I wouldn't say that scene is the saddest, scariest, most disturbing scene even WITHIN THE FILM, much less in film history!! The entire film is immensely sad, scary and disturbing - but the saddest, scariest, and most disturbing scenes (as another viewer pointed out) in it are the ones where we see Andre losing control of his mind, and orchestrating his own demise, while trying frantically to affirm to his wife that he loves her.
It's hard to feel the same kind of sympathy for the fly caught in the web, because that's not supposed to be Andre, but rather a fly that now HAPPENS to have a human head replete with the ability to speak. We are not emotionally invested in the fly, the way we're invested in Andre - we already know that Andre is dead, and that his soul is gone. We may be seeing Andre's head on the fly, but we know that the soul embodying the creature is NOT Andre's soul, but rather the soul of the fly (if you believe that flies have souls, that is). I think it's more DISCONCERTING than truly disturbing - disconcerting to see a fly with a human head/Andre's head in that situation and subsequently being crushed to death, but not truly DISTURBING because it's not Andre himself.
Flies are eaten by spiders all the time, so the event itself is par for the course - in Nature - but what is NOT par for the course, and hence *TRULY* TERRIBLE is to see a man ending up with the head of a fly, and then having to prepare his own death before the instincts of a creature take over his human mind and soul (all the while reminding his wife that he loves her).
But even those scenes don't constitute THE SADDEST, SCARIEST, MOST DISTURBING scenes in ALL OF FILM HISTORY. There are so many sadder, scarier and more disturbing scenes in other films that I can think of - even if ALL of them may not have the 'shock' value of this (although many of them do).
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