough, not naïve, but well-meaning and not particularly ambitious. Wells (Harry Lime) is a black-market opportunist. Cotton is how most Americans see themselves in the word. Welles is often the reality. This is Carol Reed and Graham Greene's movie but Wells did write the Cuckoo Clock bit that everyone remembers:

[KittyDuran]

Local Hero's closing scene:

[Mutaman]

I don't know how I could I forget this. The end of The Third Man. I guess this won't be impressive for those that haven't seen the movie. Yes, Orson Welles is great, but I think people forget how great Joseph Cotton was. Here a love triangle of Cotton, Trevor Howard and Alida Valli is (un)settled with cool detachment. I love Valli's walk just by the camera and Cotton's little bit of "ah phooey" as he tosses his match.



The Third Man might be the British movie ever. The irony isn't that it features two Americans in lead roles, it's that it's largely about America after the War. Cotton (Holly Martens) is a Western pulp writer, clever enough, not naïve, but well-meaning and not particularly ambitious. Wells (Harry Lime) is a black-market opportunist. Cotton is how most Americans see themselves in the word. Welles is often the reality. This is Carol Reed and Graham Greene's movie but Wells did write the Cuckoo Clock bit that everyone remembers:

Great flick. Great ending. Cotton is pretty good (and pretty creepy) as Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt.

[KittyDuran]

Cotton is pretty good (and pretty creepy) as Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt.

Loved him in Niagara (also pretty good and creepy).

[Ohayou]

Burn After Reading is the perfect movie for these times on RedsZone (and life in general):

What did we learn, Palmer?

I don't know, sir.

I don't ****in' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.

Yes, sir.

I'm ****ed if I know what we did.

Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say.

Jesus ****ing Christ.

[Mutaman]

Loved him in Niagara (also pretty good and creepy).

Someone was in Niagara besides Marilyn? I never noticed.

[marcshoe]

The Third Man is in my top two movies of all time (with Casablanca). I hadn't thought of the closing scene, maybe because I usually think of the Ferris Wheel scene or Joseph Cotton being shown the results of the bad medicine or Orson Wells in the tunnels.

Or the zither music. I confused the girl at Jack White's Third Man Records in Nashville once by asking her about the zither music, because the soundtrack album was displayed. She didn't know anything about the movie, unfortunately.

[RedsBaron]

I recently watched The Third Man for the first time. I didn't appreciate it probably as much as I should had, I think it part because it has been copied so much by other movies and TV shows since then. I can recall an episode of "Remington Steele" which lifted quite a bit from the film.

[RedsBaron]

It doesn't have the grandeur of The Searchers but Rio Bravo is terrific. In contrast to High Noon, that presents the people as cowardly, Rio Bravo is most democratic -- a super great New Deal American movie.

I don't think John Wayne or Howards Hawks, who directed Rio Bravo, would have considered Rio Bravo to be a "New Deal American movie." Wayne and Hawks were very critical of High Noon and actually made Rio Bravo in part as a conservative answer to what they believed was a leftist High Noon. Even more ironically, when Gary Cooper was unable to attend the Oscar ceremonies Wayne accepted Cooper's best actor award for Will Kane.
I think Wayne's and Hawks's criticisms of High Noon were unwarranted, and I like both High Noon and Rio Bravo.
That said, I am one of the apparently few people who prefer Rio Bravo's re-make, El Dorado, to the original film. While I liked Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson, I regard Robert Mitchum and James Caan as far superior actors to Martin and Nelson, and I believe the roles of drunken sheriff/deputy and younger sidekick were better written in El Dorado. I also greatly prefer Arthur Hunnicutt's "Bull" to Walter Brennan's "Stumpy"-Brennan overplayed the role too much for my tastes.
There is also a scene in El Dorado I really like. Too often westerns have the good guy tell off the bad guy and then turn his back and go away, for some reason confident the bad guy will not do something, well, bad, such as shoot him in the back (in "The Cowboys" Wayne is shot in the back). However, in El Dorado, after Wayne returns the balance of his retainer to the head bad guy played by Ed Asner, Wayne has his horse carefully back out of the premises while Wayne carefully keeps his eyes on Asner and his gang. It is remarkable to watch the horse walk backward, and Wayne keeping his eyes on the bad guys conveys the menace they present.

[redsfanmia]

I really liked the opening scene of Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards.

[Mutaman]

I don't think John Wayne or Howards Hawks, who directed Rio Bravo, would have considered Rio Bravo to be a "New Deal American movie." Wayne and Hawks were very critical of High Noon and actually made Rio Bravo in part as a conservative answer to what they believed was a leftist High Noon. Even more ironically, when Gary Cooper was unable to attend the Oscar ceremonies Wayne accepted Cooper's best actor award for Will Kane.
I think Wayne's and Hawks's criticisms of High Noon were unwarranted, and I like both High Noon and Rio Bravo.

Has there ever been a movie like High Noon that means so many things to so many different People? Some folks think the bad guys represent McCarthyism and the town's people those Americans who cowered
before Tailgunner Joe and his henchman Roy Cohn. It was written by Carl Foreman, a communist who was blacklisted and driven from the USA. (he later wrote Bridge on the River Kwai). The star, gary Cooper, was very conservative yet he supported Foreman until public opinion forced him to back down.

Gary Wills says that Cooper throwing his badge in the road at the end, shows that no office can be held without popular support-"a profoundly democratic message".

High Noon is Bill Clinton's favorite movie.

On the other hand, High Noon is a favorite of neo-conservatives. They see the townsfolk as liberals who back down from evil. Still plenty of internet posts around from the height of the Irag War the second where folks equate Marshal Kane with George w Bush, standing up to evil.

Me? I hate to mix politics and art for the most part, which allows me to love John Wayne despite his off screen foolishness, which I supect was just a defense mechanism for his draft dodging during WW11, an activity that a real war hero like Ford never let the Duke forget. So High Noon is ok, but I don't think it comes close to any of those Wayne movies I listed in post #41. Love the young Lee Van Cleef and Grace Kelly is nice on the eyes.