10 top golden moments of cinema history

With the Oscars just around the corner, we relive some of the great moments in cinema.

It’s one of the greatest jobs in the world, being a film director.

You have an idea of how the movie should look and sound, you get the Hollywood bosses to fund it to the tune of millions, and eventually there it is on the big screen.

The audience gasp, hide behind their hands or roar with laughter, or applaud you for the spectacular scene. Suddenly, all that hard work and expense was worth it.

Well, that’s how directors would like all their movies to be, anyhow.

Sadly, only a few manage to come up with scenes so stunning, so terrifying or so awesome, that they become iconic, talked about for years.

This week, we select 10 of our favourite Cinema Iconic Moments, highlighting some of the scenes that have been unforgettable since the first time they blasted out of a big screen.

Some are just memorable phrases, others are the kind of thing you’d never see in real life, but each and every one has been ingrained in our minds since we first saw it.

1. KING KONG (1933)

When King Kong stood atop the Empire State Building, with the petrified Fay Wray in his paw, audiences hoped he didn’t clutch her as tightly as they were clutching their cinema seats.

Over 80 years old, you can still suspend your disbelief and love this marvellous flick, so just imagine how incredible it was in 1933!

Sadly, of course, the gigantic prehistoric ape perishes in his attempt to possess Wray, one of the first so-called Scream Queens.

However, when you see the way he plucks an aeroplane out of the sky and swings it about, too, while wreaking havoc on New York, you realise Kong had to be stopped.

What has never stopped, however, is fans’ love of this wonderful, mad classic film.

2. ALIEN (1979)

There was no way we could avoid some horror in this Top 10, and few cinema moments have caused alarm quite like the scariest moment in this one.

Sure, that space monster thingy creeping around the spaceship is pretty unnerving, to say the least, but when an alien parasite burst out of a character’s chest, we all screamed.

The crew had been on an arduous mission, before sitting down for some grub, and then just want to go to sleep while their craft takes them back to Earth.

Their uninvited guest has other ideas, though.

3. THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955)

When someone paid £3 million for the dress Marilyn Monroe wore in this one, it was a wise investment.

Why? Because it is probably the thing that made MM a megastar, and the scene where it really stole the show is often voted the most erotic cinema moment of all time.

So that dress will keep going up pardon the pun in value!

Marilyn, of course, looks all surprised when she happens to stand over a subway grate and the wind blows her dress up, revealing the legs we all dreamed she had.

We’re willing to bet all the Angelina Jolies on Earth couldn’t conjure up such a moment today!

4. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)

It was only a matter of time before the words Alfred and Hitchcock popped up in this Top 10, and Hitch could easily have made it for The Birds or several other classics.

In this one, though, it’s the sight of Cary Grant racing across fields, with a swooping plane in hot pursuit.

This film is 55 years old now, and Tinseltown experts would still struggle to capture it quite like Hitch did.

They reckon the scene is given its power because the pilot can’t be seen, and Grant is dressed so elegantly for a terrifying chase. We reckon it just looks brilliant because it is.

Hail Hitch!

5. GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

They took two years to get Clark Gable for his role, and auditioned 1,400 actresses before choosing Vivien Leigh for hers, so they were bound to be good together.

However, for all their dramatics and great acting, it was one tiny little word in a tiny little sentence that gave this classic flick its iconic cinema moment.

When Rhett Butler cut Scarlett O’Hara to the quick with his “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” audiences fell off their seats.

The original book, by Margaret Mitchell, had dared to use the dreadful D word, but it was almost changed for the final cut of the movie.

In the end, that guttermouth Gable was allowed to utter it, and a timeless piece of cinema was born.

6. THE GODFATHER (1972)

All three Godfather movies have power-packed moments, but when Marlon Brando breathes his last at the close of this first one, it’s right up there.

Brando had caused visible alarm with the toddler playing beside him, improvising and putting a fruit peel in his mouth, something that definitely wasn’t in the script.

However, it’s when his character, Vito Corleone, collapses and dies in the garden, with grandson Anthony innocently skipping around, that he truly steals the show.

One of the most power-packed films of all time outdid itself with the death of the Don.

7. PSYCHO (1960)

We knew that Hitch guy would make another appearance, and if you can’t guess which room of the house this one is in, you don’t like movies!

No one who saw this in the 60s has been able to relax in the shower quite like they did before it, but the famous scene wasn’t simple to shoot.

Janet Leigh, apparently, struggled to keep her eyes wide open with the water splashing onto her face, and they had to redo it several times.

The shadowy figure on the other side of the curtains, knife in the air but silhouetted, created a real classic terror moment.

Strange to say that the actress was pestered for many years afterwards, with threatening phone calls and letters from lots of shadowy strangers out there.

8. APOCALYPSE NOW (1979)

Voted the single best combat scene in cinema, ever, we can’t argue with the experts about the Flight of the Valkyries, as it’s become known.

The 12-minute centrepiece of an epic movie about the Vietnam War, Francis Ford Coppola’s dream was to have a formation of helicopters appear over the horizon, going to war to the music of Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries.

Problem was, American leaders didn’t like the script and refused to let him use US choppers, so he turned to controversial President Marcos of the Philippines.

Promptly, Marcos’s Huey helicopters arrived, and the director got his sensational scenes.

A real veteran who was flown in to tell Coppola if the scenes were realistic was moved to tears.

9. PLANET OF THE APES (1968)

More apes and famous buildings!

King Kong had been hard to miss, and perhaps it was the inspiration behind an amazingly-iconic scene in this one.

When the top half of the Statue of Liberty appears on a deserted beach, breaking through the sand, the human stars of the film have just escaped at last from those power-crazy apes.

It finally dawns on them that they’re not on another planet, but on a post-apocalypse Earth.

If it sounds a bit corny, it’s an astounding scene, to rival those moments in King Kong 35 years earlier.

10. CASABLANCA (1942)

Like Mr Butler in his damn movie, Mr Bogart merely utters a few words and the world sighs.

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” Rick Blane tells Ilsa Lund, knowing he has to go on and do manly, heroic stuff where a beautiful lady just wouldn’t fit in.

Ingrid Bergman, of course, was Ilsa, and the pair of them had brilliant chemistry.

Bogart’s line here, though, is still sure to make many a cinemagoer’s eyes weep.

Amazing, to think she was taller than him, and he had to stand on blocks. But it was still another unforgettable iconic cinema moment.