The Most Brilliant Shot in Movie History
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- Of course we all love pretty compositions and flashy tracking shots, but, if you ask me and, since you're reading this I presume you do, what makes a truly great shot is its capacity to convey its message in the most effective way possible. THAT is a great shot, but what makes a brilliant shot? Let's find out by digging into the minds of great directors like Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, George Stevens and Alfred Hitchcock.
You will finally understand the famous Lubitsch Touch, you will learn why George Stevens is an underrated genius, you will find out I am NOT an alcoholic (don't let them tell you otherwise), you will blush at the sight of chairs, shiver at the sight of doors, giggle at the sight of trains and you will finally know what it feels like when a movie treats you like an intelligent viewer, which is what you are, you wonderful video-watcher and description-reader.
00:00 What makes a brilliant shot ?
01:36 The Lubitsch Touch
02:39 Angel (1937)
04:27 Giant (1956)
06:17 Sunset Blvd. (1950)
09:44 The Lost Weekend (1945)
11:26 The Grass Is Greener (1960)
12:37 The Production Code in the Golden Age of Hollywood
13:20 North by Northwest (1959)
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There is a similar shot in "The Apartment" by Billy Wilder. Main character after romantic break-up goes to bar, he orders martini with olive. The drink comes with the olive with a toothpick in it. After cut, we see him in front of bar. Now, a bad director would go with a something like monologue "I'm so wasted, I drank 6 martinis". Decent director could show some empty glasses (more creative, still - very in your face). What Billy Wilder showed us? There are 6 toothpicks in front of character, who sits there staring in the wall.
The loud explosion in the final moments of the film has the same purpose as the empty doorknobs in sunset boulevard. The popping initially sounds like a gun going off but it turns out to be champagne popping, a comic twist on two established ideas from earlier
I am proudly in 'one of the greatest shots of all time' - where the steadicam follows DeNiro's Jake Lamotta from locker room, down the hall, into the arena, down the stairs to ringside - then splitting at the corner where I am to step on a crane and hover over the ring as Jake enters. When it was aired at that year's Oscars I did a spit take at home - a proud time for me, the lowly young ringside reporter...
How cool! What a great story! Thanks for sharing and totally agree... I love that shot. A chilling movie but beautiful. And with a particularly beautiful DeNiro!
The last scene in The Third Man. Joe Cotton just waiting for his true love to walk up...
I like this.
Waiting, and then watching her pass him by...
The italian actress Alida Valli. She was wonderful !
A simply terrific movie all round. That last shot, yes.
This is such an intelligent, salient and humorous video essay that deserves more recognition and a much higher view count. Thank you for the laughs, and cheers to the future of this channel! 🥂
*AGREE*
It would have a have a higher view count if it wasn't so awfully littered with bad jokes and obnoxious sound effects.
The last scene of the Searchers
"Lawrence of Arabia" has a couple. The approach of Sharif Ali to the well, the sun rising over the endless empty desert, and the ship passing behind a sand dune when Lawrence reaches the Suez Canal. Maybe the shot of the guns at Aqaba, where the town has been overrun and they are still trained out at the sea.
The best shot in Lawrence of Arabia is the last shot, Of Lawrence heading home, shot thru a windshield so dusty that we can’t quite make him out. Just as Lawrence was an enigma to those around him, he ended up an enigma to himself.
Lawrence of Arabia’s opening and closing shots are both spectacular in my opinion.
i agree , has everything . colour and illusion
I was thinking about "Lawrence Of Arabia" as well... it's right up there with Citizen Kane. Also the opening sequence of Michelangelo Antonioni's "The Passenger": no music, very little talking, 8 mins of pure visual literature.
😅David LEAN.
GENIUS.
DOUG out
Billy Wilder is indeed one of the greatest directors of all time. You should do a ranking of his films.
Honestly, I miss things being implied, rather than explicit.
It feels more clever, intelligent, and classy.
Exactly! It's part of the general dumbing-down of society that everything is now explicit. I realised the change after turning a television on after 10 years with no tv. I saw what looked like a shared house, with 3 people in a kitchen, and 5 people in the garden outside. An on-screen display read '12:23'. It was quite clear what was going on , they were a mixed bunch of housemates. Then a narrator said: 'Twelve Twenty-three. Three of the housemates are in the kitchen, five are in the garden'. I thought that it was being narrated for blind people. But no - it was Reality TV! - so it was being narrated for MORONS!
Preach!
