Best shot ever.

[Bored Of Education]

If push came to shove, I would probably have said the opening scene from Star Wars would have been it but this has just beaten it.

Has anyone seen the whole film?

[ursus arctos]

Best shot ever.

If it is as good as your link is bad, then the title is richly deserved.

[Diable Rouge]

Best shot ever.

Bored of Education wrote:

If push came to shove, I would probably have said the opening scene from Star Wars would have been it but Bored of Education wrote: That is an appalling appalling list. Yeah, I mean I'm all for not]this has just beaten it.

Has anyone seen the whole film?

Yes, never managed to see The Godfather in its entirety though, usually give up after the first half hour.

[Ek weet nie]

Best shot ever.

The opening shot of Silent Light would come close for me.

[matt j]

Best shot ever.

The best shot from any movie ever, is the first shot of Omar Sharif riding out of the desert in Lawrence of Arabia.

[Bored Of Education]

Best shot ever.

I have now fixed the link but am impressed by the way the debate can carry on without it.

Here is a lesser quality version with the original music

[mafu]

Best shot ever.

I thought it might be this. Not seen the whole film, no. There's another shot where the camera descends from a party on a roof and then into a swimming pool.

[erwin]

Best shot ever.

With far more complex choreography and tension, there's the Touch of Evil opener ...

[Bored Of Education]

Best shot ever.

I love the "Touch of Evil" one and, indeed, that was the one I was searching for when I found the "I am Cuba" one.

What set the Cuban one apart for me was that I have always assumed that the ToE one was shot on a studio lot whereas the Cuban one is fairly obviously shot on location.

Apparently, the Cuban one involved a cameraman being passed along by a load of studio hands with hooks on his back so that he could be suspended for some of the sections whereas I am assuming the ToE one had a crane on a track

[Renart]

Best shot ever.

I saw this movie when I was in college. The cinematography is beautiful—stunningly so—but as you might suspect from a Soviet-financed movie about Cuba, the "message" is a bit heavy-handed.

There's a scene with Russian actors pretending to be U.S. sailors that's unintentionally hilarious.

[Bored Of Education]

Best shot ever.

I don't care really about the story. Any film that shows how beautiful Havana is like that is worth having. Actually, the nice thing is that Havana is still like that.

[Renart]

Best shot ever.

Yes, this is one movie I'd say is beautiful enough that the story doesn't matter much at all. (And anyway, I'm fairly sympathetic to the movie's politics.)

As for other movies, I love the opening scene in 8 1/2, with Mastroianni trapped in his car in a tunnel traffic jam and then crawling out through the roof and flying away.

[Incandenza]

Best shot ever.

Touch of Evil opening shot

The Searchers final shot

From Sunrise, 3:34 in. All the more impressive for being from 1927.

[evilC]

Best shot ever.

Oh my god!

There's so, so many!

Still, moving, black & white, colour, tracking, steadicam, panoramic, close-up. I could name several examples of each - and others - that I haven't, as yet, in this tipsy moment, thought of.

However, even without initially looking at the link in the very first post of this thread (which I have since done) there was one that sprang to mind that is actually closely related to it:

The opening scene from 'La Ronde' by Max Ophuls - made all the more (technically) remarkable by the fact that this was made in 1950.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Best shot ever.

Yeah, Touch of Evil for me, at least as far as tracking shots go. Scorsese mimicked it in New York, New York as a kind of hommage I think. It's also pretty nifty. Other possibilities: I've always loved the opening scene of Bonnie and Clyde as the naked and horny Faye Dunaway stares at Warren Beatty from her bedroom window as he steals her Mama's car. A couple or three... or four Hitchcocks are worth mentioning. Rope because the entire movie is one shot (take) which, technically at any rate, is pretty ballsy. The cropduster scene from North by Northwest. Sabotage is full of great shots, not least the famous bus explosion. Then there's the "glass of milk" scene in Suspicion, and on and on...

[Nefertiti2]

Best shot ever.

What constitutes a great shot, let alone "the best shot ever". There are the technological "tours de force", many of which have been mentioned here where the camera moves all over the shot. We could add the tracks-and zoom in Vertigo. Or the shot in Grand Central Station as time changes in Once Upon in America.

Then there are masterpieces of mise-en-scene, like the long shot in the metro in Haneke's Code Inconnu where the frame never changes and yet the way action moves around the carriage means that it is always pushed and extended, hiding something and threatening something as well as showing something. The performance and timing is extraordinary and reveals, better than anything what a director can do. There is another wonderful foreground and background shot in Time of the Wolf by the same director.

Helicopters in Apocalypse Now or For shots alone some of the tracking shots in One from the Heart.

Visconti is great too - there's a fantastic shot in Rocco and his Brothers after the fight between Rocco and Simone. And Lancaster pacing in The Leopard.

I'm very fond of the opening tracking shock of The Clock by Vincente Minnelli and the scene on the escalator where she loses her heel. a ballet of the city

[Ek weet nie]

Best shot ever.

As Clive mentions, Max Ophuls bosses the tracking shots. The stairway shots in Letter from an Unknown Woman and the dance sequences in Madame de... are breathtaking. All the more amazing when you realise that in many cases he managed to do it with a camera the size of a small car.

