Memorable Movie Beginnings and Endings

One of the keys to good writing is to hook the reader from the very start. A competent writer, especially a writer of fiction, will begin his or her story in such a way that the reader wants to continue - your interest has been piqued, and you want more.

This idea also applies to the ending of a story. The ending should leave the reader completely satisfied, and it should generate a "wow" factor from the reader. A good writer will strive to end with a figurative bang. It might be a loud bang, or it might be a barely audible bang, but a bang nonetheless.

These rules, of course, apply to the art of movie making as well. Directors, writers, actors, etc. are telling a story on the screen. A good film maker wants to draw the audience in from the very start, and wants to leave the audience completely satisfied as the credits begin to roll. This hub is dedicated to those movies that best did exactly that. I am offering my selection of the 10 best movie beginnings, and the ten best movie endings. These choices are in no particular order. I am sure there will be some debate about my lists, but I hope you enjoy the hub nevertheless!

10 BEST MOVIE BEGINNINGS

1. The Sound of Music - Maria twirling on a hilltop in the Austrian Alps, Rodgers and Hammerstein's music beginning to crescendo, helicopter camera shot zooming in, and Julie Andrews angelic voice breaking into song with "The hills are alive with the sound of music". Sets up the character of Maria perfectly, and lets the viewer know that this film was shot on location, not on a Hollywood sound stage. Beautifully shot!

2. Star Trek - This reboot by J.J. Abrams was a really good movie that even non-Star Trek fans could enjoy. I had my doubts about this movie before my first viewing, but those doubts were put to rest after the first 20 minutes. Abrams not only sets up the plot for the movie, but he ingeniously gives us the extraordinary circumstances of the birth of James T. Kirk in the process. I have to believe that for Trekkies, this is one of the two or three best moments in Star Trek film history.

3. Jaws - A seemingly innocent start with a young couple meeting at a beach party, then going for a little moon light swim. He passes out on the beach in a drunken stupor just before she is ripped to pieces by a shark! What makes the scene so memorable is the fact that you never see the shark at all, only actress Susan Backlinie moving through the water at an inhuman speed while issuing blood curdling screams. It gets the audience on the edge of their seat where they will remain until the end.

4. Pulp Fiction - There are many aspects to this movie that make it a modern day classic, not the least of which is Tarantino's clever beginning that will seemingly have nothing to do with the rest of the story...until the end. Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honeybunny (Amanda Plummer) have a hilarious conversation about bank robbing while having breakfast in a local coffee shop. The scene ends when to the two of them decide to rob the coffee shop and all the customers in it after a romantic kiss across the table. We don't find out what happens next until the final ten minutes of the movie. Genius!

5. The Godfather - "I believe in America." A great first line that sets the stage for the whole Godfather trilogy. The famous opening monologue is spoken by a humble Italian-American undertaker as he asks Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) for a favor on "this, the day of his daughter's wedding." The scene plays out with the Don agreeing to help the man extract a measure of vengeance against some thugs who raped and beat his daughter. More importantly, the scene tells us everything we need to know about Don Corleone and the inner workings of a mafia family.

6. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - The opening scene of the final installment of Peter Jackson's opus lets the viewer know that they are headed down a dark path with the characters. It begins with an almost Disney-ish feel with two Huckleberry looking Hobbits fishing in a picturesque pond. However, we soon realize that one of these Hobbits is Smeagol as we witness his discovery of the Ring. We watch in the first ten minutes of this movie the dark power this ring has as Smeagol strangles his friend in cold blood and begins to take the first steps towards his transformation into Gollum. Andy Serkis is fantastic in this scene!

7. Contact - Robert Zemeckis perfectly sets up the premise of the story by giving the audience a sense of wonder and awe about our place in the universe with the opening scene. In a clever bit of film making and special effects, the camera starts on Earth and begins a pull back past the moon, Mars, the entire solar system, out of the Milky Way, through the vast universe, until it finally stops as we see it coming out of the eye of Ellie Arroway (Jena Malone). Having the expanses of the universe end with Ellie's eye also gives the audience a perfect segway into this pivotal character as well. A really well made, stunning opening to the movie.

8. Scream - The freshness and cleverness of the original Scream has been somewhat tainted by all the subsequent sequels and rip-offs. But upon first viewing, I remember this movie to be a great addition to the horror genre. Wes Craven dramatically sets the movie up in the opening sequence with a teenage girl (Drew Barrymore) being harassed over the phone by a menacing individual with a love for horror movies. The scene plays out with terrifying and in-your-face results, and introduces the audience to the serial killing antagonist of the film. A case could have been made for a Supporting Actress nomination for Drew Barrymore for this scene - a long shot, I know, but some consideration at least.

9. Saturday Night Fever - One of the most iconic movie openings of all-time! John Travolta walking down the sidewalks of Brooklyn to the tune of the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive", the camera focusing on his feet. Travolta's walk tells us much about his character here - cocky and macho. The song echos those characteristics as well. The audience knows at once that they will be entertained by an incredibly interesting leading man and one of the best soundtracks to hit the movies since The Graduate.

10. Raiders of the Lost Ark - The single greatest start to a movie in Hollywood history! The opening 20 minutes tells us everything we need to know about the movie and its protagonist. Steven Spielberg sets us off an a roller coaster ride filled with thrills and spills that doesn't end until the final credits. There are more nail biting moments in the first 20 minutes of this film than you find in most two hour long action movies. Most importantly, the audience meets Indiana Jones, a throw back, swashbuckling type of movie hero. After the opening sequence the audience is willing to go anywhere and do anything with this professor and archaeologist who happens to be deathly afraid of snakes!

