The last 15 minutes of Lodge Kerrigan’s “Keane.”
Anna Karina watching La Passion on Vivre sa Vie.
Junebug- The hospital scene where Amy Adams [Spoiler] tries to understand why she lost her baby. One of the best performances ever.
^Yes. Powerful scene. Well written and executed to perfection.
You’ve Got Mail?
How could you miss this one??? Hanks delivers one of the best moments in cinematic history.
“What if you weren’t the little shop around the corner and I wasn’t Fox’s books. I would’ve asked for your number and we would have gotten a bite to eat and seen a movie and drank Starbucks…FOR AS LONG AS WE BOTH SHALL LIVE. Why can’t you forgive me…(and best delivered line:) Oh, how I wish you would.”
What a damn tear jerker. And then he comes around the corner with his goofy dog and flowers and Somewhere Over the Rainbow is playing and he meets her at a fountain and the tears just come. It’s beautiful.
I was in bad shape during The Color Purple. Laughing one minute and crying the next.
YOU’VE GOT MAIL? Seriously? No, go with the original THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER for emotional power.
I agree with everyone on BICYCLE THIEVES, UMBERTO D, MIRROR, SANSHO THE BAILIFF, SECRET SUNSHINE, TOKYO STORY, TOY STORY 3, and THE WORLD OF APU.
I’ll add:
RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY: Steve Judd enters his house justified
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: HAL 9000’s death. How can Kubrick make killing a homicidal computer that emotionally powerful?
THE CAMERAMAN: Buster saves Sally but Harold takes credit for it. Then Sally finds out the truth while watching Buster’s newsreel
CASABLANCA: The ending and the “La Marseillaise” scene
CHUNGKING EXPRESS: Faye watches Cop 663 take a sip, perhaps the most romantic shot of unrequited love in all of cinema
HEAVENLY CREATURES: The murder set to Madame Butterfly
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR: Most of the movie
THE RED AND THE WHITE: The final march to the soldiers’ final battle
MIRACLE IN MILAN: Toto gives Edvige the moon
COME AND SEE: The look back, one of the most shocking cuts in movie history
TALK TO HER: “The Shrinking Lover” as a metaphor for Benigno’s love/lust, the ending with Marco seeing Alicia at a dance performance and cutting to “Marco y Alicia”, and Caetano Veloso singing “Cucurrucucú paloma”
That guy who collects the teeth of the Japanese in The Thin Red Line: the scene where he later cries in the rain – tears in the rain – and lets the teeth drop onto the mud.
The final 20 minutes of Dancer in the Dark devastated me. (Bjork’s performance and Von Trier’s direction)
Seeing the women in Pussy Riot having to return to prison.
The scene in Come and See when he shoots at the picture of Hitler and newsreel footage is shown backwards.
The famous scene from Paris, Texas in which we find out what the entire movie was about.
Rashomon. It won’t move you to tears but it was quite moving.
The final scene in La Strada.
The final scene in Late Spring.
The Bicycle Thief
Umberto D.
Sansho The Bailiff
Tokyo Story
Ikiru
Seven Samurai
The “Big Three” of the Japanese Golden Age are the most moving filmmakers, the neorealist directors are the filmmakers that will move you to tears.
@Hmgurny
Oh shoot, I forgot about La Strada. Nice.
Antoine going to jail on the paddy, and the opening credits. Kills me.
Someone mentioned in Fanny & Alexander where they go up at night hearing their mother scream hysterically. Gets me every time.
The climax in Autumn Sonata, if you could speak of such a thing in that film…
The scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when James Stewart has lost all that money and comes up to his family devastated, angry and annoyed but then “gives up” and embraces one of his kids in desperation.
In Elephant Man when he first meets Hopkin’s wife in the film and when she treats him so nice and he’s stunned – she asks him what it is and he replies that he hasn’t encountered such friendliness before.
I’m pretty good at not crying though, I can’t remember if I’ve ever cried to a film but these moments listed usually gets me teary eyed.
I agree with those mentioning the ending of Umberto D. It’s embarrassing, but anything involving animals, particularly dogs, gets me. Also:
-when Genevieve and Guy see each other for the first time after all those years at the ending of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg gives me goosebumps. Then when the camera rises up high over the gas station while the snow blazes and the music goes into full strenght always makes me a little teary.
- this doesn’t make me cry, but Belle entering the castle in Cocteau’s The Beauty and The Beast is very moving. To me the most beautiful use of slow motion ever.
- the kid burying his little sister in Grave of the Fireflies. And everything that comes before that scene!
Nikhil Jayakrishnan
Not tearjerkers, but these scenes do affect me in some way.
The Circus- The final scene when the Circus troupe leaves including Merna, the tramp’s crush, and her husband. The extreme long shot showing the tramp all alone in the circus ring, looking very contemplative, brings a lump to my throat.
Rashomon- The priest and the woodcutter are alone, on a rainy day, the priest holding an abandoned baby in his arms. The woodcutter pleads that he has six children of his own and having another one wouldn’t make much of a difference. After more than an hour of bleak discussion over human nature, this concluding scene restores one’s hopes in humanity.
Late Spring- The scene towards the ending when the father has married his daughter away and he is all alone in his room, peeling an apple.