Certain movie scenes outlast the test of time.
While most of these iconic scenes required lots of planning and preparations, others sprung up spontaneously during, or even after, production.
You'll be surprised to find that classic scenes from 'Casablanca' and 'Indiana Jones' were spur of the moment filming decisions.
Beginning a beautiful friendship
Perhaps no movie has as many famous one-liners as Casablanca (1942). But they weren’t all the work of screenwriters Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch (who deservedly won an Oscar for their work).
Based on Murray Burnett and Joan Allison’s unproduced play Everybody Goes to Rick’s, the script was written in a hurry, and was still going through rewrites when filming commenced. As a result, some of the best lines were improvised.
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” Humphrey Bogart’s farewell line to Ingrid Bergman, was a popular quote in the 1930s. Bogart ad-libbed it while filming Casablanca, and it worked so well that it was used twice. In 2007, Premiere magazine named it the best greatest-ever movie line. Bogart’s final line, however, was created just for the film.
Who can forget that last shot, as Rick (Bogart) and Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains) walk away, planning to escape Casablanca after assisting in a noble cause. “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” says Rick. The line was created by producer Hal B. Wallis, and dubbed by Bogart after filming was completed.
Indy vs. the Swordsman
In one of the coolest and most memorable scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), ready for action, is confronted by an evil-looking swordsman.
Rather than engage him in hand-to-hand combat, he gives the swordsman a tired, “you must be joking” expression, pulls out his gun and casually shoots him. This funny and clever moment, filmed in Tunisia, might never have happened if Ford and most of the crew weren’t suffering from food poisoning.
Initially, Indy was supposed to defeat the swordsman in an extended fight sequence, using his famous whip. However, as he was so ill, the scene just wasn’t working. Instead, director Steven Spielberg allowed him to dispose of his foe in this simpler, but no less effective, method. The tired look on Indy’s face, of course, was utterly real.
“You ain’t heard nothing yet!”
Warner Brothers’ The Jazz Singer, immortalized as the first-ever talking picture, was basically a silent film, with just a few moments of synchronised sound.
The audio was mainly just a few opportunities for the star, Al Jolson, to sing hit songs like My Mammy and Blue Skies (later a hit for Willie Nelson). The small amount of dialogue was ad-libbed by Jolson and Eugenie Besserer (who played his mother – or his “mammy”).
Jolson spoke a grand total of 281 words in the film, and the most memorable line was his final one: “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothing yet!” It was a prophetic quote, and more than 70 years later, it would earn a place in the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest movie lines.
Because Jolson’s line was so off-the-cuff, it might have been removed from the final cut if Sam Warner, the driving force behind talking pictures, had not insisted that it stay. Sadly, Warner died of a sinus infection a day before the film’s release, meaning that he would never witness it making history.
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