Five industry-shaking scenes that changed cinema forever
Like any other art form, cinema relies on a set of established tropes. People go to the movies expecting certain things, and filmmakers can use these building blocks to construct their own worlds and present them to an audience. Every once in a while, though, something comes along and shakes these foundations to their very core.
There are many people involved in the movie business who think they’ve got ideas that will change the world, but very few actually manage to pull this off. Be it technical innovations, character beats, or entire subjects being viewed through a different lens, these five films left the industry in a different position from where they found it.
While not all of these movies were the first to do certain things, they definitely popularised the traits they are most associated with. All of them undoubtedly owe a debt to smaller pictures that didn’t pick up nearly as much traction, but these are the ones that made the biggest impact in their chosen fields.
They didn’t just make waves—they sent shockwaves through Hollywood, rewriting the rules of what was possible on screen. Whether it was a groundbreaking visual effect, a radical storytelling choice, or an audacious directorial vision, these films redefined the cinematic landscape. Some divided audiences, others became instant classics, but all of them proved that, in the right hands, film can still be an unpredictable, ever-evolving force of nature.
Five scenes that changed cinema forever:
‘Citizen Kane’ (Orson Welles, 1941)
It’s become the cliche to end all cliches that Orson Welles’ directorial debut Citizen Kane is one of the greatest movies of all time. That’s the problem though—it is. As well as weaving a compelling web of ambition, heartbreak, and the perils of success, the movie began or popularised several techniques or structures that are now commonplace in cinema. Its use of flashback, its non-linear plot, and its impressive makeup and special effects all moved the medium forward in huge leaps, but it’s the technical work of Welles, cinematographer Gregg Toland, and editor Robert Wise that stands out the most.
You could play pretty much any scene from the film and stumble across something innovative, but why bother going through the whole movie when the opening stretch is so iconic? The slow, ominous crawl towards Xanadu, the title character’s palatial fortress, is full of technical marvels. A series of well-hidden dissolves, including one into a reflection of the house in a pool of water, maintains the momentum of the advance. The lone light in Kane’s bedroom remains in the same place with each new frame, a seriously impressive feat that adds to the sense of audience immersion. Right from the very start, Citizen Kane changed the game, and its influence on future generations cannot be overstated.#
‘The Wizard of Oz’ (Victor Fleming, 1939)
It is truly mind-boggling to think that, in the same year that most of Europe was plunged into the Second World War, one of the happiest, most cherished movie musicals of all time was wowing audiences in America. The story of Judy Garland’s Dorothy and her journey along the yellow brick road is baked into the DNA of pop culture, with more parodies and homages than you can shake the Cowardly Lion’s tail at.
Perhaps the most memorable and important scene from Victor Fleming’s masterpiece is the one where our heroine first touches down in the titular land of Oz. Up to this point, the movie had been presented in black and white, but as soon as Dorothy opens the door of her displaced shack, the audience is blinded by a burst of glorious Technicolor. Though not the first scene to use the technique, this one demonstrated how powerful it could be. Transitions between monochrome and colour are still used today to demonstrate changes in time, place, or feeling, and none of those scenes would have been possible without the success of that little girl from Kansas.
‘Psycho’ (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
Even now, many movie protagonists suffer from what is affectionately known as ‘main character syndrome’. Everybody knows that James Bond has to come back for the next movie, so why worry when he’s placed in mortal peril? With the noticeable exception of No Time to Die, of course. Would Daniel Craig have been blown to smithereens if Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t killed off his leading lady some six decades earlier? Almost certainly not.
Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is in the shower when a mysterious figure advances on her with a knife. As the tension builds and Bernard Hermann’s legendary score swells underneath, the figure – later revealed as Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates – strikes. He stabs poor Marion over and over again, her blood circling the drain. With the main character gone halfway through the runtime, nobody was safe in Psycho, or any movie for that matter.
This is still a rarity in films to this very day, as most scriptwriters are terrified to kill off their lead and risk losing the audience. Not Hitchcock, though. He takes one look at your conventions and laughs.
‘Saving Private Ryan’ (Steven Spielberg, 1998)
War is hell, and nowhere is that clearer than in the opening to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Omaha Beach, 1944. Operation Neptune, better known as D-Day. Thousands of American troops join their comrades from the UK, France, Canada, and many more to begin the ground assault that will hopefully bring about the end of World War II. The Normandy beach landings are revered as one of the bloodiest, most brutal parts of the entire conflict, with thousands of men cut down by gunfire before their feet even touched the sand.
Movies set during wartime can be guilty of glorifying armed combat. Not this one. Spielberg wanted to convey the madness of D-Day, so he went out of his way to make this scene as harrowing as possible. Through Janusz Kamiński’s brilliantly wobbly cinematography, frantic scenes of men being killed or wounded feel startlingly real. There is nothing glamorous about this maelstrom of bullets, limbs, and dying screams. Some veterans reportedly couldn’t get past the opening scene because it reminded them too much of the horrors they endured. From the very first shot of this remarkable film, war on screen was never the same again.
‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ (Ang Lee, 2000)
The first non-English language movie to gross over $100 million in the United States was a martial arts movie that nobody expected to be a hit. Directed by the great Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a quintessential example of wuxia, exploring the lives of martial artists in ancient China. Starring Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh, the plot kicks off when the legendary Green Destiny sword is stolen, and two master fighters must figure out who took it and bring it back to where it belongs.
The use of wires to exaggerate actors’ and stunt personnel’s movements is prevalent across the film. This so-called ‘wire fu’ had been seen by Western audiences before, most notably in The Matrix, but its use in the fight between Li Mu Bai (Chow) and Jade Fox (Cheng Pei-pei) feels far more authentic. It’s a beautifully choreographed fight, its use of wires granting an almost supernatural aura to its characters without straying too far into the absurd.
Not since Bruce Lee first burst onto the scene had Asian martial artists been treated with this sort of respect: international cinema was now an established genre in the Western mainstream, opening the floodgates for every great non-English movie of the 21st century to be viewed by a much larger audience.
