Favorite Movie Moment

Abogado del Diablo · 05-08-2005, 02:30 AM

This is a little different than the "Favorite Movie" thread. What is your favorite scene in all the movies you've watched? My favorite movie is "Apocalypse Now," but my favorite scene is the conversation between Howard Beale (Peter Finch) and Mr. Jensen (Ned Beatty) in the huge coporate boardroom in "Network" (1976):

Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! You think you've merely stopped a business deal -- that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen, and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and A T & T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state -- Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war and famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.

Beale: Why me?

Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Beale: I have seen the face of God.

Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

InLove · 05-09-2005, 06:54 AM

Okay--I'll bite! (Big surprise, huh?)

In "Life is Beautiful (Vita é Bella)", right after Guido (Roberto Benigni) and his little boy, Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini) have been taken to the men's quarters at the concentration camp and the Nazi soldier comes in to instruct them as to the dark rules and realities of the horrible place. In order to shield his son from the terrors there, Guido pretends to interpret the German into Italian, and with incredible humor, making it sound like the Nazi is explaining the rules of a big game that has as its prize a tank ( a toy which Giosué has always wanted). I don't have it word-for-word as it is scripted, but the scene is just great.

Ah yes, but the scene near the very end of the movie, after Guido has been executed, but the war is over and the poor prisoners are released--when the allied tank rolls around the corner and the American soldier picks the little boy up in his arms and gives him candy and holds him up riding in the tank, and he sees his mother? Well, I will just put it this way: I am not watching the film right now, but I am going for the Kleenex tissue anyway!

.

InPeace,
InLove

Bandit · 05-10-2005, 07:18 AM

one of my favorites is when Cary Grant is telling the Christmas story to the little girl in the Bishops Wife. I love that part!

Abogado del Diablo · 05-10-2005, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by InLove

Okay--I'll bite! (Big surprise, huh?)

In "Life is Beautiful (Vita é Bella)", right after Guido (Roberto Benigni) and his little boy, Giosué (Giorgio Cantarini) have been taken to the men's quarters at the concentration camp and the Nazi soldier comes in to instruct them as to the dark rules and realities of the horrible place. In order to shield his son from the terrors there, Guido pretends to interpret the German into Italian, and with incredible humor, making it sound like the Nazi is explaining the rules of a big game that has as its prize a tank ( a toy which Giosué has always wanted). I don't have it word-for-word as it is scripted, but the scene is just great.

I love that film. There are too many great scenes to count. I especially like the love story at the beginning and the two scenes you mentioned.

I think I'll rent it this weekend.

InLove · 05-11-2005, 12:20 AM

Abogado,

Yes, I was discussing this with a friend yesterday, and we decided we were going to do the same thing. (It was actually on television today, but it was the English version, and it just seems to lose so much in English--some of the humor doesn't translate well.)

By the way, I made my usual typo/spelling goof--if anyone is looking for the film by its Italian title, it is "La Vita é Bella" (I left the "la" out before. But at least I remembered where I had stored my symbols this time.)

InPeace,
InLove