91: Braveheart - The battle of Stirling Bridge
(Mel Gibson, US, 1995)
Although the Oscar-winning film became a rallying point for Scottish Nationalists, most of the filming took place in Ireland. The Irish government offered tax incentives, the use of five castles and hundreds of Irish defence force soldiers at Gibson's disposal, which paid off when they came to film the battle of Stirling Bridge. The filming required 30 days' shooting, 10 cameras and 3,000 extras. He concentrated on capturing the violence of the conflict, zooming in on the brutal hand-to-hand fighting and the carnage. During editing, Gibson worried that some battle scenes were too strong, and was proved correct when people walked out of a preview screening, causing him to cut some of the gore. 'You don't want to gross people out,' he admitted at the time, 'but I think they have to feel what a 13th-century battle was like. It can't be a comfortable experience, people slugging each other with blunt weapons.'
92: High Noon - Will Kane realises he is alone
(Fred Zinnemann, US, 1952))
Having had his call for volunteers rejected in both the saloon and the church, sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) returns to his office and has to tell his one temporary deputy, Herb, that they're going to have to stand alone.
'You and me against Miller and all the rest of 'em?...I'm ready now, but this is different, Will. This ain't like what you said it was gonna be. This is just plain committing suicide and for what? Why me? I'm no lawman. I just live here. I got nothin' personal against nobody. I got no stake in this? There's a limit how much you can ask a man. I got a wife and kids.'
Kane lets Herb go and lets his weary head rest against his desk. A teenage boy tries to help Kane, but it's clear he'll have to stand alone. When the clock turns to noon, he gets up and walks out into the street. But even then he's no fighting machine: he's an anxious, ailing middle-aged man, glancing nervously around. And all the more heroic for it.
93: Ice Cold In Alex - 'Four ice-cold lagers'
(J. Lee Thompson, UK, 1958)
The title comes from a pledge that (alcoholic) British officer Captain Anson (John Mills) makes to the crew of his ambulance as they brave the Germans, the Sahara and the spy they have in their ranks, trying to get from Tobruk to Alexandria: if they make it, they'll have the best beer in the world.
Battered, dusty, weary and expectant, the survivors: Anson, the sergeant (Harry Andrews), Diana, the nurse (Sylvia Syms) and the Nazi spy (Anthony Quayle) who has actually saved them, troop into Anson's favourite bar and take their stools.
'Set 'em up Joe,' Anson requests, as if he'd been in the day before.
'Set what up?' the barman asks.
'Four ice-cold lagers.'
The quartet look tense as the barman pours the drinks.
'You've kept your promise,' Diana says.
'Let's hope the beer is all I said it was.'
The barman lines up four glasses of frothy lager. Anson looks at his for a long time, thinking back on the long, shambolic and dangerous trip across the desert. He picks up the glass, sinking it in one. 'Worth waiting for.'
94: Les Diaboliques - He rises from the dead
(Henri-Georges Clouzot, Fr, 1955)
'Don't be devils. Don't ruin the interest your friends could take in this film. Don't tell them what you saw.' (Henri-Georges Clouzot's post-film voiceover.)
Is this the one film Alfred Hitchcock wished he had directed himself? In retrospect, he probably regretted turning it down. Instead, Henri-Georges Clouzot stepped in to direct the classic pot-boiler. The resulting film was the first art-house hit in America, inspiring round-the-block queues. The appeal: dark humour, a hint of supernatural mystery, a foreboding atmosphere topped off with a memorable twist lured many mainstream moviegoers to their first foreign language film.
Ironically, Hitchcock was inspired by the film when he came to direct Psycho in 1960, Les Diaboliques' marketing ploy, urging people not to reveal the ending, proved wise both times.
After being drowned by his long-suffering wife, Christina (Vera Clouzot), and vengeful mistress Nicole (Simone Signoret), callous headmaster Paul Meurisse (Michel Delasalle) is spotted around the school. A botched job or something more sinister? Nothing is quite as it seems, of course. At the end of the film, the headmaster rises again out of the tub, soaked but unapparently unharmed, although his pupils are missing from his eyes. His slow ascent is terrifying, deepening the mystery about his mortality. Is he man or monster? The Hitchcock link continued after the release of Psycho when he received a letter from a distraught fan. 'Sir, After seeing Diabolique [sic], my daughter was afraid to take a bath. Now she has seen your Psycho and is afraid to take a shower. What should I do with her?' Hitchcock replied: 'Send her to the dry cleaners'.
