20 Most Perfect Scenes In Cinema History

When you’re compiling a list like this, you have to accept the fact that some entries are chosen for you: and you just can’t write an article on the most perfect scenes in cinema without including Pixar’s modern classic Up.

The opening minutes detail protagonist Carl’s meeting with the love of his life, Ellie, as children. From there, it’s straight into a sweeping, wordless montage, leafing through their whole life together from the moment of their wedding, culminating with Ellie’s illness, and her passing.

Often, you assume that these apparently perfect scenes came about entirely organically, springing whole from the furrowed brow of the writer/director like something out of classical myth.

Here, however, you would be mythtaken: this montage came about through the painstaking process of redrafting and revision. Building Carl’s perfect relationship with Ellie was central to establishing his motivation throughout the increasingly peculiar events of the film, but something wasn’t working.

It was story supervisor Ronnie Del Carmen who had the idea to take a planned succession of shorter snapshots and tease out the visuals and the score, cutting the dialogue entirely and blurring them into the mise en scène of a complete life.

It’s one of the most heartbreaking scenes in cinema: without a single actor, or a single line.