Best opening/closing scenes in movies

[westofyou]

David Crosby's father was one if the DPs on High Noon, I have heard he's responsible for the long shot from the down low as Will walks down the street at the climax

I love how it's in real time not film time

[Mutaman]

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.

Watch Travolta discuss the two flicks in "Get Shorty".

Mitchum and Caan set a pretty high bar but i think Dino is a incredibly underrated actor. Just sensational as 'Bama in Minnelli's "Some Came Running". Rio Bravo has risen from a cult favorite to a classic and I think the chemistry between Martin, Brennan and Nelson, with Wayne serving as their audience , is the reason why. Ricky of course is Ricky, and that ain't bad.

[Rojo]

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

I was thinking of that movie when I wrote about the under-appreciation of Cotton. He played a lot of nice guys. But in Shadow of a Doubt he wasn't so nice. That's a pretty misogynistic movie and he was great in it.

Also one of Hitchcock's Bay Area movies (set in Santa Rosa), so I have some affection for it.

[Rojo]

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.

That's part of it. But also it's boring in parts. I think it's analogous to baseball -- can be boring but it's high points are really high.

[Rojo]

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

I haven't seen this. To do. Thanks.

[Rojo]

That might be my favorite movie. We've talked about this before, haven't we?

And yes, wonderful, devastating closing scene.

So I'm watching this scene and my landlord comes down to complain about the noise. And, at 46 years old, I want to get all Withnail on him.

Of course I don't.

[marcshoe]

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.

Clint Eastwood said that he and John Wayne were talking about teaming up for a movie before High Plains Drifter came out, but when Wayne saw it, he wanted nothing to do with Eastwood. You can't really blame him; the anti-hero bit is taken too far, and the rape scene seriously mars a good movie.

[marcshoe]

I was thinking of that movie when I wrote about the under-appreciation of Cotton. He played a lot of nice guys. But in Shadow of a Doubt he wasn't so nice. That's a pretty misogynistic movie and he was great in it.

Also one of Hitchcock's Bay Area movies (set in Santa Rosa), so I have some affection for it.

I saw a quote from Cotton once where he said that he was in three great director's favorite movie: Orson Wells (Citizen Kane), Carol Reed (The Third Man), and Hitchcock. He was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up, back when the networks would show black-and-white movies during prime time. I'm old. I also seem to remember him being one of my grandmother's favorites.

[KittyDuran]

Martin Scorsese reads RedsZone? Who knew? (nice article about Cotton BTW):
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/articl...or-August.html

[Mutaman]

Martin Scorsese reads RedsZone? Who knew? (nice article about Cotton BTW):
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/articl...or-August.html

This was great. Scorsese talking about movies is like Bill Wyman or Sir Paul talking about music.

Here's Scorsese's top 10 (actually 12). Of course The Searchers is on there.

http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/m...te-movies.html

[Mutaman]

Not to say Scorsese doesn't have good taste in music himself.

Speaking of good openings:

http://youtu.be/k0KMxLvsvLI

[MikeThierry]

Goodfellas has my favorite opening scene. I also like Kubrick's opening weirdness in "A Clockwork Orange".

[RedTeamGo!]

Best opening credit roll? The Shining

[WildcatFan]

It seems a little hokey now with the found footage craze it inspired, but the closing scene of The Blair Witch Project is one of the most chilling things I've ever seen on the screen.

[Kingspoint]

My favorite opening was from "Amistad".

*Spoiler alert*

You don't know what's going on for a while, as it starts out extremely zoomed in. Your senses tell you through hearing what sounds like someone breathing hard in a struggling manner, while there's a mess of browns, shadows and reds. In this background is another sound, which you soon determine is scraping, but what is being scraped, what is being used to scrape with, you don't know. As it slowly pans out, you discover that the reds are blood and the browns are human and wood, with the shadows and light throwing pieces of the puzzle together. Before it's all over, bodies have been hacked and skewered, all through the sounds of half a dozen African Languages and Portuguese being screamed in the background.