While I was watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with the kids the other night (the first one starring Gene Wilder, not the scary-looking one with Johnny Depp that I don't even want to see), I noticed some real and great "movie" moments.
Gene Wilder's entrance as Willy Wonka has to be the best character entrance I have ever seen.
He hobbles out of the factory with his cane, looking miserable and miserly. A fun and rambunctious crowd quiets to nothingness. His cane gets stuck between two bricks in the road and he tumbles forward and springs to life, with the crowd going wild. The movie builds this character up for half the movie and we are given a wonderful first appearance.
The only other really great character entrance that I can think of is Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man from 1949, directed by Carol Reed. Harry Lime is flat out considered dead for half the movie then he is there as the light from another window gives him away, with a smug grin. Orson Welles himself called it "the greatest star part" he had ever known.
Honorable mention has to go to Darth Vader in Star Wars: A New Hope as he enters the white ship surrounded by stormtroopers. His black costume was a dark hole in the screen and scared the crap out of me as a kid. It still gets a kind of Whoa feeling. However, it happens to soon in the movie, without any buildup, to really be a great character entrance.
Honorable mention also goes to Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Without seeing his face, he leads his team into the jungle. He hears a click of a gun, senses the betrayal, and turns with his bullwhip as quick as lightning to unarm the perpetrator. Then he steps into the light and we see him with a glare and that fedora hat.
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