- guardian.co.uk, Sunday February 6 2000 18.37 GMT
You, Observer readers, have been versatile in your interpretation of what constitutes a moment. A good many which make the list are those moments you can almost freeze in time - such as the one in first place on the list, the blinding flash when Kujan (Chazz Palmintieri) gets the plot in The Usual Suspects, or the 46th moment when, in The Crying Game, Fergus (Stephen Rea) discovers that he hadn't quite known Dil (Jaye Davidson) as well as he thought. They are shocking revelations we have shared with the characters.
But several selections correspond to the loose definition of 'I'll be with you in a moment' which could be anything between the five minutes Gene Kelly takes to sing and dance in the rain (or the milk, as pedants will have it) or the 25 minutes it takes Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and his company to get from the landing craft to the cliffs on Omaha Beach. But not even this last epic can compete with perhaps the longest 'moment' in the final list, the peepshow booth encounter from Paris Texas as the former lovers, played by Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski, meet.
However you have chosen to define a 'moment', detailing a list of favourites is a very different exercise from asking for a series of favourite films. It's likelier to elicit a more interesting and honest response. More interesting because voters will be less inclined to produce a balanced, thoughtful list that will attest to their education, intelligence and good taste - the usual suspects, as it were. (As opposed to The Usual Suspects.) Readers, we thought, would be more tempted to vote for a scene from a film that normally doesn't make it on to 'sanctioned' lists - and so it occasionally proved. (The Princess Bride, for instance, chosen for its unconventional sword fight.). Put on the spot, you are forced to be specific in describing the key images and scenes that have remained lodged in the mind's eye. For more than just a moment.
