Movie scenes can change your life: Here are just 5

Above : John Wayne in the closing scene of John Ford’s 1956 Western film “The Searchers.”

Some movies scenes stay with us forever.

Who can forget the young Brandon De Wilde calling out to Shane as the wounded gunman rides off alone toward the distant mountains? Or Jack sliding off the makeshift raft in “Titanic”? Or Bonnie and Clyde being shot to pieces by government agents?

Scenes such as these shape the very way many of us see life, for better or worse.

Let me run down five movie scenes that, to this day, remain imprinted in my consciousness as if I’d just opened up a screening room in my mind.

1. Gene Kelly swinging his umbrella as he dances his way through the wet streets in “Singin’ in the Rain.” I’ve told the story many times about this 1952 Stanley Donen-directed project was the first movie I ever saw. Its infectious humor, underscoring a story that blends romance with the history of the first talking movies, set the stage for my lifelong love of film.
2. John Wayne stepping through the doorway at the end of John Ford’s “The Searchers.” For many good reasons, Westerns – including classics such as this 1956 work directed by Ford – get a bad rap these days. But visually, nothing represents the lonely, self-isolating feel of Wayne’s character better than this closing image. And who hasn’t at one time or another felt similarly?
3. Keir Dullea’s pursuit of the mysterious monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The older I get, the more I can relate to Dullea’s character stalking through a strange room, one that looks like something designed for European royalty, aging from one scene to the next until he, bed-bound, is left reaching out to the monolith that we want to believe holds all the secrets of the universe.
4. The closing shot of Charlie Chaplin’s 1931 silent film “City Lights.” I’m referring specifically to the scene in which the face of Chaplin’s favorite character, The Tramp, lights up with – what? – delight, expectation, hope? – as the young blind woman, who can now see, realizes who he really is. Gets me every time.
5. Natalie Wood as Maria crying over the body of Richard Beymer, as Tony, at the end of Robert Wise’s 1961 adaptation of the Broadway musical “West Side Story.” I’d gone to see the movie at an outdoor theater on a naval air base in Hawaii with several other kids, and I had to stay behind for several minutes because I didn’t want anyone to see that I had been crying. It wasn’t the first, nor would it be the last, time that a movie would move me so profoundly.

I know I’m not alone with how much the movies have affected me over the years. As proof, though, IMDb.com hosts a weekly podcast in which presenter Ian de Borja interviews various celebrities about “Movies That Changed My Life.”

As for the movies themselves, keep watching. It may take years before you know what lasting impact they’ll have on you.