Each March the movie industry honors its own by handing out “Oscars” to the best of many categories. I would like to propose to Hollywood a new Academy Award be presented for the “Best Cemetery Scene”. If you frequent movie theaters, you have probably noticed that at some point in a few of the films the action will move to a cemetery. Some tragic event in the script has caused one of the main characters to die. The camera pans the funeral procession as family and friends stand around the grave, looking down sadly at the casket. As a teenager I never missed an opportunity to take my girl friend to any movie that had someone being buried in a cemetery. Here was an opportunity to put my arm around my date, offer her my handkerchief, and comfort her as she wept softly in my arms. These cemetery scenes were emotional for the both of us.
My nominations for the best cemetery scene from the most recent movies are:
The envelope please! And the “Award for the Best Cemetery Scene” goes to “About Schmidt”. The award winning scene in this movie shows Schmidt’s wife being lowered into the ground while cars and buses drive past the cemetery, showing that the rest of the world does not even pause when someone you have loved dies and is buried.
Without a doubt the Best Cemetery Scene of the 20th Century was in a spaghetti western movie filmed in 1966 and featured a little known actor named Clint Eastwood (1930 - ). The movie was entitled “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”. The ending of this 161 minute classic takes place in a U.S. Civil War cemetery where a soldier’s grave, his coffin and a wooden grave marker play an important part in the final showdown between Eastwood (Good), Van Cleef (Bad), and Eli Wallach (Ugly). This movie is now being shown on the American Movie Classics Channel at least once each month. The film’s music theme lends suspense to this action packed western, but the whole plot centers around the cemetery and the search for a fortune in silver coins buried there.