This is not a scene from a movie. It is not even a scene from one of those television programmes (Heimat, Dekalog or Berlin Alexanderplatz; The Naked Civil Servant or The Sorpanos…) that we film critics, who can look down upon television the way critics of the older arts can look down upon film, like to claim as something like honorary movies because we can’t accept that anything made for the small screen could possibly be so… cinematic. (By which we mean ‘good’.) Rather, it’s a two-and-half minute song sung by a puppet on one episode of a children’s TV show from the 1970s. And it is as worthy of assessment here, or of the label of ‘great scene’, as practically any example of extraordinary acting or groundbreaking montage we might pluck from cinema’s canon.

Having thusly praised it, I doubt I have to mention that the scene is performed by Jim Henson’s Muppets, the peerless puppets that are, like the characters of Charles Schultz’s Peanuts cartoons, both icons of innocent Americana in the 20^th Century and invested with an appeal both timeless and universal. ‘Time In A Bottle’, though, doesn’t feature any of The Muppet Show’s iconic characters. Kermit The Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Animal and Fozzy Bear aren’t on show here. Instead, the scene focuses on one distinctly un-famous character who was created using a number of anonymous puppets, the faces of which were altered to allow them to fill any sundry roles in the show – what were, in Hensonese, known as ‘Whatnots’.

The use of an unfamiliar character is astonishing considering how short the scene is and how entirely it eschews exposition. There is no introduction, no explanation and, indeed, no dialogue. There is only the voice of Jim Henson singing Jim Croce’s ‘Time In A Bottle’ (which had been released earlier in that year and would be a posthumous US number one for Croce in the next), and a series of puppets portraying an unnamed man conducting experiments in laboratory. And the decision to make it like that was inspired. Without preconceptions about the character, or the clutter of dialogue, we are un-distracted from the startling economy of the narrative.

Within seconds we know that this man is aged and ailing; that he is a skilled scientist; that he is in a wistful mood and of a philosophical bent; that he has a loved one, or perhaps loved ones, he desperately doesn’t want to leave behind in this life; that, in his many years alive, he has accumulated wisdom but not lost the childish desire for immortality; and that the liquids in his test tubes and beakers are attempts at an elixir of youth.

There a perfect touches throughout. The most of effective of these is the tap – and, more specifically, the accompanying clink on the soundtrack – that the scientist gives to his beaker the first time he sings the words ‘time in a bottle’. The watching child instantly understands the literal relationship between the lyrics being heard and the images being seen. It’s an important establishing tactic, because it is absolutely necessary that the young audience immediately understands that the scientist has trapped time in a bottle. If they don’t, the central sequence – the scientist’s regression, with each sip of each improved potion, backwards towards childhood – will fail entirely.

The scene is primarily powered, of course, by the choice of song. ‘Time In A Bottle’ is taken by people to be a love song, here aimed at children, but originally aimed at an adult lover. Ironically, the original was not aimed at a lover at all, but at a child. Jim Croce wrote the song for his then-unborn son – who would, incidentally, grow up into the singer A.J. Croce. Croce Sr. was killed soon after, and the poignancy of the song for his son must be unbearable. The lyrics are superb, the standout lines (‘There never seems to be enough time / To do the things you want to do / Once you find them’) an exquisite example of the kind of hokey, but nevertheless unimpeachable, wisdom that would be preposterous as poetry and dull as dialogue, but that is perfect in a 150-second pop song.

Compare Henson’s version to Croce’s and note how, in Henson’s, the song is slowed slightly, to bring clarity and emphasis to the lyrics, and given the lilt of a nursery rhyme, to make it more familiar to infant ears. Note, too, how the backing track deliberately recalls the sounds of a child’s music box. Finally, note how each stage of the scientist’s regression is accompanied by a change in voice as a distinct as his change in appearance – but that each ‘new’ voice is unmistakably a younger version of the old man’s. If there were any opportunity for a child to misunderstand and think the scientist has transformed, not into a younger version of himself, but into someone else, then the entire scene would collapse.

‘If I could save time in a bottle’ of course actually means ‘I can’t save time in a bottle – and neither can you’. It’s a daring, but entirely appropriate, message to deliver to children. The moral is a more sophisticated equivalent of that of most kids’ programming: work hard, capitalise on every opportunity and appreciate those around you. But where, in most children’s programmes, the reason for doing those things is because that is what good little girls and boys do – or because that is what teacher tells you or because that is how you do well at school and get into a good college – the implicit reason here is more honest and more profound.

You should seize the day, Henson tells you, because the moment you were born the countdown to your death began – and science can’t save you. (Not even the magical science, of miraculous potions and reality-bending gadgets, seen on kid’s television.) We all have to learn that life is precious, fragile and finite, he argues, so you may as well learn it now, whilst you’re still sitting cross-legged in front of children’s TV.

This simple and short scene is so cleverly conceived, and so elegantly executed, that its message still burns in the minds of many who saw it, just once and decades ago, as children. What’s more, its beauty is sufficient to moisten the eye of any parent now watching it for the first time. And that makes it a very great scene indeed.