Movie Tearjerkers: What’s the Saddest Scene in Cinema?

Accord­ing this fas­ci­nat­ing piece in The Smith­son­ian, Fran­co Zef­firelli’s 1979 weep­fest The Champ is the most con­sis­tent­ly effec­tive tear­jerk­er in the his­to­ry of film. It’s also the tear­jerk­er most often used in sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies of grief and sad­ness:

The Champ has been used in exper­i­ments to see if depressed peo­ple are more like­ly to cry than non-depressed peo­ple (they aren’t). It has helped deter­mine whether peo­ple are more like­ly to spend mon­ey when they are sad (they are) and whether old­er peo­ple are more sen­si­tive to grief than younger peo­ple (old­er peo­ple did report more sad­ness when they watched the scene). Dutch sci­en­tists used the scene when they stud­ied the effect of sad­ness on peo­ple with binge eat­ing dis­or­ders (sad­ness didn’t increase eat­ing).

We would have gone with either the last scene of West Side Sto­ry or that dev­as­tat­ing 1989 Negro Col­lege Fund com­mer­cial with the pen­nies. Feel free to post your own can­di­dates in the com­ments.

via Neatora­ma

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.