95: Schindler's List - The girl's red coat
(Steven Spielberg, US, 1993)
This heartbreaking sequence relates to the earlier 'Rosebud' moment in Schindler's List. During the Krakow ghetto clearance, the girl in the red coat had dodged through the carnage, ignored by everyone, as Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) watched in growing horror. In the film it marked a turning point for the industrialist, pushing him to risk his life and fortune rescuing potential camp victims. The red coat, conspicuous in an otherwise black and white film, draws our attention to the anonymous girl. At the end of the sequence she slips into an empty house and hides under a bed. However, her ultimate fate is still tragic. Later, we catch a glimpse of the coat in a cart piled high with corpses.
Apparently the arc of this particular story caused a stir between Spielberg and screenwriter Steven Zaillian who worried the sequence was too sentimental. The film was released to almost universal praise but prominent Jewish American critics were not won over. Writing in the Village Voice, J. Hoberman thought the film focused too heavily on Schindler's heroics relegating Jews 'to supporting parts in their own cataclysm, hanging around the Krakow ghetto'. The film, he argued, was 'a feel-good entertainment about the ultimate feel-bad experience of the 20th century'.
96: Cool Hand Luke - The egg-eating contest
(Stuart Rosenberg, US, 1967)
Non-conformist convict Lucas 'Luke' Jackson (Paul Newman) is a good ole Southern boy whose spirit can't be broken. He arrives in prison and becomes a messiah figure in the eyes of his peers, earning their respect by challenging the prison establishment and, in the film's signature scene, scoffing boiled eggs to win a wager.
Luke's pal Dragline (George Kennedy) makes a bet with the other prisoners that he can eat 50 eggs in an hour. The men are confident Luke can't do it. 'Fifty eggs gotta weigh a good six pounds? A man's gut can't hold that. They'll swell up and bust him open?'
'They're gonna kill him,' says one as he throws his money down. Following a couple of humorous eating exercises, stretching his stomach's skin, Luke is ready. After eating 32 eggs rapidly, he looks beat. But his feeding fatigue is a ploy to drum up more betting interest. 'I wanna hear from some big money men. Where's all the high rollers?' asks Dragline. 'I believe you've got it all, Dragline. Every cent in camp is riding,' comes the reply.
Luke eventually reaches the target, but the punters aren't happy he swallowed the last egg within the time limit. They examine his mouth before laying the exhausted victor on a table covered in egg shells. An overhead camera looks down, Luke's arms are outstretched, his legs are crossed and his head is tilted in a crucifixion pose. The deification is complete.
97: The Thomas Crown Affair - The chess game
(Norman Jewison, US, 1967)
Steve McQueen was never hired for his command of dialogue. Think of his defining roles - The Great Escape, Bullitt - and you'll notice he barely says anything. So it is with this six-minutes-plus sequence. Crown is a suave millionaire who organises heists for the hell of it; Vicki Anderson (Faye Dunaway) is the absurdly stylish insurance investigator who is on his case. Crown has invited Vicki to his mansion, and she is wandering round his study - open fire roaring in the background - when she spots his chess set.
'Do you play?' Crown asks.
'Try me.'
For a while, they concentrate on the game. Then Vicki starts stroking her arms.
Crown plays with his lips. The camera focuses on her fantastic false eyelashes, then her ultra-pink lips. She slips a finger into her mouth - there's nothing subtle here - and strokes a chess piece. Their legs meet under the table.
'Check,' she says, breaking several minutes without dialogue. He gets up, wanders round the table and pulls her up to him.
'Let's play something else.' What follows is the longest kiss in film history.
You can argue the 1999 remake is a better film. And maybe McQueen was miscast as the millionaire - the part was apparently intended for Sean Connery, which indirectly might explain why Pierce Brosnan was chosen for the remake. But as super-stylised Sixties decadence, the chess scene is hard to beat.