It demands cleverness, intelligence, and class from you, which makes you feel good about yourself for the same reason that someone talking down to you makes you feel bad about yourself. "This movie believes in me!"
@@MonsterKidCory it's also the difference between someone saying "excuse me I need to go to excuse myself for a moment", and someone saying "oh damn I think I shit my pants".
One gives you all the information you need to know, and the other gives you all the information you didn't need while managing to be vulgar and disgusting on top.
@@braedenh6858 the real pro move is screaming that someone put shit in your pants.
Once you started talking about shots alluding to sexual activity proscribed by the Hays Code, I knew that North By Northwest's final shot was homing into view :)
Perceptive you are.
Freudian: sometimes a train is just a train!
@@Find-Your-Bliss- - lol and the tunnel a bridge too far
The top of the saddle in the horse scene being perfectly aligned with the horizon was very neat.
Gangs of New York... opening scene (or a scene somewhere in the beginning), were the camera pans over the port showing immigrants landing in the US, then immediately being enlisted in the army (civil war era), then boarding a ship ... from which coffins are being unloaded. A few seconds of scene tells you a thousand things. It does not rely on absence and it is not simple (busy frame with lots of people and things moving all the time and the camera following the flow of people, it might even have made use of CGI), but it works brilliantly.
That shot is brilliant!
That shot made me cry
If you enjoyed this, you might like the film “Visions of Light” (1992), which is a documentary on cinematography. It’s over 30 years old now but has so many brilliant shots like these and really makes you appreciate the art of cinematography.
So true. And it is heavy on the Kurasawa if memory serves. There are so many amazing shots in his films. The opening of Yojimbo is one of them!
One of my favorite shots is in "For a few dollars more" at 02:04:12 when the hand appears with the medallion, and we instantly know what is going on. But in that scene it's the music that gets me. So much payoffs that had been carefully built up. Many great scenes in that movie. Like the moment u realize why the bandits are in an old chapel just so the main antagonist can deliver a preachy speech from a pulpit. Brilliant
That shot is amazing and was the first time Sergio Leone brought the soundtrack into the film itself. The shot just goes to highlight Leone's genius. That movie walked so Once Upon a Time in the West could run. One of my favorite shots of all time.
The closing scene of "The Heiress," in which we watch a thousand emotions flicker across Olivia DeHavilland's face as she refuses to open the door for Montgomery Clift, is brilliant. No words were necessary.
Like Valli walking past Joseph Cotten in Reed's "Third Man". I agree Wyler is amazing!
Brilliant examples, though I’m more inclined toward the telephone gag and the shot glass rings. Amazing storytelling there with shots more well composed than the missing doorknobs. The shot from GIANT is the most aesthetically beautiful of them all, reminiscent of Sergio Leone or of Terrance Malick.
"And that, Billy, is how baby trains are made."
The shots of the windmill and the railway station at the start of Once Upon A Time in The West is some of the most impressive i have ever seen.
Along with the soundtrack too. The squeaky windmill is haunting.
sorry dude, i just posted the same comment, i wouldn't have had i scrolled down looking for a like minded individual, regardless, we are both correct
I got more laughs out of this episode than any other, good one.
Obviously, the inflatable smoking a cigarette in Airplane.
Brilliant, absolutey brilliant video! This was filled with wit, humour...thank you dude!
There better already be a comment about "Checkov's Lack of Doorknob".
I know I'm going to get some shit for this, but I thought the way Hawkeye's cellphone rang in "Avengers: Endgame" was pretty damn effective.
A simple ring (with caller ID) and the audience knows that TRILLIONS of lives throughout the Universe had come back. No popping or lightning, no montage, just a simple little buzz.
PS I'm not a huge Marvel fan.
For me the best shot ever is the closeup of The City Woman's heel sinking into the mud in Sunrise, which elucidates everything about her and her relationship to The Man.
Agree on "Giant" . . . fwiw, the maybe-ordained, probably-deserved death of Luz, changes all the dynamics on Reata (and initiates Jett to create "Little Reata"). Love that film, which goes above/beyond a terrific novel.
If you want to include Disney/Pixar, there is an incredible POV shot right through the thought-it-was-invincible "learning" robot that shows the result of the used-as-a-counter-weapon robot claw indicating that yes-indeedy the robot was killed via it's own claw, by the the great teamwork of the Incredibles family. The whole build-up, action sequence and ending is terrific. Brad Bird knows robots!
Your videos are so well written!
