The Greatest Tearjerkers of All-Time
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Title Screen
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Movie Title/Year and Brief Tearjerker Scene Description |
Screenshots
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Doctor Zhivago (1965, US/UK)
#43
- surgeon Dr. Yuri
Zhivago's (Omar Sharif) final farewell to lover Lara Antipova (Julie
Christie) to allow her to escape execution, with his memorable last
gaze at her from the ice castle's second story broken window
- the
moving death of the aging surgeon years later when he sighted his
old flame Lara walking down a crowded Moscow street; he struggled
to signal to her, then rushed to exit the streetcar, but the exertion,
enormous stress and physical effort was too much for him as he chased
after her. He suffered a fatal stroke, as he
fruitlessly tried to call out to her while waving. He collapsed
and died on the street after failing to get her attention.
A crowd surrounded his lifeless body in a long overhead shot
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Dodsworth (1936)
- the scene at the Vienna train station in which retired
US auto industrialist husband Sam Dodsworth (Oscar-nominated Walter
Huston) departed from his youth-obsessed and self-centered
wife Fran (Ruth Chatterton) after she had told him she was demanding
a divorce in order to get married to someone else - and his touching
goodbye when he tells her: ("Did I remember to tell you today
that I adore you?")
- and the confrontational scene on the cruise
liner about to depart from Naples for the US when Sam finally decided
to leave his wife for good: ("I'm
going back to doing things...Love has got to stop someplace short
of suicide"), to
return waving in the final scene to better-matched divorcee Edith Cortwright
(Mary Astor) at her villa in Naples, Italy
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Don't Look
Now (1973, UK/It.)
- the early scene of the heart-breaking
drowning death of John Baxter's (Donald Sutherland) daughter Christine
(Sharon Williams) in
a muddy fishpond outside his home in England - who was wearing a
tell-tale red raincoat
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Dreamgirls (2006)
- pregnant, spurned singer Effie
Melody White's (Jennifer Hudson) show-stopping, powerful song "And
I'm Telling You (I'm Not Going)" - first to her former pop
singing group The
Dreams and its lead singer Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles), then
to the unmoved, unknowing cheating father Curtis Taylor, Jr.
(Jamie Foxx) of her unborn child as she kissed and embraced him, and
then her emotionally-sung declaration to the world from an empty
stage
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Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
- the sad, quiet death of long-time black maid Idella (Esther
Rolle) watching the daytime soap The Edge of Night on TV while shucking peas
- the scene in which Jewish
ex-schoolteacher Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy), after having a mental
dislocation, told her dedicated black ex-chauffeur Hoke Colburn (Morgan
Freeman): "Hoke...you're
my best friend...no, really, you are," and took his hand in
hers
- the final Thanksgiving scene in a nursing home
in which an enfeebled 97 year-old Daisy was spoon-fed her Thanksgiving
pie by Hoke
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The Duchess (2008, UK/US/It./Fr.)
- the wrenching scenes in this
exquisitely sad costume drama of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana
Spencer (Keira Knightley) - the witty, attractive, but unhappy Duchess
of Devonshire, who was set up and then tragically trapped in an arranged
marriage at age 17 with emotionally-distant and callous but regal
and powerful Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes) by her calculating
mother (Charlotte Rampling) - and her gasping, astonished question
she asked when told she was engaged: "He loves me?...I have
only met him twice"
- Georgiana (known as "G"),
who was unable to bear male heirs (at first), turning a blind eye
to her husband's illegitimate ("bastard") child Charlotte
(that she raised as her own) and then after being aghast at her husband's
open 'live-in' affair with her own friend/divorcee Lady Elizabeth
'Bess' Foster (Hayley Atwell) - accepting it, while she was not allowed,
due to the double standard, to have her own extra-marital lover (open
marriage) - with rising politician and childhood sweetheart Charles
Grey (Dominic Cooper), although she said: "It can make me happy"
- after giving her husband a son, Georgiana's engagement
in an extended extra-marital affair with Charles, notably
during a secret tryst at Bath without her husband, when she became
pregnant again
- in the film's most tearjerking scene after she gave
birth away from the public eye in the countryside, she was forced
to give up her infant daughter named Eliza to the Grey family on
an open country road -- although she was able to frequently visit
the girl (which Charles called his 'niece') in secret as she grew
up
- Georgiana was compelled to trade personal happiness
for her three children (Little G, Harryo - or Harriet, and William)
with the Duke, and in the film's conclusion, gave her blessing so
Lady Bess Foster could become the second Duchess of Devonshire
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Dumbo (1941)
- the touching scene in which a lonely
Dumbo visited his caged and shackled mother Mrs. Jumbo after she had attacked
a bratty boy who was tormenting him because of his big ears -- and her comforting
of the distressed young elephant by stroking him with her trunk extended
from her large cage (and swinging him back and forth) during the song "Baby
Mine" - accompanied by the many images of baby animals (monkeys, hyenas,
hippos, ostriches, kangaroos, etc.) peacefully sleeping with their mothers
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Dying Young (1991)
- the overwrought, tearjerking romance
between dying, wealthy leukemia patient Victor Geddes (Campbell Scott) and
his loving companion nurse Hilary O'Neil (Julia Roberts)
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