11: Singin' In The Rain - Gene Kelly does just that
(Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, US, 1952)
When the lovestruck Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) sang and danced in the rain, twirling his umbrella, skeetering in and out of the gutter until the suspicious glare of a Hollywood policeman finally dampened his ardour, the song was already some 30 years old. It debuted in the 1929 MGM musical The Hollywood Revue and became an instantfavourite, while Arthur Freed, having flourished during the vaudeville era, became a major producer of musicals in the post-sound era.
Inspired by MGM's rich back catalogue of film music, Freed commissioned screenwriters Adolph Green and Betty Comden to write a story that would serve as a showcase for some of the better known numbers. After months of brainstorming, Green and Comden came up with the ingenious idea of setting the film in the late 20s - during the transition from silent movies to sound, when many stars fell from grace - and set the benchmark for biting Hollywood satire.
Ironically, the keynote scene was anything but joyous for its star: cold-stricken Kelly performed the routine over two days with a fever of 103 degrees, while the rain itself - a blend of water and milk, to make sure it showed on camera - shrank his woollen suit.
12: The Deer Hunter - The prisoners play Russian roulette
(Michael Cimino, US, 1978)
The first major Hollywood movie to deal with Vietnam after US withdrawal from the quagmire, Cimino's three-hour, three-act epic is perhaps unhelpfully remembered for the Russian roulette scene - particularly when it is such a central plank in the charge of racism often levelled against the film. But there is no getting away from the scene's brutal power.
Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken) and Stevie (John Savage) are three friends from a Pennsylvania steel town thrown into the heat of the South-East Asian conflict. Imprisoned in a waterlogged, rat-infested bamboo cage behind enemy lines, they are forced to play Russian roulette for the entertainment of various unnamed, unsubtitled Vietcong gamblers. The round in which a near-hysterical Stevie escapes death sets the gruesome, inhuman scene. Then Michael plays against Nick, demanding three bullets are loaded into the revolver ('Now we got ourselves a game,' he pronounces grimly). As the gun-chambers roll, bets are placed, faces are slapped and foreign voices reach fever pitch, Nick cheats death with a click, and the two men turn the tables and escape, after which a nail-biting piece of close-up, emotional cinema turns into a dry-run for Rambo.
The scene is much discussed, much copied, but rarely matched for potency of performance. De Niro revealed afterwards how tough it was to play: 'It was hard to sustain that kind of intensity. I mean, we were really slapping each other; you sort of get worked up into a frenzy.'
13: Ben Hur - The chariot race
(William Wyler, US, 1959)
Though edited by Wyler, the famous chariot race was actually shot by second unit directors Andrew Marton and the legendary Yakima 'Yak' Canutt, one of Hollywood's first stuntmen and known in the industry as the best. Canutt also helped train Charlton Heston in the art of chariot-driving in the month and a half before shooting in Rome; he handpicked the other stunt-riders and horses and oversaw the design of the track. You might say that this great movie moment belongs to Yak.
The eight-man race, in which Judah Ben-Hur (Heston) is pitted against arch-enemy Messala (Stephen Boyd), remains one of Hollywood's crowning practical achievements, pulled off without miniatures or process shots, and with 4,000 Italian extras making up the crowd at the Circus of Antioch. In his autobiography In The Arena, Heston denies categorically that any horses - or men - were killed during the race, though the accidents which did occur were not surprising in the circumstances: a camera buried in a pit was struck by a chariot wheel, breaking a horse's leg, and Heston's double was almost killed when a chariot flipped him following a jump (his recovery can be seen in the finished film, cut to Heston climbing back in). Thrilling stuff.
14: Don't Look Now - The hooded figure
(Nicolas Roeg, UK/It, 1973)
With its shocking conclusion, Nicolas Roeg's beautifully filmed psychodrama managed a rare coup in modern cinema in that its outcome is both illogical and inevitable.
Architectural restorer John Baxter (Donald Sutherland) and his wife Laura (Julie Christie) are taking a holiday in Venice to recover from the traumatic death of their young daughter, who drowned in the family fishpond. They meet a pair of sisters, one with psychic powers, and Laura becomes obsessed with the idea that their child will one day return to them. John is sceptical, but a string of coincidences and telepathic flashes suggest otherwise. Finally, he spots a familiar hooded figure - wearing a red plastic mac, like the one his girl died in - darting in and out of the city's walkways. Confronting the apparition, John comes face to face with a hideous, homicidal midget, who stabs him with a kitchen knife, making ominous sense of the weird sisters' prophesy.
As in many of Roeg's other films, present, past and future come together in kaleidoscopic editing. Asked recently if he had any pleasant memories of the film, Roeg responded with a telling dismissal of certainty. "Is memory pleasant?" he asked. "I don't know. It's sad and happy, and inevitably there are ups and downs."
