The Most Stunning Still Shots In Movies

Film and photography are two very different art forms, but at the same time the former incorporates the latter. A photograph is its own thing, but a film is a sequence of photographs (or simulated photographs, in this digital age) which tells a story, usually with the aid of sound and spoken dialogue. 

So while there's so much more going on in film, it can still be interesting to pull out specific still images and look at them as though they were photographs. In fact, while we don't usually discuss it in such terms, we do a lot of that on the internet. For this article, we've chosen images from both classic and recent films that are beautiful and moving all on their own, while also providing insights into the films from which they come.

Meet the Joker. You won't learn he's the Joker until later, but this is his first appearance on screen in The Dark Knight. And already, it's clear that something is off about him. Even without seeing his face, there's something unsettling in his stance, in the hunch of his shoulders. And of course that clown mask he's holding, with light shining through the eyes, makes him even creepier. When he removes it at the end of the bank robbery scene, revealing that he's also a creepy clown underneath, that retroactively makes this scene much scarier. But it's also beautiful, this daytime shot of Chicago-as-Gotham with one figure—highlighted front and center—who definitely doesn't belong.

With this shot from Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, film-as-art enters a more post modern period. It may look like the film is double-exposed, but actually the scene is just shot through a large picture window, capturing the interior of a beach house along with the reflection of what's outside. 

As Sterling Hayden and Nina van Pallandt discuss their troubled marriage inside the house, we also see the smaller reflected figure of Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe—who was hired to help them but may just be further complicating things—walking along the surf outside. Also, the faces of Hayden and van Pallandt are obscured by reflected palm trees, which in turns reflects the fracturing of their emotional lives.

Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums is such a visually beautiful film that it's difficult picking just one shot. There's the flag flapping over the house, the falcon taking flight, or the illuminated tent in the dark ballroom. But this shot does something really special. It recontextualizes the character of Margot, who we've already met as an emotionally distant and self involved woman who dresses like a child and wears too much eyeliner, and shows us how much Richie loves her. 

When she steps off that Green Line bus, the film goes into slow motion. When her lips part slightly, Nico's "These Days" begins to play. Obviously making Gwyneth Paltrow appear beautiful is no great feat, but the beauty of this moment is something extremely specific to the story being told, and that's what makes it so special.

Speed Racer is a visual joyride, in which the Wachowskis use a mix of live action and CGI to create a candy-colored futuristic world where car racing is the most important thing, and conjoined empires of business and crime have grown up around it. In the center is Emile Hirsch as Speed Racer—that's his actual first and last name—a young man with a purity of focus who only wants to drive fast and be the best at it. And while the whole film is a whirlwind of light and color, there's nothing quite like this moment, in which Speed gets out of the car after a race, disoriented, as flashbulbs ignite all around him and the celebration of his victory begins before he's even had the time to realize he won.

The original Star Wars is best remembered for reviving the adventurous spirit of classic sci-fi properties like Flash Gordon and bringing a fast-paced sense of fun into the melancholy world of 1970s science fiction. But Star Wars also has its moments of melancholy and contemplation. The first, and perhaps still the most beautiful, is when Luke Skywalker contemplates his place in the galaxy, as he stares out over a barren desert at two suns setting on the same horizon. It's poetic, but it's also world-building, which is a rare balance in genre films, especially in a single shot. As viewers, we know that Luke's life is about to change, but he doesn't, and that dramatic irony adds another shade of beauty to this perfect moment.

Feminist film critic Laura Mulvey pointed out that the gaze of a film is traditionally a male gaze. And you might say that few cinematic gazes are more overtly male than Quentin Tarantino's. Tarantino loves composing a beautiful shot, and he also loves framing images of beautiful women. This moment from Inglourious Basterds, featuring Mélanie Laurent, is a great example of the intersection of those impulses. 

Laurent is a unique beauty, to be sure, but what makes this image great is her placement by that round window, with the reflection of her face juxtaposed against another woman's face on a poster outside, and that unsettling red streak of a Nazi banner on the far right. Laurent's red dress mirrors the banner, and both are the color of blood and fire, foreshadowing her ultimate plan to slaughter a theatre full of Nazis.

It Follows is a horror film, and a very effective one, about what you might call a sexually transmitted demon, which relentlessly pursues its prey and can only be escaped by having sex with someone, who the demon then pursues instead. And while that premise is interesting and unique, it's the mood and the visuals that really stick with you. 

The story is set in Detroit, in a kind of neverland time that suggests the past while containing elements of the present, and every scene is surrounded by decay and desolation. This perfectly composed shot is a great example, with the main characters approaching a dilapidated house as the central protagonist, played by Maika Monroe, turns and looks directly into the camera. She's checking to see if she's being followed, which of course she is.

Derek Jarman's punk rock opus Jubilee is a sci-fi fantasy film that contains no real special effects. It relies entirely on its visuals and a unique cast to create a sense of the unreal. Take for example this early moment, in which the faery spirit Ariel (the same character from Shakespeare's The Tempest) appears before Queen Elizabeth and John Dee. With just a bit of pale makeup and perhaps some contact lenses (it's hard to say for sure), actor David Haughton is believable as an inhuman spirit, more beautiful and ethereal than any man could be. 

His appearance is later mirrored by the singer Adam Ant, who shows up as a human man too beautiful to survive in the brutal future where the bulk of the film is set. Derek Jarman's camera has just as desirous a gaze as Tarantino's, in its way, but Jarman's male gaze isn't directed at women.

In Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger plays a cowboy who spends his entire life struggling with his love for another man (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). Steeped in conventional mid-20th-century American masculinity, his longing and discomfort manifest in unfortunate ways throughout the film. 

At a Fourth of July celebration, for example, he lashes out so violently at some rude bikers that his wife picks up their small children and carries them away from him. He stands up and watches his family run away from him just as the sky explodes with fireworks behind him, creating one of the most moving images in cinema of a man in conflict with himself and his world.

Mad Max: Fury Road was filmed in the Namibian desert, and that setting is used to the fullest possible effect. For much of the film, this involves driving heavily modified cars and trucks through the desert at high speed, which is its own sort of visual splendor, but the most striking single image in the film is much more solitary and still. 

Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, has just learned that her homeland, an idyllic green place ruled by women, no longer exists. It became unlivable, as much of the rest of this post-apocalyptic world already is, and only a handful of her people survived. Given this new information, Furiosa moves away from the group, falls to her knees in the desert, and cries in anguish. She's crying because the world has ended, and the empty landscape that surrounds her illustrates that fact.