MEMORABLE MOMENTS in FILM

Film buffs will never forget Scarlett shaking her fist on that blood-red hilltop overlooking Tara, nor Gable pulling down the walls of Jericho. Here are my favourites, matchless combinations of script, actor, direction, and all of the other elements that make celluloid magic.
THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME 1939

THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME 1939
Raised to a human identity for the first time in his life by the lovely Maureen O'Hara seeking sanctuary from the mob, the hunchback loses her to a handsome captain. In the final scene, Charles Laughton caresses the gargoyle high on the walls of Notre Dame. "If only I were made of stone, like thee." The camera recedes until he is merely a speck. Adding poignancy, as biographers of Laughton have pointed out, were the tragic but filmworthy results of his self-doubt.
DINNER AT EIGHT 1933
The unlikely contrast of bag-of-toys Marie Dressler and nubile bleached bombshell Jean Harlow chatting as they saunter to the dinner table has few equals. Jean confesses that she read a book recently. Marie does a classic doubletake, then hears Harlow's comment that some professions may become obsolete. Taking her arm like a wise elder sister, Marie says, "Oh, my dear, that is something you never need worry about."
NINOTCHKA 1939
Garbo laughs. How did director Lubitsch coax an academy-award nomination from an unlikely comedienne when an attempt to repeat the success made her next picture an embarrassment that ended her career? "Can you laugh?" he asked. "I think so," she answered and returned the following day to treat him to ten solid minutes. Melvin Douglas's tumble from his chair in the little cafe may be slapstick, but her reaction isn't.
RANDOM HARVEST 1942
Greer Garson could do more with her facial muscles than Marcel Marceau. She met her love Ronald Colman when he was shellshocked and had lost his memory. Recovering suddenly on a business trip, he has returned to his former life. In desperation, she becomes his secretary, which the viewer discovers by watching her eyes make love to his voice while she takes dictation.
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE 1941
Fatherly, ethical Spencer Tracy plays a villain for a change, and what a monster, trumping performances by John Barrymore and Frederic March. With Ingrid Bergman as the pouty-lipped victim, streetwise at first, then under his fatal spell, Tracy directs her in a gay ditty ("How I love to dance the polka") which ratchets into a terrifying moment of manipulation.
CABARET 1972
One of the best-edited films ever made. Never a false move. The pivotal scene involves Liza Minnelli at a country gasthaus on a summer's day. A young lad begins a sweet lieder, "The sun in the morning..." Tensions build as voices and instruments join in. In the last chorus, the boy is revealed as one of Hitler's youth, and the lyrical interlude has turned into a drum-beating martial explosion of Nazism.
A FOREIGN AFFAIR 1948
Few people imagine Jean Arthur as a singer, but in this political comedy, her prim, country Nebraskan facade touring post-War Berlin dissolves under the charm of a few drinks, and she belts out "I am from Ioway" with vaudeville aplomb, upstaging Marlene Dietrich.
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