15: Saving Private Ryan - The Normandy landings
(Steven Spielberg, US, 1998)
After the critically disparaged Jurassic Park sequel The Lost World, people were beginning to wonder if Steven Spielberg wasn't lost himself, somewhere far away in a land of gloopy-eyed sentiment. Even the monochrome intensity of Schindler's List, then his only truly adult movie, couldn't prepare audiences for the 25-minute opening onslaught of Saving Private Ryan, a bleak tribute to the allied forces.
Inspired by the real-life case of the Niland brothers, it tells the story of a PR mission during World War II to bring back the only surviving member of the Ryan family, whose brothers have been killed in service. This is just a premise, however, which Spielberg uses to present a glimpse of the real-life horrors of the D-Day landings at Omaha beach. A battle-weary captain (Tom Hanks) is ostensibly the focus, but Spielberg goes all-out to portray the misery, fear and confusion, racking the film to get a jittery newsreel effect, plunging his camera into the muddy water as sniper bullets leave their bloody trails. We haven't met any of the characters yet and Spielberg uses this to maximum effect: no one is safe, everyone is shockingly vulnerable, and we have little idea who is going to survive this apparently unbeatable onslaught.
Stunningly filmed by Schindler's List cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, this horrendous scene was stripped of some 60 per cent of its colour, making a sober bookend with the closing scene of the American flag hanging shameful and ragged in the wind.
16: The Birds - The crows gather on the climbing frame
(Alfred Hitchcock, US, 1963)
By the time Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) arrives outside of the Bodega Bay school, we have already seen seagulls attack a children's birthday party, finches have streamed down Rod Taylor's chimney terrifying his family and one of the town's residents has been pecked to death. Hedren has gone to collect Taylor's sister and while she waits for the class to end - the birds seem to know that playtime is about to start - she sits with her back to the playround smoking, oblivious to the massing ranks of crows. Hitchcock used more than 80 camera angles - only a handful of the birds were real - to shoot the scene.
The camera lingers on Hedren for what seems an age - we can hear the children singing in the background - and the suspense is maintained with the camera cutting back and forth to the climbing frame as the crows mass. Hedren turns to discover the birds, rushes into the classroom and while the children are being evacuated down the main street the crows attack.
Evan Hunter, scriptwriter
"Hitchcock called out of the blue and asked me if I would like to write the screenplay for The Birds. He told me to forget the original Daphne du Maurier story. All he wanted to use was the name and the idea of these birds attacking humans. I had worked on a number of stories for his television series but I didn't know Hitchcock too well when I received the call. We were going after different things. He wanted the film to be artsy and I simply wanted to scare people out of their wits. But he shot this particular scene completely in line with my script. Others were changed as they were shot and the last 10 pages of the script were dropped completely, but this scene was shot as I wrote it. I wanted to get the contrast between the innocence of the children's voices in the background and the malevolence of the birds. We have already seen the birthday party attacked and we know that the birds are dangerous, which goes against all our preconceptions. So when they start to mass we know there will be trouble."
"It was beautifully shot to build the audience's apprehension. If there was one thing that I would now change I would not have had Tippi following the final bird as it comes into land - the moment she realises that the birds have massed while she smoked her cigarette. Instead I think she should have simply turned around casually in one movement and been faced by the horror of the sight of the birds."
Hunter went on to write the screenplay for another Hitchcock movie, 'Marnie', but the two argued and he left before the film was finished. Hunter is perhaps better known as crime writer Ed McBain. His favourite scene from 'The Birds' features Hedren, trapped in a telephone box, being attacked by our feathered friends.
Howard Smit, make-up artist
"The images of pecked flesh that came out on that screen came from my imagination. I had never seen anyone pecked and although we researched it we couldn't find any examples, so I had to make it just as I saw it. In those days we were restricted as to the amount of blood we could show. We were trying to make it as realistic as possible and that is, I think, what we achieved. Nothing had been done like this before. It was an important film in make-up terms. The make-up for this scene was not demanding - it was just Tippi's normal beauty make-up. But once the children were under attack as they ran down the street, that is when we got into the action."
Robert Boyle, production designer
"We had a lot of technical problems. Hitchcock wanted everything planned and so we had to storyboard everything - there was no computer help in those days. Hitchcock wanted Melanie to come out of the school house, sit down, relax, smoke a cigarette, while the audience is aware of the birds gathering. All the time we hold her in a loose shot, very relaxed. For the next shot we move in closer and listen to the children singing off-camera. All the time she sits and the camera moves in a little closer. We, the audience, are aware of the crows, but the tension is mounting, until we move in on a closed shot of Melanie - Hitchcock's instruction was to hold the shot until the audience just can't stand it any longer and then we see the mayhem. The essence of this scene was Hitchcock's vision of a woman sitting, not knowing what was happening, while the audience can see everything and knows the danger."
Robert Boyle went on to work with Hitchcock on 'Marnie' and his final unfinished film called 'The Short Night'. The climbing frame scene is his favourite from 'The Birds': "The whole film takes off from there - it is the turning point of the movie."
