[PenultimateManStanding]

Apocalypse Now was a better movie than The Deer Hunter in some ways. The Deer Hunter spends an entire hour showing an ethnic wedding and a hunting trip before it gets down to business. However, the music theme and the tearful singing of God Bless America at the end show that Cimino's intent was to express the sadness of the people in their disillusioned and grieving state. So in that sense, it's one of the saddest American movies. Apocalypse Now with it's Ride Of The Valkyries, surfboarding, loving the smell of napalm in the morning, acid tripping in battle, rioting GIs at the playmate concert, was more from the weirdness angle than the sad.

[AirlinePilot]

Just saw the movie "There Will be Blood" and thought it very sad. Money cannot buy happiness and you cannot undo wrongs in your past. If you don't learn from those things you die a slow and unhappy death in your life. Very sad.

Thought Daniel Day Lewis did another outstanding acting job in this.

[btu2012]

Johnny Got his Gun
Boys don't cry
Gods and Monsters
Million Dollar Baby
The Quiet American
Dog Day's Afternoon

[WildRose]

Out of Africa (1985), director Sydney Pollack. I saw this movie in a theater when it first came out, beautiful cinematography. A story about great personal loss. I watched it with my parents and my husband. After we left the movie, I was so choked up I couldn't speak on the way home in the car. I was eight months pregnant at the time; maybe that had something to do with it. I've been thinking about watching it again to see if the film would have a similar effect on me after all these years.

[midnight-gamer]

Movies I have seen that have not been mentioned so far.
"The Note Book"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0332280/
"Glory"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097441/
"Leaving Los Vegas"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113627/
"Mystic River"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327056/
"The Last of the Mohicans"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104691/
"Letters from Iwo Jima"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498380/
This last is not a American movie, but it effected me the most. Just thinking about it now makes me tear up.
"Grave of the Fireflies"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_of_the_Fireflies

[Moped]

Saving Private Ryan

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Silent Running - when I was a little kid the first time I saw the movie, the end scene where little Huey the robot is left on his own out in space to tend the last remaining living plants - perhaps forever - made me want to cry.

Here is an environmentalist's diatribe to the sheeple, poetic in its way.

One Christmas Amazon.com mis-delivered a Winged Migration DVD to my house. I guess the film isn't American, but it's one of the most moving movies I've seen - it follows all sorts of different types of birds as they migrate half way across the world. The cinematography and music score are truly spectacular (youtube doesn't do it justice). It really captures the bird's struggle to survive - every once in a while another bird in the flock is left behind to perish on its own (come to think of it, much like Huey the robot, hmm...). The most pathetic moment is when a little bird with a broken wing is running around in circles on the beach, and a gang of crabs is closing in on it, just biding it's time until the bird tires itself out. That movie depressed me for days afterward.

The movie is so sad is because that is nature at its best, sans global warming, plastic filling the oceans, and so on. Even during the best of times, before people were around to screw things up, the real world was horribly tragic. That's what we are trying to get back to by saving the planet. Yippee!

[AirlinePilot]

Silent Running got to me the same way Koy! I can still remember that scene.

I still tear up when Ryan stands above the Captains grave and asks his wife If he was a good man.....really gets to me every time I watch it.

The Scene where Tom Hanks implores him to "Earn this" is very powerful also.

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'Y')ea, the Onion Field and Apocalypse Now were both great.
It dawns on me that in the PO sense American Graffiti might be the saddest - especially since I grew up cruising in the town it was based on, albeit a bit later.

[hubbertspeak7777777]

Well, it didn't really make me sad, but I was kind of pissed when McMurphy got lobotomized in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, meanwhile that miserable twat Nurse Ratched survived. The ending to Chinatown was similar, it ended on a down note.

[btu2012]

[Micki]

I want to add in one more.
Very strong and very well acted. Especially Charlize Theron did a great job. Surprised it didn't get much higer rating in IMDB.
And No, it is not a horror movie.

Monster

[jboogy]

"Saving private Ryan", I had to choke 'em back when he's at Millers grave,

"Cold Mountain"

When they show that little girls red coat in the pile of bodies in "Schindlers list"

I can't believe how many people here saw "Requiem for a dream", that movie was intense but I didn't think many saw it, there's something strange, ( or cool ) that a movie that didn't enjoy widespread success is somehow known by a lot of the people here.

"Million dollar baby"

How about the foreign film they showed you in grammar school about the little boy who loses and then chases around his red balloon, that one always made me sad.

I don't understand so many choosing "Blade Runner", if memory serves Darryl Hannah and Rutger are murdering cyborgs. And I was unsympathetic to Sean Youngs character.

"Life is beautiful", that one bothered me.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Maybe it's not the saddest American movie, but "Charly" seems appropriate for our peak oil predicament. Charly is a mentally retarded man who undergoes a neurological experiment that turns him into a genius. He exalts in his newly found possibilities, but the experiment goes awry and he gradually reverts to his former self. Based on the novel Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

[PrairieMule]

I found a rare Gem in a obscure film called the "The Mighty". Also there was this one scene(the Bob Seegar scene) in "The Weather Man" with Michael Caine and Nicholas Cage-cuts to the bone.

Both flims are fine blends of Comedies and Tragedies.