98: Bambi - The death of Bambi's mother
(David D. Hand, US, 1942)
It's the cute schtick with Thumper, or else 'Drip-drip-drop little April showers', that they always show on Disney Time at bank holidays. But we all know which bit of Bambi is really imprinted on our collective memory: the clip they never show.
Bambi predated The Lion King's famed 'Circle Of Life' theme by half a century. It begins and ends with a birth and deals with the death of a parent along the way, as we watch Bambi grow from doe-eyed innocent through to antlered defender of his new mate's honour. But, three-quarters of an hour into the film, it is the death of Bambi's mother that provides the narrative pivot.
A premonition is provided when Great Prince Of The Forest (Bambi's dad) rescues his young heir from being shot. Searching for an explanation, Mother explains, bluntly, 'Man was in the forest.' (Released after the US had entered World War II, the message was clear.)
Spring comes, and Man enters the forest once again. This time, Bambi escapes and assumes his mother is right behind him. 'We made it!' he exclaims. 'We made it, Mother! We? Mother?'
The Great Prince explains, 'Your Mother can't be with you any more. Man has taken her away.'
For a screen death that happens off-screen, it is a tear-jerker to beat them all.
99: The Sound Of Music - 'The hills are alive'
(Robert Wise, US, 1965)
The scene is idyllic; as the camera races over the Austrian mountains, we catch sight of a distant figure, at first just a speck, then identifiably a woman in a plain black pinafore dress. As the music builds, the camera swoops and the woman spins round ecstatically, launching into one of the most famous songs in musical history: 'The hills are alive?'
Based on the true story of the Von Trapp family, who were the subject of a hit German film in 1956, The Sound Of Music was premiered as a Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical in 1959, rapidly becoming one of Broadway's biggest shows in the early Sixties. But although the film's reputation is now sealed, its star, 28-year-old Julie Andrews, was quite a risk at the time. Despite having over 10 years' stage experience, Andrews had only starred in a single movie (Mary Poppins). Co-star Christopher Plummer was not first choice either; when the project was being developed by director William Wyler, the role was considered as a vehicle for Yul Brynner, presumably in a bid to replicate the success of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The King And I.
100: Heat - Neil McCauley and Vincent Hanna first meet
(Michael Mann, US, 1995)
McCauley: Maybe we should both be doing something else pal.
Hanna: I don't know how to do anything else.
McCauley: Neither do I.
Hanna: I don't much want too either.
McCauley: Neither do I.
The first onscreen match-up between acting heavyweights Robert De Niro and Al Pacino is the highlight of this epic cops and robbers movie. Dogged policeman Vincent Hanna (Pacino) is on the trail of big-time thief Neil McCauley (De Niro) in Los Angeles, but audiences had to wait until halfway through the three-hour film to see them together. After tailing McCauley's car, to no avail, Hanna pulls his adversary over and asks if he can buy him a cup of coffee at a nearby diner. McCauley accepts. The two men then face each other across a table, sipping coffee, and discovering they have quite a lot in common. This simple scene illustrates the theme of Mann's film: the symmetry between cop and criminal.
Amazingly, the actors didn't rehearse the scene before shooting it. 'We just read it through a couple of times, very mechanically, because if the magic's gonna show up, I want it on the film, not in my office,' explained Mann. Rather than use elaborate camera movement in the scene, Mann concentrated on the actors' faces, intercutting between them. The background was neutral so nothing distracted the eye from the performances. Although Pacino and De Niro had earlier shared billing in The Godfather: Part II, De Niro only appeared in the flashback scenes without his Heat co-star.
The joint appearance of arguably the two greatest actors of their generation dominated Heat's pre-release publicity. The scene was based on an incident told to Mann by his friend Chuck Adamson. He was the policeman who shot dead the real McCauley in Chicago in 1963. The real-life protagonists had met once, shared coffee and enjoyed each other's company. 'There was a real rapport between them; yet both men recognised one would probably kill the other. And subsequently Chuck was called out to an armed robbery and shot him six times,' says Mann. 'But it was the intimacy and mutual rapport that became the nucleus of the film.'