The Greatest Motion Picture Sequences -- Part 4

The ending from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975) --- In this somber ending to Milos Forman's classic Oscar winning film, Randall McMurphy (played by Jack Nicholson) has just undergone a lobotomy (shock treatment) after having had raised complete hell in an insane asylum even though he really wasn't insane. The Chief, who had been so silent for so long, comprehended what had happened and kills McMurphy by holding a pillow over his head to end his suffering. And then he relieves his own by doing what no one else in the asylum could do but had figured out would be the only way out, thanks to McMurphy's help. He breaks the fountain off of the floor, and rams it through the windows and runs to freedom, to the cheers of the startled inmates. It's a somber yet hopeful ending to a classic film.

Janet Leigh shower scene from PSYCHO (1960) --- This sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's seminal horror film was unique for several reasons. It's one of the most well known film sequences in history, but why? To analyze it from a cinematic perspective, it was such a shift in the plot of the film to kill off a major character, Janet Leigh, midway through the film. Up until she arrives at the Bates Motel, the audience has been following a story of conspiracy and intrigue involving Janet Leigh and her escape with the money. But the film changes when she is killed in the shower to a story about Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, an apparent madman who talks to a dead mother and kills people on her behalf (or is the mother killing the people???!!) The sequence itself is unique also because of how it is shot -- amazingly enough, with all the cuts and views of the stabbing in the shower, the viewer never actually sees the knife puncture the skin (we only see it come close and we see blood collecting in the tub) and the viewer never sees any nudity, AND we never see the face of the killer. That was an incredible achievement of cinematography and editing to accomplish that, which all contributes to make the sequence more horrifying (once again, what we don't see is always more horrifying than pure gore). And plus it plays on one of our greatest fears in one of the places we feel safest and most secure

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