A lot of people see cinema as a way to capture reality. Quite frankly, I do not see it that way. It is an artificial medium, and everyone watching knows it. The capturing reality mindset is needed for some pictures, but it is not a hard and fast rule. I think filmmakers embracing film’s artificiality can make for very interesting products.
One of my favorite ways to highlight that is by directly breaking the fourth wall, a storytelling technique that addresses the audience in very a direct way. It can make them complicit in a nefarious plot. It can accuse them. It can bring them in on a joke. It is a very fun device to use, and, for the most part, it works when it’s used.
Below is a pretty fun supercut of breaking the fourth wall in movies. Here, though, breaking the fourth wall is translated as looking directly at the lens. There are many other ways of breaking the fourth wall, but this seems to be the most popular and, in some cases, very discreet. The films included range from the fairly obvious — Fight Club, The Wolf of Wall Street — to films I did not even realized did this such as Silver Linings Playbook, Wanted.
Give the video a watch below and be prepared, there are 77 different films featured, all of which I’ve listed below the video in alphabetical order. [via Jswinney1]
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- The 400 Blows
- (500) Days of Summer
- Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
- Alfie (1966)
- Alfie (2004)
- Alphaville
- Amelie
- American Beauty
- American History X
- American Hustle
- Anchorman
- Animal House
- Annie Hall
- Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
- Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me
- Black Swan
- Boogie Nights
- Bronson
- Bruce Almighty
- A Clockwork Orange
- Crazy Stupid Love
- The Dark Knight
- The Dark Knight Rises
- Death Proof
- Django Unchained
- Do the Right Thing
- Donnie Darko
- Escape from L.A.
- Evil Dead
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Fight Club
- The Fountain
- Four Rooms
- Full Metal Jacket
- Funny Games (1997)
- Funny Games (2007)
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
- Goodfellas
- The Great Train Robbery (1903)
- High Fidelity
- Hot Tub Time Machine
- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
- The Ides of March
- Inglourious Basterds
- Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
- Kick-Ass
- Kill Bill Vol. 2
- Lord of War
- Magnolia
- The Mask
- The Master
- Melancholia
- Poetry
- Psycho (1960)
- Pulp Fiction
- Requiem for a Dream
- The Royal Tenenbaums
- A Scanner Darkly
- The Shining
- Shutter Island
- The Silence of the Lambs
- Silver Linings Playbook
- Spaceballs
- Superman
- This is the End
- This is England
- Trading Places
- Trainspotting
- Vanilla Sky
- Vertigo
- Wanted
- Wayne’s World
- We’re the Millers
- The Wolf of Wall Street
- The World’s End
