indelible moment: "Bell, Book and Candle"

Richard Quine's "Bell, Book and Candle" (1958) is one of those rare films that not only seems to improve with age but also strikes me as ageless. It's timelessly contemporary, whether you saw it in '58, '88 or '08.

In that sense, it's magical, a quality that drives its most enchanting sequence - when Kim Novak and her cat Pyewacket bewitch Jimmy Stewart, complemented by George Duning's lilting theme, hummed by Novak, and James Wong Howe's shimmering cinematography. (Duning, by the way, came to call his title track for the film ... "Kim's theme.")

The moment is creamy, dreamy and, well, indelible.