119 years ago today, Laurence Olivier was born in Surrey. The son of a clergyman, Olivier would go on to become one of the greatest stage actors of the 20th Century. He would also have a distinguished film career, one that led to him frequently being described as being the world’s greatest living actor.
He is perhaps best-known for his Shakespearean performances. He won multiple Oscars for directing and starring in 1948’s Hamlet. Today’s scene that I love comes from that film and features Olivier at his best, as both an actor and a director.
In honor of James Stewart’s birthday, our scene that I love comes from one of my favorite Stewart films, 1959’s Anatomyofa Murder.
In today’s scene that I love, James Stewart explains to his client (played by Ben Gazzara) that there are four ways that he can defend a murder charge. The contrast between Stewart’s classic style and Gazzara’s intense method style makes for an intense scene between two very talented and unique actors.
Today is Pete Townshend’s 80th birthday and today’s scene that I love features Pete Townshend (as a member of The Who) performing at Woodstock in 1969.
Roger Daltrey later said that this was the worst gig that they ever played and The Who did end up going on stage early in the morning, with the sun rising as they performed See Me, Feel Me. The majority of The Who’s performance was not included in the initial release of the Woodstockdocumentary but the noticeably grainy footage would later be included in various rereleases.
Unfortunately, no cameras recorded the moment when Pete Townshend became the hero that 1969 needed by kicking a ranting Abbie Hoffman off of the stage. But, audio of the incident survived.
Today’s scene that I love comes from Twister and it features Bill Paxton showing off some wonderful chemistry with Helen Hunt. One of the great things about Bill Paxton is that he was equally at home in both big blockbusters like Twister and Titanic and low-budget indies like Near Dark. He was an artist who also happened to be a star. As a lover of both films and eccentric Texans, I will always miss Bill Paxton.
Today, the Shattered Lens wishes a very happy birthday to the great Robert Zemeckis. Today’s scene that I love comes from Zemeckis’s 1985 film, BacktotheFuture.
Did you know that rock and roll was invented by a time traveler? Well, let’s not overthink things. Let’s just enjoy the scene.
On this date, 118 years ago, Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She would go one to become a cultural icon, a performer who survived being labeled box office to poison to eventually become one of our most acclaimed actresses. Hepburn was a total of four acting Oscars over the course of her career, a record that has yet to be topped.
Today’s scene that I love comes from 1940’s The Philadelphia Story and it features Katharine Hepburn acting opposite another one of my favorite performers, the great James Stewart.
Norman Bates, now there’s someone who probably made a big deal out of every Mother’s Day. Today’s scene that I love comes from 1960’s Psycho and features Hitchcock, Janet Leigh, and Anthony Perkins at their absolute best,
“Holly, I’d like to cut you in, old man. There’s nobody left in Vienna I can really trust, and we’ve always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message – I’ll meet you any place, any time, and when we do meet old man, it’s you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won’t ya? Don’t be so gloomy.
After all it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.”
Orson Welles has been a giant of the film industry since he first stepped foot in it with his masterpiece Citizen Kane. He has been lauded as one of the greatest filmmakers and his innovation in the techniques of filmmaking continues to influence past, present and future filmmakers.
Yet, he wasn’t just a great director but a great writer and producer. He was also a great actor both on-screen, and previously, on stage where he honed his craft. He has had some memorable moments in all the films he’s acted in (even his final film which was the cult classic animated film feature Transformers: The Movie, where he was the voice of a planet-devouring transforming robot planetoid).
It is his brief but great monologue past the halfway mark of the classic noir film The Third Man that is my choice for Scenes I Love and another entry in the “Great Film and TV Monologues” series.
Welles plays the amoral Harry Lime who meets up with his childhood friend Holly Martins. As they ride the famous Wiener Riesenrad in Vienna, Welles waxes poetic about the insignificance of people, in general. How, from the the heights of the Riesenrad, people looked like little dots and would one dot or a group of them be missed if they suddenly stopped moving.
Yet, it is when Lime and Martins exit the ride that Welles’ as Harry Lime performs what is considered one of the greatest monologues ever put on film and, most likely, one of the briefest. It is a philosophical observation on the cynics take on the violent nature of man and how it affects society.
The monologue itself wasn’t written by the film’s writer, Graham Greene, but was inserted in the script by Orson Welles himself. The Third Man was one of the greatest films ever produced even without Welles’ contribution as a writer, but we should be all glad that he decided to add this brief monologue which helps explains the character of Harry Lime and the meaning of the “third man”.
Through the Shattered Lens 