I'll have to agree with Frank's assessment of Aguirre's awesomeness. It's stunning, beautiful, dark and tragic.

Serial:

And the final scene of Aguirre, the last survivor of the expedition, dying on a raft covered in monkeys, floating down the river is one of the great end scenes in cinema.

Plus the movie has one of the most stunning opening shots of a movie and one of the most stunning closing ones as well.

is one of the great end scenes in cinema.

Very striking image.

Narratively I think my favorite might be the end of French Connection II.

Though the end of Vertigo (which I saw in its theatrical re-release) made me yell something like, "No way!"

x-post, natch. Yeah that ending is what I was thinking of, but the shot of the line of the expedition winding it's way up (down?) the mountain as far as the eye can see at the beginning is pretty frelling amazing too.

Both scenes are featured in My Best Fiend, so maybe I don't have to see it! Frank's report on Fitzcarraldo is about what I guessed.

Though the end of Vertigo (which I saw in its theatrical re-release) made me yell something like, "No way!"

And, of course, that's one of the great "suspended / what next" scenes of all time because if it went on for a moment longer it looks pretty clear that Jimmy Stewart's going to go jumping off the roof too.

at the beginning is pretty frelling amazing too.

Oh yes. I was a little uninterested in it when my roommate at the time rented it. But between that first shot, quickly followed by the sequence where one of the cannons they were humping over the peaks of the Andes was too heavy for the ground beneath it, and the cannon (and crew, I think) plunged thousands of feet into the jungle below, I was hooked.

Though the end of Vertigo (which I saw in its theatrical re-release) made me yell something like, "No way!"

I've forgotten the exact ending, but I remember being very dissatisfied with Vertigo, as I had watched it after several other Hitchcock films, and thinking it much weaker than the other films I'd seen.

Wikipedia agrees that Vertigo ends on the bell tower, but I thought it ended in some kind of hearing room, like the wrap-up in Psycho. Maybe I am mixing up my Vertigo scenes.

I've forgotten the exact ending, but I remember being very dissatisfied with Vertigo, as I had watched it after several other Hitchcock films, and thinking it much weaker than the other films I'd seen.

Pfft. This is a silly opinion.

Of course Vertigo is a very weird movie that makes very little sense. But it is all about the dream logic and Hitch leaving all his creepy obsessions up on the screen.

Naturally, it is my favorite Hitchcock movie, though I'm also very partial to Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, and Rear Window.