Sunrise is in my personal Top 10. The late silent era was a golden age for inventive camera shots because camera manufacturing had come on leaps and bounds, the camera was now relatively lightweight and flexible. The advent of sound brought back bulky cameras and static scenes because of the difficulty of recording (yes, my knowledge does mostly come from Singing in the Rain). It wouldn't be until the late forties before the same flow of camera movement could be obtained by the equipment.

[evilC]

Best shot ever.

Yeah, I think that (as with music, in my case too) technical virtuosity is meaningless on its own, though. A shot - of whatever kind - has to project some of the emotion or intended atmosphere of a film. Hence why 'La Ronde' sprang to mind. Strange, Ek weet nie - I nearly mentioned 'Letter From An Unknown Woman', too. I also nearly cited the 'swings' scene from Kurosawa's 'Ikiru' last night, but when I re-watched it, I remembered that that is actually 2 shots, so it doesn't really count. I guess most people are crying too much to notice by then, though.

I think that for 'radiance', black & white usually wins hands down. I guess that's almost 'accepted wisdom' these days. I suppose that's why people such as Coppola with 'Rumble Fish' or Marker with 'La Jetee' latterly chose it. Each of those two films have some beautiful shots/frames.

However, colour isn't without its champions, too, of course. Fassbinder ('Querelle'), Wenders ('Paris, Texas'), Wolfgang Petersen ('Das Boot') and take your pick from the fims of Jeunet & Caro, Ang Lee, Greenaway, Almodovar, del Toro, Herzog and Lynch. (Check out this incredible opening shot from Twin Peaks. That's always haunted me.) But the one film which trumps them all, IMHO, is Sokurov's 'Mat i Syn' ('Mother and Son'), where almost every single frame is like a painting. It's extraordinary, but it does, of course probably cross the line into 'art house' cinema. A sad perception, really, as it means most people won't see it due to that tagging.

Other random shots worth mentioning: 'A Matter Of Life And Death' (again, take your pick from wihin that film) and the ballroom scene from Maurice Elvey's 1927 'Hindle Wakes'. That film is worth seeing in its entirety as it has perhaps the most unexpected plot twist I've ever seen in a film. But the ballroom scene was a real eye-opener for me, too. I simply hadn't realised that they could be such chaotic places!

I'm sure I'll remember more, but I've probably already hogged this thread enough with just this post.

[Ek weet nie]

Best shot ever.

Nonsense, that's a wonderful post, keep them coming!

[evilC]

Best shot ever.

Oh yeah - there's one film I have to ask about, since I don't know its name. In fact, I never even saw it in its entirety. (It was one of theose films where I was still living at home with my parents and got in late from the pub one night, turned on Channel 4 and found it. I think I fell asleep or went to bed before I'd seen much of it, though.)

I think it was a Scandinavian film, or at least set somewhere in (a relatively barren part of) Scandinavia. Anyway, the important part is that this scene - which I think was the opening scene - seemed to be shot from the underside of an aircraft (although with no aircraft noise) that was speeding towards a rugged coastline. The shot - without cutting or pausing in any way - swept up from the sea, over these cliffs, up a hillside toward a small croft or stone cottage, in through the open window, through a room or two and alighted slowly on the face of one of the main characters, all beautifully lit in rough auburns. Like I said, all seemingly in one seamless shot, and yet with perfect lighting and tracking the whole way.

Now, if that shot is indeed as flawless as I seem to remember it, then that would have to be my ultimate 'best shot'. However, I don't even know the title of the film, so I can't even recommend it properly! I'd of course love to watch it in its entirety at last, too.

Help, OTF hive mind!!!

[jason voorhees]

Best shot ever.

Sorry ev c, only seen Bergman and the original Inception. And most of Lars Von Trier, if that's really Scandinavian.

Massive thanks to Inca and Ev for listing Sunrise, saving me an hour of typing.

In terms of memorable, many character introductions are great, such as Third Man or John Wayne in Stagecoach, or the glass of water vibrating in Jurassic Park. (Or technically, Keyser Soze's introduction in Usual Suspects.)

As far as well-lit, the Exorcist was packed with them, from Father Merrin's looking at the window in nighttime, to the first head-spin that was in a beautiful sun-lit bedroom.

The Shining was also packed with them. Hell, everything by Kubrick was all about the shot.

But my favorite shot of the past decade was the younger brother on top of the platform in The Return. It's great because it introduces him as one way, and he becomes quite different. 3:38 in the opening scene.

[De Geas Clean Linen]

Best shot ever.

- The opening shot of Blade Runner (the refinery)

- The Osaka fly-by in Black Rain

- Anything Michael Mann does with helicopters...

[West End Zuma]

Best shot ever.

The best shot ever was the one where Robin Hood splits the arrow he just put in the dead center of the target with another arrow in the dead center of the target.

[gt3]

Best shot ever.

William Holden (**********spoiler********his dead body) floating face down in the swimming pool, the camera beneath him, looking upwards in "Sunset Boulevard" is pretty cool.

Lots of shots in "Citizen Kane" might qualify as well.That deep focus one at the opera, which is referenced by De Palma in "The Untouchables" being one that springs to mind.

[Uncle Ethan]

Best shot ever.

It is not terribly technical, but the shot of the head rolling out of the boat in Jaws was rather effective.

The opening shot of The Searchers says an enormous amount with very few words.