17: Platoon - Sergeant Elias staggers out of the jungle
(Oliver Stone, US, 1986)
Screen legend Mickey Rooney was so distressed after seeing Platoon he said a sign should be placed outside cinemas banning women.
While the Eighties are often remembered for Hollywood's Rambo view of US foreign policy, Stone apparently wanted to redress the balance. His trio of overseas conflict films - Platoon, Salvador and Born On The Fourth Of July - painted an unrelenting picture. In Platoon the real enemy is not the Vietnamese but rogue elements within the US forces. The moral battle at the centre of the film pitted saintly Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe) against sociopath-in-uniform Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger). The rookie protagonist Chris, played by Charlie Sheen, has to chose between two conflicting role models. His hand is forced after Barnes shoots Elias, leaving him to die. Barnes tells platoon members Elias has been wounded in action which they accept uneasily. They are subsequently lifted from the area by helicopter. As they leave, Elias is pursued by Vietcong soldiers who shoot him. He falls to the ground, lifting his arms Christ-like.
Stone served 15 months in Vietnam, after dropping out of Yale at 21 and enlisting. The naive Chris is based on the director, whose experiences inspired the film. He spent 10 years trying to raise funds for Platoon while writing films such as Midnight Express (1979) and Scarface (1983).
18: Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - The mothership appears
(Steven Spielberg, US, 1977)
On a national monument in Wyoming, manual worker Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) is getting closer to solving the mystery that has bothered him since his van was smothered in strange white light. His quest has brought him to Devil's Tower, where thousands of others like Neary are drawn without knowing why. A loudspeaker reveals that they are not alone: 'Gentlemen, ladies, take your positions, please. This is not a drill. I repeat: this is not a drill. Could we have the lights in the arena down 60 per cent please? Sixty per cent. I don't think we could ask for a more beautiful evening, do you? OK, watch the skies please. We now show uncorrelated targets approaching from the north northwest."
A fabulous lightshow follows, as UFO outriders fly down to make contact, followed by the awesome sight of the mothership, which lands to reveal its spectral alien pilots.
If it seems like some kind of epic revelation, it was supposed to be - at least in scriptwriter Paul Schrader's original draft, in which Neary was a government official involved in the cover-up of flying saucer activity. "It came down to this," Schrader recalled. "I said, 'I refuse to send off to another world, as the first example of earth's intelligence, a man who wants to go and set up a McDonald's franchise,' and Steven said, 'That's exactly the guy I want to send.' Steven's Capra-like infatuation with the common man was diametrically opposed to my religious infatuation with the redeeming hero.Steven was right to realise that I was an intractable character and he was right to make the film he was comfortable with."
19: Lawrence Of Arabia - The entrance of Sherif Ali
(David Lean, UK, 1962)
"I'm anxious to get a mirage shot. I don't know how the hell we do it, but give it some thought," said David Lean to his Oscar-winning cinematographer Freddie Young prior to filming in Jordan. Fortunately, he found a way to show Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif) striding majestically out of the desert coming to a standstill between Peter O'Toole and his guide.
The technical answer lay in a long 500mm telephoto lens, which allowed him to film the mirage in close-up showing details of the heatwave. A spot in the desert from which mirages were regularly seen was chosen. "We had him go practically out of sight until he was a little pinpoint in the distance and David told him to ride straight toward the camera," recalled Young. Sharif's desert trot lasted 10 minutes; Lean later interpersed the footage with reaction shots from both actors adding a swirling soundtrack to increase the tension.
Perfectionist Lean wasn't totally happy with the finished results. "Originally, I had Omar coming out of the mirage at double the length and it was better," he admitted. "I lost my nerve and cut quite a bit. Wish I hadn't."
20: Taxi Driver - 'You talkin' to me?'
(Martin Scorsese, US, 1975)
Becoming increasingly neurotic, New York cab driver Travis Bickle is alone in his seedy apartment, having stocked up on arms to carry out a meaningless plan to assassinate governor Palantine (Leonard Harris). He's wearing a combat jacket and addressing the mirror, but his words are delivered straight to camera. 'You talkin' to me?' he snarls. 'You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talkin' to? Oh yeah? Huh?' The gun shoots out of his sleeve. 'Try it, you fuck!'
According to screenwriter Paul Schrader, the bulk of De Niro's narration was scripted, although this particular scene was improvised. "In the script it just says, 'Travis speaks to himself in the mirror.' Bobby [De Niro] asked me what he would say, and I said, 'Well, he's a little kid playing with guns and acting tough.' So De Niro used this rap that an underground New York comedian had been using at the time as the basis for his lines. Because the scene was filmed in one of Manhattan's noisiest areas, Scorsese kept asking De Niro to repeat the line in case the microphone lost it. But it recorded perfectly, and Scorsese kept it all."