There are so many great shots. in Herzog's Nosferatu, when the ship glides into the channel with nobody alive on board, when the townsfolk "celebrate" having the plague with a feast in the square. The entire movie is gorgeous. Hitchcock's Frenzy, when the camera slowly backs away from the apartment where we know a murder is being committed and when the murderer remembers his victim clutching his initial pin and when, at the end, the cop says to the necktie murderer, "you're not wearing your tie !" In Polanski's Repulsion when the camera closes in on a photograph where a young girl has such an expression while looking at a man in the same photo. The beginning of The Sound of Music with the camera flying over the Alps then closing in on Julie Andrews. In Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, Mia Farrow's face when she first sees her baby! Also love the shot of Marilyn in Wilder's Some Like it Hot when the train emits a puff of steam when Marilyn walks past.
All great!
The end of Edge of Darkness hits me every time. That's definitely an outstanding shot.
Best shot in movie history: in The Apartment when Jack Lemon wants to see how his new hat looks and Shirley MacClaine hands him her compact mirror and the mirror is cracked.
Yea, no.
The Searchers final shot should have got a mention here
MAGNIFICENT!! Thank You!
Orson Welles. Citizen Kane. The breakfast scenes with Kane's first wife Emily: in the final of the six clip montage we see the now distant couple sitting at opposite ends of the table heads buried in their morning papers not speaking to each other... as the camera pulls back the table with the cloth draped over it takes on the visual form of a coffin symbolizing the death of Kane's first marriage. It's not as obvious as the scenes from Angel or Giant or Sunset Blvd but personally I feel this is the greatest scene in film history because of what it conveys visually without saying a single word and the absolute truth of the situation it's portraying.
Yep- a classic!
I love Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be
It's brilliant!
This was so good that I was not paying attention to the beginning of it, but midway though it captured my attention and caused me to rewind it to the beginning to pay attention to the whole thing. Well done!
Just wonderful. Thank you!
Kind of surprised that, in your intro, you didn't include the famous Wide-Shot from Laurence of Arabia>
Or was it too obvious, too easy!?!
I love your work. Thank you.
Sou tão fã do Movie Wise que já estou pegando as referências em séries e filmes!!
BR !!
Love your channel! Keep the videos coming.
Great fun!
So nice to see other people enjoying classic cinema, especially at this level. Well done!
A year old video and YT just now figured out The Grass is Greener is my favorite movie?
No, seriously, it is. But this video is very amusing.
Glad to have found you.
Once Upon A Time In The West opening Scene, surely the creaky squeeky sign and wide angle shots at the station Must be up there
Wasn't expecting this video to change the way I think about "show don't tell".
Great narration and editing, thank you for creating this.
Love your work too! Great comic timing! Also nice to hear your actual voice in the censored parts!
Great work!
The last shot of Friedkins Scorcerer that begins with the shoes, then pans up to reveal who is wearing them. That’s all you need to see to know Roy Scheiders fate.
I have yet to see that film...thanks for the mention!
Id say the long final shot of Citizen Kane maybe, as it meanders patiently and then without a word finally reveals the mystery that the whole movie has been seeking.
The shot in Kong’s lair when the plesiosaur is swimming towards us in the lake and the sulphur pits are bubbling… truly a surreal shot in 1933.
First time to your channel but this is worthy of a subscribe! Looking forward to more
Glad to find out Count Dracula now has a youtube channel about films
great work - keep them ... errr.. coming?!
Very well done video.
First time watcher and glad I did.
I work in Hollywood on major films and tv shows with a few, half dozen or so Oscars and a few more Emmys on my resume'/IMDb profile. I've worked with Speilberg, Tarantino, Tom Ford just to name a few.
I have always been a fan of the way directors had to find creative ways to skirt around Hayes back in the days. It was done by cinematographic techniques and also by the dialogue used by the actors either written in the script or improvised. Some of my favorites examples would be any Marx Brothers movies. The things that Groucho would say to people, especially to women, were absolutely genius to get his point across clearly but cleanly past Hayes censors.
You have a new subscriber .
Thanks for your work
Enjoyed this, thanks
I think this might be the best CZcams channel. Of all time
I’m so ignorant of the classics I just tried to wipe Norma Desmond’s beauty spot off my iPad.
Going by what you have presented and talking about what is not shown only helps to imply... I would say the ending of The Godfather 2 after everyone has left the dinner table to go greet papa Brando at the door. We see Michael all alone. He had no family there at the 'beginning', and he had no family at the 'end'.
