Great Scene: “Sophie’s Choice”

A gut-wrenching scene from the 1982 movie Sophie’s Choice, screenplay by Alan J. Pakula, based on the novel by William Styron.

IMDb plot summary: Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live in Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stingo, the movie’s narrator, a young American writer new to New York City. But the happiness of Sophie and Nathan is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions.

The scene plays out as a flashback late in the story, a crucial revelation which explains much of Sophie’s self-destructive personality, haunted by this very moment: A mother has to choose between her son and her daughter — one shall live, one shall die.

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