Memorable Movie Moments

The first is no doubt the Odessa steps sequence from Eisenstein's "The Battleship Potemkin", where a perambulator, hurtling down the steps uncontrollably, with a baby inside, climaxes the horror when a group of Cossaks charge a rebellious mob.

Hitchcock's "The Young & Innocent" (now available colorised) based on Josephine Tey's "A Shilling for Candles" featured an astonishing crane shot, tracking in from a distance of 145 feet across a crowded ballroom to within 4 inches of the twitching eye of a black-faced drummer.

Satyajit Ray's "Aparajito" featured a scene, where Apu's father, near death, gulps the holy water of the Ganges, fed by Apu, & drops down dead. Before his head touches the pillow, there is a sudden cut to the birds suddenly flying away from the banks of the Ganga. There was a spontaneous ovation from the audience at this point at the Venice Film Festival, where the film went on to win the Golden Lion.

In Stanley Kubrick's "2001 - A Space Odyssey", a group of primates, hunting, hurl a piece of bone into the air, where it dissolves into a spacecraft hurtling through space. This audacious dissolve condenses millions of years of human history into one sequence.