Thomas Mitchell was a great character actor; his best and most memorable performance, for me anyway, was the head of the family in The Fighting Sullivans. One scene is indelibly imprinted in my mind; I doubt there was a dry eye in the audience. View the video below from it's start, watch those 5 boys climb the water tower, along the tracks, the viewer expecting possible trouble, perhaps one falls off,....; their father was a brakeman on the railroad, in small-town Iowa. After the train passes the tower, skip ahead if you wish, to minute #8:00. Following is the scene of which I speak. The 5 Sullivan brothers, joining the Navy during WW-II, requested assignment together on the same ship, the USS Juneau, and they got it. Juneau was sunk by the Japanese on 13 Nov 1942, with the loss of 687 men, including the Sullivans. "USS The Sullivans (DD-537) is a Fletcher-classdestroyer. She is a United States Navy ship named in honor of the five Sullivan brothers (George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert) aged 20 to 27 who lost their lives when their ship, USS Juneau, was sunk by a Japanese submarine during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 13 November 1942. This was the greatest military loss by any one American family during World War II.[1] She was also the first ship commissioned in the Navy that honored more than one person." That scene moved me more than any other I've seen. The movie depicting their lives is "The Fighting Sullivans", released in 1944. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fighting_Sullivans Frank
Frank, when I first joined here, you mentioned this film. We downloaded the film and watched it It was everything you said it was, such a good movie and yes, very sad
Yeah, that's tough to watch. I lost my oldest uncle, Charlie, who was on his way to fight in Europe. He volunteered because he was too old for the draft, but he couldn't NOT go, after seeing all of his younger friends being drafted. Just after advance basic training he boarded the S.S Dorchester, which took the northern route to try to avoid the subs, who tended to guard the south Atlantic. Just after midnight, the ship was hit by a German U-boat torpedo. Many men had taken off their life jackets because of the heat from the steam room, and were asleep. Panic and confusion prevailed, and only a few over 200 were saved, with almost 700 lost at sea within a few minutes due to water temperature being 34 degrees. A sad tragedy.
I put a 'like' for your Uncle Charlie for his courage but not the sacrifice he made, may he be blessed always @Hugh Manely
The last few minutes of "Schindler's List". I don't think there was a dry eye coming out of that theater. I couldn't even talk.
Doctor Zhivago was a good one. It had it all - war, destitution, hunger, death, betrayal, unfaithful marriages. A passionate and sensitive doctor, also a poetry writer who is torn between his love for Lara (played by the stunning Julie Christie), and his wife Tonya, who is also his cousin, while caught in the midst of the Russian Civil War, and then WWI. Most of the scenes are shot with snow and frost all around so that it looks like ainter fairyland most of the time - that is, when people aren't trying to kill each other. But one of the most emotional scenes for me was (not exactly the end of the movie) when they had been together at the gardener's cottage, due to the main house being sealed and closed by the Communist. Due to circumstances (too complicated to cite), Lara has to leave for safety reasons, and Yuri (the doctor) was supposed to follow. As she leaves, a passenger on a horse sled carriage, he waves goodbye, but knows that he might not ever see her again. At that moment, his love for her overwhelms him so much that he runs up to the top floor with a window to get a view of her as she leaves. The window is too icy to see out of, so he find a metal stick beside the window and breaks it out, as he watches the carriage go off into the distance. We see his forlorn look of desperation of a lost love, as only Omar Sharif could do.
Can think of several, but scene from Steel Magnolias was good one. At the grave site when Sally Fields goes on rant claming she just wants to hit someone. Olivia Ducakis grabs Shirley McClain and says " here hit her"! Cried and laughter all at once.