Fannish5: Top 5 reunion scenes
Mar. 21st, 2012 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakDifficult to limit oneself to five. Hmmmm, let's see.
1.) The Tramp and the Kid, in The Kid
It was this or the Tramp and the Flower Girl at the end if City Lights for Chaplin reunions, but The Kid wins for sheer unabashed shameless and completely working melodrama. Evil social services separate Our Heroes! Most heartrendering child performance ever! Tramp outwits police, reunites with kid! Best screen kiss ever! Doesn't matter how often I've watched this, it works on me every time. (Also, if you want background trivia, given Chaplin's gruesome childhood which included several times he and his brother Sydney ended up in orphanages despite having a living mother (who was, alas, mentally breaking down and not able to run after the cars taking them away the way the Tramp is), there are some obvious autobiographical overtones here, only with a happy ending.)
2.) Harry Lime and Holly Martins, in The Third Man
At this point, Holly, played by Joseph Cotten, has spent two thirds of the film finding out his supposedly dead friend Harry has been involved in all kinds of shady deals, and that there's something seriously iffy about the story how he died. If you watch this miraculously unspoiled and aren't wondering when Orson Welles will turn up, you might suspect Harry isn't really dead, but you can't be sure. And then, presto, in one of the justly most famous scenes (extra bonus for use of cat whom we previously heard only liked Harry), we get our reveal: Harry Lime's alive! What's the ice on the cake, though, and really makes the film, is that Harry, whom at this point both audience and Holly have learned wasn't some misunderstood good guy as Holly had hoped but a genuine bastard (and incidentally the villain of the tale), doesn't glare or twirl his non-existant moustache. No, instead, he smiles, and in this sole Orson Welles role he ever played without makeup (seriously, even the young Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane adds a fake nose and something to pull back the cheeks to Orson's natural look), not least because in terms of screen time, it's just a brief part and nobody bothered, including O.W., you get hit with the full blast of charming magnetism friends and foes alike ascribe to him.
3.) Tanya the madam and Hank Quinlan the corrupt sheriff, in Touch of Evil
I know, it's Orson Welles again, but he didn't direct The Third Man whereas he did direct (and write) this one. This time it's Marlene Dietrich having the cameo role with limited screentime but maximum emotional impact. (She did it as a favour to her old pal, for no salary.) What the Tanya scene here and a later one does is to give Quinlan, whom until this point we've seen being a racist bully in general and a ruthless bastard to Our Hero (Charlton Heston) in particular, another dimension. Not by negating what he's been established at but by adding, just in the way he and Dietrich's character interact, a long past. My favourite lines between them aren't in this clip anymore (when he asks her to read his future, she says "you haven't got any; you're future's all used up", which, well, it's hard not to call Wellesian perverseness given he wrote those lines and he knew damn well how Hollywood saw him), but the moment they meet already carries so much already.
4.) The (Tenth) Doctor and the Master in Utopia (season 3 of New Who)
Even Rusty haters tend to agree that the Return of the Master (last spotted being Eric Roberts as one of the truly embarrassing parts of the TV movie) to the Whoeverse was one of the standout sequences of the entire 40 plus years saga. Not least for Derek Jacobi's performance, going from kindly Professor Yana to the Master without any makeup changes whatsoever, just by the expression in his face. But also in the way it builds on a lot established in preceding episodes (meaning of the fobwatch, Face of Boe, the instinctive way Yana and the Doctor worked together in this episode), and, balancing something that RTD was really good at, manages to convey this Master person a) has an enormous history with the Doctor and b) is a ruthless killer for complete newbies without repeating info Old Who watchers would have been familiar with anyway in a very brief screentime. All that, and a treasure for trivia spotters (it's "recognise that soundclip from the previous Masters" time when Yana's memories start to come back, and Derek Jacobi's costume is very close to what the First Doctor wore; Simm!Master's "new teeth" matches the Tenth Doctor's reaction after regenerating from the Ninth, etc.).
...and that John Simm fellow at the end isn't half bad, either, which is something, coming after Derek Jacobi
5.) Blake and Avon in Blake, Blake's 7, season 4
Now how could I leave out the bloodiest, most fan-traumatizing genre reunion of them all? *veg* "Did you betray me?" "Aaaaavon". Again, there's a lot of build up; Avon spent two seasons being what he supposedly wanted, Blake-free, discovered he didn't like it at all, obsessively searched for The Man Who Went To The RSC and getting steadfastly more paranoid. And in this episode, first time viewers could assume Blake really had gone bad until the reveal it had been a test (with Blake having gone as paranoid off screen as Avon did on screen), and no sooner do we learn that that it's time for the big fan trauma that left certain future tv headwriters starry-eyed. Trivia: according to both actors, Gareth Thomas teased Paul Darrow by whispering Nelson's dying words - "Kiss me, Hardy" as a dying Blake grasps Avon and slides down.
