Do you have a movie shot that you find simply awesome and unforgettable?

I just saw Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” and being a movie fan, I couldn’t help but be awed by his directorial skills. He is hailed as the Master of Suspense and earned it through his astute storytelling skills via his actors, music score, lighting, set design and writers. But composing scenes, visual manipulation and staging were his and his alone.

So I’m really curious about how a scene was staged through a director’s masterful eye and if there is one that impressed you so.

In “Spellbound” my favorite was when Gregory Peck’s character, a mentally imbalanced killer suspect, triggered by seeing something white, was given a glass of milk while holding a shiny razor blade. The glass was given by an unsuspecting character. To heighten the suspense of the milk triggering him to kill, Hitchcock did not just shoot Gregory Peck pointblank drinking the milk.

He placed it from the extreme close-up POV of GP’s eyes, the glass taking over the whole frame as milk swarms and overwhelms the entire screen. That’s a flood of white coming at you, see?