&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/62100?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Clip+joint%3A+hat+throwing%3AArticle%3A1646667&amp;ch=Film&amp;c3=GU.co.uk&amp;c4=Film%2CCulture&amp;c5=Not+commercially+useful&amp;c6=John+Carvill&amp;c7=11-Oct-12&amp;c8=1646667&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Blogpost&amp;c11=Film&amp;c13=Clip+joint+%28series%29&amp;c25=Film+blog&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFilm%2F&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;You could leave your hat on but we don&#039;t want you to, as Clip joint moves up a headgear to find the best hat action scenes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, as Freud pointed out, a cigar is just a cigar. But a hat is rarely just that &ndash; at least not in the movies. The artistic use of everyday objects as signifiers goes back at least as far as Homer, and probably to cave paintings. And the humble hat, due to its inevitable association with the human head, comes with immense symbolic potency. Classic Hollywood was brim-full of them &ndash; Humphrey Bogart was presumably born in a fedora &ndash; but let&#039;s not forget the more recent fashions. Arguably the most headgear-centric film of all time is Miller&#039;s Crossing: a movie with more metaphorically significant hats than you could shake a schtick at.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hat can be used as a shorthand for good or evil. It can crown the hero or conceal the villain. And yet movies &ndash; which &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be art, but in any case &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be entertaining &ndash; should shy away from any egregiously portentous treatment of headwear. Movies oughtn&#039;t be over-serious, dour, pretentious, or po-faced. They should, in short, be fun. So instead of pondering the significance of the hat, why not throw it in the air instead?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Throwing a hat is seldom a solemn gesture; almost always it&#039;s a liberating, joyous act, expressive of an emotional state roughly equivalent to actually &lt;em&gt;being &lt;/em&gt;an early Beatles song. Yes, a thrown hat can be a weapon &ndash; we&#039;ll get to that &ndash; but even then it&#039;s generally accompanied by a gleeful evil laugh.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So don&#039;t get a bee in your bonnet; instead, doff your cap to Clip Joint&#039;s top five tremendous hat-throwing scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) Unlikely Harvard graduate Reese Witherspoon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_FKP-rjhh4&quot;&gt;leads a gloriously exuberant version of the classic mortarboards aloft scene in Legally Blonde&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;2) You&#039;re Jimmy Stewart, you&#039;re standing on top of the Flatiron building and Kim Novak is falling in love with you. Great tossing in Bell Book and Candle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;3) Miss Moneypenny could have warned Oddjob that Bond can skim a mean bowler: Goldfinger&lt;br /&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;4) Joseph Cotten tempts fate by nonchalantly ignoring dire warnings not to put a hat on a bed in Shadow of a Doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;5) A rare piece of non-metaphorical mad hattery in Miller&#039;s Crossing: an athletically stylish chuck from the late Al Mancini.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Last week on Clip joint, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2011/oct/06/clip-joint-thieves-steal-hearts&quot;&gt;we ransacked the treasure chest of clips featuring thieves who steal hearts&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;What a motley gang of rogues this week&#039;s Clip joint has uncovered. Some are smoother than others, but each is irresistible to at least one character. From least to most alluring, here are this week&#039;s most charming thieves (selected by steenbeck from your suggestions): &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;1) The scene &lt;strong&gt;bobnessuk&lt;/strong&gt; nominated from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FezBxUfWWXo&quot;&gt;Brighton Rock&lt;/a&gt;, though beautifully filmed and scripted, is so sad. Pinky&#039;s not worth crying over, Rose! &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eechBAzEQeo#t=2m10s&quot;&gt;The Maltese Falcon&lt;/a&gt; is such an odd little film. Mary Astor&#039;s character is not naturally charming; charm is one of many tricks in her set of thieves&#039; tools, as &lt;strong&gt;Nilpferd&lt;/strong&gt; reminds us. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;3) What does Ed see in Hi? It&#039;s hard to say. It&#039;s easy to understand the appeal of this scene from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBVesAXZPzA&quot;&gt;Raising Arizona&lt;/a&gt;, however, as &lt;strong&gt;mald2&lt;/strong&gt; says, &quot;a near-perfect short film in its own right&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY0lwOhFwLY&amp;feature=youtu.be&quot;&gt;Raffles&lt;/a&gt; serves up a sophisticated cocktail of suspense, and Niven becomes the unlikely hero &ndash; smooth, kind, impossible to dislike. Thanks to &lt;strong&gt;Secretcinema&lt;/strong&gt; for the clip.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;5) As silky and cool as a cube of melting ice! In this nearly wordless scene, Andy Lau shows us how it&#039;s done. &lt;strong&gt;AJBee&lt;/strong&gt; provides us with a clip from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8188hAnvNK4&quot;&gt;Running Out of Time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html&quot;&gt;Terms &amp; Conditions&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds&quot;&gt;More Feeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style=&quot;clear:both&quot; /&gt;