Friday, September 24, 2010

More Scenes From An Elevator








Seek and ye shall find, indeed. Since yesterday's post, I caught a good portion of Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo tango a Parigi / Last Tango in Paris (1972), including a key scene involving Marlon Brando's character chasing up winding stairs around Maria's Schneider's character as she ascends in a birdhouse-style elevator. This is a recurrent trope in mysteries, crime dramas, and so on. Who will get there first? Will the targeted person escape or crash and burn, figuratively or literally?

Shock and surprise is another recurring trope: armed folks shoot outwards from inside or armed folks shoot folks in an elevator; or a monster of some kind goes in, or a monster springs out.  Here, a snippet from Martin Scorsese's The Departed (2006).  Bang bang -- surprise! 




















Bloody elevators come in other varieties, too. I haven't seen Curtis Harrington's Games (1967) since I was a kid, but I sure do remember a scene where a lowering cage-style elevator reveals what is apparently a blood-dripping corpse  -- the horrific image stuck with me. Given the actors involved (Simone Signoret, James Caan, Katharine Ross and more), it would be fun to see Games again as an adult.

As for bloody elevators, let's not forget the bloody torrents gushing out of the elevator shafts at the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) -- remember?

Today's Rune: Initiation.  

2 comments:

the walking man said...

OK you just brought to mind the scene from The Godfather when Clemenza fires a double barrel into the elevator as the doors open.

Charles Gramlich said...

Another elevator scene I like is from the matrix, when they drop the elevator with the bomb inside and it blows up at the bottom, sending the door flying.