Famous Movie Scenes #2

I thought Monty Python as well. I'm a pretty big LOTR nerd but just couldn't put two and two together for some reason

Very famous scene. I'm with rgc1600, really surprised actually that more people knew the American Beauty scene than the North By Northwest and Citizen Kane scenes.

I'd say it was just me but then, the percentages seem to bear out my observation.

North by Northwest is my favorite Hitchcock movie. He was such a master at suspense, and it slowly builds in this movie. Deserves its iconic status IMO. On the other hand, so many lists have Citizen Kane as the greatest movie of all time that I had to watch it. I somehow missed the giant impact of it all. Perhaps a film expert can enlighten me. Casablanca and GWTW are at the top of my list.

Citizen Kane had a lot of "firsts" in it. Before then, most directors were studio men who used the same aesthetic conventions to tell a story efficiently and easily. Many people think of Citizen Kane as the first true auteur movie. Orson Welles was a major commodity that Hollywood had been unsuccessfully courting for years. He finally signed under condition that he could write, direct, produce, and star in his own movie with little oversight, which was unheard of at the time. So he was able to do things most movies wouldn't allow -- things that are taken for granted now. He used offbeat camera angles to play with perspective, used music to augment scenes rather than just fill space, and finally tightened the absolutely dreadful pacing of early Hollywood editing. The movie, viewed just for enjoyment, is not so great. But if you appreciate how innovative it was when it happened, its significance is clearer.

I actually think the best modern film actors are a lot better than the older ones. Most "Golden Age" actors were really hammy over-actors that relied on good looks and charisma for their greatness, but they weren't very realistic. Brando, Bogart, Welles, Katharine Hepburn, and Bette Davis are the major exceptions I can think of. Modern "movie stars" like Will Smith, Scarlett Johanssen, the Rock, etc. definitely rely on their star power rather than acting, but there are also lots of really great modern actors who are masters of their craft, like Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Rockwell, Glenn Close, Viola Davis, Robert De Niro, Gary Oldman, Bryan Cranston, Laura Linney, and so on. I always think the facile comparison between Tom Hanks and Jimmy Stewart exemplifies the distinction. People talk about them like they're the same. Tom Hanks is ten times the actor Jimmy Stewart ever was.

I don't think it's really the plots that make Hitchcock so unique, perhaps except for Psycho and a few others. Hitchcock usually worked with clichéd plot elements and subverted them with expressive camera angles, montages, use of color, music, and silence, etc. He went so far as to coin the term MacGuffin, which is an object that drives the story but has no significance in itself, and even consciously deprived his MacGuffins of their significance over the years. In North by Northwest, when Cary Grant finally learns what's behind all those secret service shenanigans, all we hear is the noise coming from a starting aiprlane. Hitch tells us to stop caring about the corny plot and makes us aware of HOW he tells it.

I don’t think Tom Hanks is who you want to use as an example of how acting is better today than when Jimmy Stewart acted. Also, you can’t really blame actors who were forced by the industry, and the available technology, to use the “trans-Atlantic” accent.