The Greatest Tearjerkers of All-Time
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Title Screen
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Movie Title/Year and Brief Tearjerker Scene Description
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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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Yuri's Death After Catching a Glimpse of Lara in Moscow
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Yuri's Final Glance and Farewell to Lara at Ice Castle
House
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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 told 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")
- he returned waving in the final scene to better-matched
divorcee Edith Cortwright (Mary Astor) at her villa in Naples, Italy
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Sam's Goodbye to Wife Fran at Train Station: "Did I remember
to tell you today that I adore you?"
Sam to Fran: "I'm going back to doing things"
Welcome From Edith
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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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Sad Drowning Death of Daughter In 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
"And I'm Telling You (I'm Not Going)"
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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
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Idella's Death While Shucking Peas
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- 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
"Hoke...You're my best friend"
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- 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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Thanksgiving Together
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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) - a 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 William Cavendish, the 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), turned a blind eye
to her husband's illegitimate ("bastard") child Charlotte
(that she was forced to raise as her own)
- then she became aghast
at her husband's open 'live-in' affair with her own friend/divorcee
Lady Elizabeth 'Bess' Foster (Hayley Atwell) - she accepted it,
while she was not allowed, due to the double standard, to have her
own extra-marital lover (open marriage)
- nonetheless, Georgiana conducted an affair with
rising politician and childhood sweetheart Charles Grey (Dominic
Cooper), claiming it would bring happiness: "It can make
me happy"
- after giving her husband a son (after a forced rape
by William), Georgiana became involved 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 Courtney, 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
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Georgiana's Surrendering of Grey's Love-Child
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- 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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Duchess: "He love me?...I have only met him twice"
The Duke's Own Illegitimate Offspring - Charlotte
The Unhappy Duchess
Blessing Given to Lady Bess Foster
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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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Dumbo Comforted by Mrs. Jumbo
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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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