1.) The Tramp and the Kid, in The Kid
It was this or the Tramp and the Flower Girl at the end if City Lights for Chaplin reunions, but The Kid wins for sheer unabashed shameless and completely working melodrama. Evil social services separate Our Heroes! Most heartrendering child performance ever! Tramp outwits police, reunites with kid! Best screen kiss ever! Doesn't matter how often I've watched this, it works on me every time. (Also, if you want background trivia, given Chaplin's gruesome childhood which included several times he and his brother Sydney ended up in orphanages despite having a living mother (who was, alas, mentally breaking down and not able to run after the cars taking them away the way the Tramp is), there are some obvious autobiographical overtones here, only with a happy ending.)
2.) Harry Lime and Holly Martins, in The Third Man
At this point, Holly, played by Joseph Cotten, has spent two thirds of the film finding out his supposedly dead friend Harry has been involved in all kinds of shady deals, and that there's something seriously iffy about the story how he died. If you watch this miraculously unspoiled and aren't wondering when Orson Welles will turn up, you might suspect Harry isn't really dead, but you can't be sure. And then, presto, in one of the justly most famous scenes (extra bonus for use of cat whom we previously heard only liked Harry), we get our reveal: Harry Lime's alive! What's the ice on the cake, though, and really makes the film, is that Harry, whom at this point both audience and Holly have learned wasn't some misunderstood good guy as Holly had hoped but a genuine bastard (and incidentally the villain of the tale), doesn't glare or twirl his non-existant moustache. No, instead, he smiles, and in this sole Orson Welles role he ever played without makeup (seriously, even the young Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane adds a fake nose and something to pull back the cheeks to Orson's natural look), not least because in terms of screen time, it's just a brief part and nobody bothered, including O.W., you get hit with the full blast of charming magnetism friends and foes alike ascribe to him.
3.) Tanya the madam and Hank Quinlan the corrupt sheriff, in Touch of Evil
I know, it's Orson Welles again, but he didn't direct The Third Man whereas he did direct (and write) this one. This time it's Marlene Dietrich having the cameo role with limited screentime but maximum emotional impact. (She did it as a favour to her old pal, for no salary.) What the Tanya scene here and a later one does is to give Quinlan, whom until this point we've seen being a racist bully in general and a ruthless bastard to Our Hero (Charlton Heston) in particular, another dimension. Not by negating what he's been established at but by adding, just in the way he and Dietrich's character interact, a long past. My favourite lines between them aren't in this clip anymore (when he asks her to read his future, she says "you haven't got any; you're future's all used up", which, well, it's hard not to call Wellesian perverseness given he wrote those lines and he knew damn well how Hollywood saw him), but the moment they meet already carries so much already.
4.) The (Tenth) Doctor and the Master in Utopia (season 3 of New Who)
Even Rusty haters tend to agree that the Return of the Master (last spotted being Eric Roberts as one of the truly embarrassing parts of the TV movie) to the Whoeverse was one of the standout sequences of the entire 40 plus years saga. Not least for Derek Jacobi's performance, going from kindly Professor Yana to the Master without any makeup changes whatsoever, just by the expression in his face. But also in the way it builds on a lot established in preceding episodes (meaning of the fobwatch, Face of Boe, the instinctive way Yana and the Doctor worked together in this episode), and, balancing something that RTD was really good at, manages to convey this Master person a) has an enormous history with the Doctor and b) is a ruthless killer for complete newbies without repeating info Old Who watchers would have been familiar with anyway in a very brief screentime. All that, and a treasure for trivia spotters (it's "recognise that soundclip from the previous Masters" time when Yana's memories start to come back, and Derek Jacobi's costume is very close to what the First Doctor wore; Simm!Master's "new teeth" matches the Tenth Doctor's reaction after regenerating from the Ninth, etc.).
...and that John Simm fellow at the end isn't half bad, either, which is something, coming after Derek Jacobi
5.) Blake and Avon in Blake, Blake's 7, season 4
Now how could I leave out the bloodiest, most fan-traumatizing genre reunion of them all? *veg* "Did you betray me?" "Aaaaavon". Again, there's a lot of build up; Avon spent two seasons being what he supposedly wanted, Blake-free, discovered he didn't like it at all, obsessively searched for The Man Who Went To The RSC and getting steadfastly more paranoid. And in this episode, first time viewers could assume Blake really had gone bad until the reveal it had been a test (with Blake having gone as paranoid off screen as Avon did on screen), and no sooner do we learn that that it's time for the big fan trauma that left certain future tv headwriters starry-eyed. Trivia: according to both actors, Gareth Thomas teased Paul Darrow by whispering Nelson's dying words - "Kiss me, Hardy" as a dying Blake grasps Avon and slides down.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-22 09:59 am (UTC)