As an aside, it kills me to think that the only reason we had the incredible ending is because Brando didn't come for that scene. If he had been there what kind of an ending would it have been(?), just a cute cameo of everyone? Talk about making the best of a situation. Ironically, that's why Col. Kurtz was often filmed only appearing slightly out of the dark, because of his weight gain that Coppola didn't want to film.
Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" just popped up as a You Tube recommendation. This got me thinking "perhaps you could treat us to a bit on sound design. Not only is that ringing phone perhaps the best use of sound I can remember since M, but Moriccone's score is perhaps his best (debatable I know!). So haunting. So spare. And achingly beautiful. There is no scored music until 13 minutes into the movie. What mastery! In both direction and scoring and in a partnership like Williams and Spielberg iit would be lovely to get your perspective on the art of scoring. I think movies now are so over-scored it is maddening. What do you think? Thanks again for the channel.!
We see different things when we watch movies. Nicely done man.
Bob Zemeckis 'Flight': Denzel struggles with alcohol addiction, he finds a little bottle in the hotel but overcomes temptation and walks away. Bravo that's my man! But... the camera lingers on the bottle a bit too long and reality comes loudly crashing down like a ton of bricks. Nothing moved from one frame to the next, but we all know what follows. It was all too good to be true.
It's not a fair question to ask: 'What is the most brilliant shot"... Because, relative to this video, you're specifically focusing on The Lubitsch Touch. But other shots are "the most brilliant", for reasons other than this one method. For example, it could be the shot the fades from 'this time' to some future or past time; the shot the holds on to the maximum length of suspense, not a second too long or too short; the shot that captures the complete, exact thoughts of a character through their eyes; the shot of the moment someone dies; the shot of the moment we all know that all hope is lost; etc. These all deserve their own consideration, I think.
But some general shots that come to mind as I write are:
Omar Sharif's appearance through the heat in Laurence of Arabia
The zoom-out finally over the railway station being built of the end of Once Upon a Time In The West
The transition shot of the spiraling bone to the space-craft in 2001: A Space Odyssey
Paul Newman sitting in his truck, staring at his boyhood home in Nobody's Fool
The panning of Miss Havisham's cobwebbed table in Great Expectations
...
Thank you for making me think. And laugh.
--
I saw Angel a month ago in a movie theatre for the first time… great movie!
David Lean’s ‘Oliver Twist’, when Sykes’ dog Bullseye scratches on the door as Sykes beats Nancy to death.
My candidate for the most brilliant shot in movie history is the panorama of the Arabian desert as Lawrence of Arabia watches Auda Abu Tayi gallop towards him on a horse. It tells us of the beauty of the desert, which Lawrence fell in love with; it tells us of the humongous size of the desert as Auda Abu Tayi goes from being a pin prick only half way to the horizon to filling half the screen; and it instills anxiety, because we don't know who this is nor what he wants.
This is great. I model 19th century as well. I really enjoy the challenge of the research part of it. I met Frank a month ago in a modelers meet up. Nice to hear more of his thoughts on it.
Thanks for this! Loved it. I have to say I'm pretty fond of the closing shot in the John Ford's "The Searchers." I'm also in love with the scene when the kid eats the cream pastry in Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" a beautiful film with an amazing score! If memory serves that is all one shot. He tells us all we need to know about childlike innocence in that shot, which also happens to be a very sensual! And although it's not considered great anymore, there are a few iconic shots in "Gone with the Wind" that are complete classics. Where would Welles' epic crane shots be if not for Fleming's amazing crane sequence after the battle of Atlanta? The shower scene's shot of Janet Leigh's eye in Hitchcock's Psycho. The relentless opening of "Saving Private Ryan" has an incredible steady cam shot. And Kubrick has so many breathtaking shots in so many of his movies it's hard to choose one! Oh I could go on and on! Shane framed by the buck's antlers George Steven's masterpiece....what a fun game this is. Hard to choose just one! I agree that a dive into Billy Wilder would be a treat, can't wait to see if you have done that one. I so enjoyed your perspective here! Thanks again! First time viewer and you've got another subscriber!
I have a candidate: near the end of Donnie Brasco, Al Pacino gets an invitation call for an immediate appointment. He hangs up the phone, then takes off his jewelry and watch, puts them in the drawer, knowing he'll never get back from the meeting.
I lost it with the train in the tunnel.
This video should have the title "The best-composited shot in history vs the best-storytelling shot in history, and we speak of the latter." And no, I was not a Humanities major. I fully agree with what you are saying, but it's like when I'm asked who the best superhero in the world is by my kid. Best in what? If you only focus on the "best", people's answers differ, but if you focus on detail, people would probably agree.