10 BEST MOVIE ENDINGS

1. The Birds - This is one of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies! It doesn't have the complexity of some of his other greats, nor does it have his best batch of characters as some of his other movies. But The Birds is the closest Hitchcock ever came to science fiction. As with most of his movies, suspense slowly builds until a chilling climax. In this case, the final scene shows Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, and Veronica Cartwright making an eerily quiet escape down the road as the entire town is engulfed by perching birds. I love that Hitchcock never explains why the birds attacked, and I love that we never really know what happens after the fact.

2. Blazing Saddles - This was Mel Brooks at the top of his game! A hilarious, irreverent spoof of Hollywood westerns with Cleavon Little playing the first Black sheriff of a western town and Gene Wilder as a washed up gunslinger, and the sheriff's deputy. The good guys vs. bad guys climax turns into absolute farce as the characters/actors break the fourth wall, and the chase continues through the backlots of a Hollywood studio. This was a perfect ending to a Mel Brooks classic!

3. Carrie - One of the first adaptions of a Stephen King novel, and one of the best! Sissy Spacek was Oscar nominated for playing the title role, as was Piper Laurie for playing her deranged mother. The final scene has Sue (Amy Irving) approaching Carrie's grave. As she bends down to lay flowers on it...up comes a hand out of the grave and grabs hold of a terrified Sue! This jump-out-of-your-seat finale has been copied so many times that we now forget how original and frightening it was when this movie first came out.

4. Thelma & Louise - A great female buddy road trip movie! Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis both earned Oscar nods for playing friends who decide to leave the humdrum exsistence of their lives behind and go on an uncharted journey across the southwest. Their experience turns into a run from the law when they shoot a rapist. The law catches up to them at the end and they decide to drive their car over a cliff and into a canyon rather than be caught, or be forced back into the lives they had left behind. The camera freeze frames just as the car goes over the cliff. Very memorable and dramatic, and often imitated including the Rob Zombie great The Devil's Rejects.

5. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - This was one of only three movies in Oscar history to win all of the "Big Five" Oscars (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Screenplay). This movie was adapted from a stage play based on the Ken Kesey novel, and starred Jack Nicholson as Randall McMurphy. McMurphy's interaction with his fellow inmates in a mental ward causes friction with the head nurse, played by Louise Fletcher. A continuous battle of wills is eventually won by Nurse Ratched with tragic consequences for McMurphy, as he is labotomized in the end. The final scene involves Chief (Will Sampson), a near mute inmate who was befriended by McMurphy, tearing the bathroom sink out and throwing in through the window in order to escape. This final act of rebellion from the unlikeliest of people gives the audience an emotional swell of hope that McMurphywasn't lobotomized in vain.

6. Places in the Heart - This is a rather routine story of "single mother struggles against all odds to succeed" that is raised to extraordinary levels by the outstanding acting by all the principles including Sally Field (Oscar winner), John Malkovich (Oscar nominated), Danny Glover, Lindsay Crouse (Oscar nominated), Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, and Terry O'Quinn. As straight forward as this movie is, the ending is incredibly abstract and thought provoking. The final scene takes place in a Protestant church during the distribution of Communion. The camera focuses on each individual character receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, including at the end, two characters that had died at the beginning of the film (a white man and a black man). This final scene lends a great deal of weight to the entire story and makes you rethink the deeper meaning behind the simple plot.

7. Schindler's List - Perhaps no movie has ever had an ending with such an authentically emotional punch. Schindler's List is Steven Spielberg's masterpiece about the atrocities of the Holocaust, focusing on Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German businessman and Nazi party member, who eventually helps to save a few thousand Polish Jews from certain death. The very end of the movie shows a silent procession of the surviving "Schindler Jews" escorted by the actors who portrayed them in the movie walking by the grave of Oskar Schindler and laying a stone on it. The audience is left with a moving tribute to Schindler, and a reminder that what that had just scene on the screen was based on reality.

8. Some Like It Hot - This is the Billy Wilder classic and one of the great comedies of all time! The plot revolves around Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as two musicians who witness a gangland murder and hide out in an all-girl band, posing as women themselves. During the course of the movie, Jack Lemmon's character is pursued by an older bachelor played hilariously by Joe E. Brown. In the final scene Brown proposes to Lemmon with Lemmon trying to give him every reason he can think of to dissuade him from marriage. Finally, with no alternative left, Lemmon takes off his wig and in his masculine voice tells Brown that he is really a guy, to which Brown replies, deadpan, "Nobody's perfect." The End.

9. City Lights - Considered by many to be Charlie Chaplin's greatest film achievement! In this movie his "Little Tramp" character decides to help a poor blind girl by raising enough money for an operation that will restore her sight. Not being able to see the appearance of the Little Tramp, she is charmed by this kind gentleman. The final scene has this girl, now able to see, visually meeting a very bashful and somewhat reluctant Little Tramp for the very first time. The look on the faces of these two actors as she realizes that it was NOT a wealthy suitor that had helped her, but someone even poorer than herself, is priceless and worthy of jerking a few tears.

10. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrick at his best! This black comedy and commentary on the Cold War revolves around the threat of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union and the inept politicians and military generals who seem unable (or unwilling) to prevent it. George C. Scott is hilarious as a fanatical general, and Peter Sellers is simply genius in three roles including the President, and as the title character. The final scene is one of the more famous in movie history with Slim Pickens riding a falling atomic bomb out of the plane like a bucking bronco as it plummets to earth, presumably starting World War Three.

There you have it. My unofficial list of the ten greatest movie beginnings and the ten greatest movie endings. Let the debating begin. I look forward to your comments and opinions. What movies would include on this list? Let me know! Until next time, "Here's looking at you, kid."