Re: A Scene That Never Fails to Move Me

Date: 28 May 2003 18:17:36 -0700
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.past-films
Size: 3,293 bytes

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY. "I just want to enter my house justified."
John Wayne at his wife's gravestone in SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON.
TUNES OF GLORY. Gordon Jackson leads Alec Guiness away at the end.
"Take me home, Johnny."
(A televised play rather than a film, but this moves me more than the
equivalent scenes in the various cinematic versions). The Royal
Shakespeare Company version of CYRANO DE BERGERAC, when Derek Jacobi
says "oh, I've done better since."
PEKING OPERA BLUES. Brigitte Lin, Sally Yeh and Cherrie Cheung
embrace in the snow outside the Peking Opera theater, and then Yeh's
lovely song starts on the soundtrack.
The end of I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, when Wendy Hiller comes back with
the pipers. Also Pamela Brown's magnificent, Diana-the-Huntress-like
entrance, shotgun over her shoulder, dead rabbit in hand, surrounded
by giant wolfhounds; it's moving in the sense that I'm moved to go
"what a goddess!"
A CANTERBURY TALE, when the Land Girl heroine and the eccentric
(indeed, rather creepy when you realize he's the Glue Man) local
aristocrat lie down in the tall grass and hear the sound of ghostly
medieval pilgrims on the road.
Fred Astaire on the railroad platform in THE BANDWAGON, singing "By
Myself." Just one example of the undercurrent of subtle melancholy
that runs through the film, which is one of the two reasons why I like
this better than SINGING IN THE RAIN (the other being The Girl Hunt
Ballet, when Cyd comes at Fred "in sections").
LOST AND FOUND. No, not the David Spade film, but the magical,
too-little-known 1996 comedy-drama by Lee Chi-Ngai, my favorite
writer/director of the 90s. At the end, when the action moves from
the isle of St. Kilda back to Hong Kong. Kelly Chan stands among the
graves at her own funeral, saying goodbye to Takeshi Kaneshiro and
Michael Wong, as a gaelic folk song by Mac Talla plays on the
soundtrack. Then we get the same beautiful, rushing black and white
shots of busy Hong Kong streets we saw at the beginning, while the
music switches to Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me Till the End of Love."
SLEEPLESS TOWN. My favorite modern noir, a Chinese-Japanese
co-production that was Lee's followup to LOST AND FOUND. The end,
when Takeshi Kansehiro is hit by the mysterious snowball and Nat King
Cole's "Unforgettable" plays on the soundtrack.
CENTRE STAGE, aka ACTRESS. Maggie Cheung's Ruan Lin-Yu (the
Chinese Garbo" who committed suicide in the 20s) says to her favorite
director: "thank you, for making me an actress and then a
revolutionary." The film then cuts to a close-up of him the next day,
at her funeral, where he murmurs "I wish I could change you one more
time." Then back to the night before, Maggie lovely and sinuous in her
cheongsam, swaying on the dance floor to "Falling in Love Again."
COMRADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY. Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai watch
Teresa Tang's funeral on the storefront television sets, then finally
realize they're standing next to each other. Also, earlier in the
film, she waits in the car and watches while he gets Teresa Tang's
autograph for her.
ASHES OF TIME. Maggie Cheung's one scene, little more than a cameo
but the emotional center of the film, a longish monolog in which Wong
Kar Wai and Chris Doyle's camera never leaves her exquisite face.