Metaphysics succinctly put is: What grounds what? What grounds our beliefs? Metaphysics therefore is basically an epistemological concern. What grounds existence...what is the ground of existence..reality. What is the ground of the self? How do say what we are? What is the the nature of of being (ontology). When we say something, what grounds it? What is the basis? Etc,. etc.....
I just watched Sunset Blvd. today. Didn’t catch that but I’ll watch it again and look at it.
What about the “Jaws Shot”? The pull back while zooming it shot?
The GOAT? Hitchcock. Though Wilder is an underappreciated master.
Both S tier directors
Kubrick for me.
Hitchcock was quoted as saying, “The two greatest words in movie making are ‘Billy’ and ‘Wilder.’”
Before watching, my vote for most brilliant shot: the doorway end scene in 'The Searchers'.
That was mine as well! That shot is perfect and Wayne played it beautifully. He is so underrated as a physical master of his craft. The pose quoting Harry Carey Sr. And his walk- his beautiful walk! And then the sentimental music so perfectly played...Ride Away....Gorgeous!
I never noticed the missing doorknobs.
Thank you
An excellent analysis; and I fully agree that Bond got it's early themes from North by N.West...... Excellent.
fantastic utube channel
i dont know man, did you see that scene in Dredd where he tells Mama that she is not the law, that he is the law? scene is badass bruh...
I thought you were talking about the two door knobs they clearly forgot to remove from the wardrobe in her bedroom. (Sunset Blvd).
Pixelating the Marx brothers was a nice touch.
The final shot of "The Magnificent Ambersons".
Classical film relied upon the audience's capacity to think, extrapolate, infer, and derive meaning. Modern film can't rely on that, or at least doesn't expect it.
"the stuff that dreams are made of." - Sam Spade
From this moment onwards, "North by Northwest" is a sex position 🥂
Your focus is entirely on American cinema as if that's the only one that exists! Some of the most beautiful and astounding images in cinema come from directors like Tarkovsky, Mizoguchi, Bergman and Kurosawa.
Nice!
Each shot is a new position? So you’re saying there’s more than two? What are you, an acrobat?
I also love that map of Texas
I’ve always thought the best shot in sunset blvd is when she’s taken him shopping for a pricey new wardrobe and the salesman says, “As long as the lady is paying, why not take the vicuña!?” The camera pushing in on a close up and we know that he knows he’s a bought man.
I like Clint AND Billy ("or" not necessary). The essence of metaphysics is simple. All is consciousness, we are the dreamers and the dreamed. Some substitute love or god for consciousness. Many "material scientists" call consciousness "the problem" because they can't believe that there is nothing there. Sunset Boulevard is effing brilliant. I will offer you the short list of the laws of everything if you want.
*Can someone please tell me*
@12:39 what movies these scenes are from?
First on is from _Requiem of a Dream_ @12:47
Second one is from _Eyes Wide Shut_ @12:48
Third clip is same as the first
But the one at @12:56 ?
at @12:58 ?
at 12:59 ?
Well, I just found the answers at the end of the video. That was very considerate of Mr. Moviewise. 👍
You are as sharply funny as you are insightful!
Those are all brilliant shots and cuts, but I think you are missing a perfect one. In Hitchcock's Vertigo, when Scotty rescues Madeleine after jumping in the water under the Golden Gate Bridge, the next cut shows Scotty drinking coffee panning to the kitchen where her clothes, including underwear is drying. (Notice the detail that on his coffee table there are some risqué bachelor magazines). The cut implies Scotty undressed Madeleine while she was pretending to be unconscious. Not bad for a 1958 movie.
The phone gag is sort of clever, but why would she play the song for her husband? How is she such an accomplished musician that she remembered the song on one hearing? Why is the other guy also playing the same song (learned after one hearing) at that particular moment?
Omar Sharif from a distance then up close in Lawrence of Arabia
Hilarious…It’s refreshing to see serious film commentary not being taken so seriously. Only those who really know it can joke about it this well.
Good video and analysis, but the super loud dramatic music and bleeping at the end made it so I didn't finish this video. Low voice and high sound effects make it not watchable
Ha, so those Cialis commercials were inspired by the movie The Grass is Greener.
Clues like that (at 9:15) wouldn't fly today. Today there would have to be an exposition or at least shot of a suicide node. Remember in Schindlers list, Spielberg had to colorize the girl's coat, because he believed that audience would not understand the hint.
14:08 anyone notice the floor is a Smith Chart ??