mengm@homxa.UUCP (P.MENG) (04/02/85)
> If you take a look at traditional American film you will find that > almost all of it has one thing in common; it pretends it's not there > > When Woody Allen steps out of the narrative of one of his films to > address the audience we are immediately ripped out of the action > and reminded that we are indeed watching a film. This seems to warrant further discussion, this business of breaking traditional rules of the cinema. Monty Python are famous for this kind of thing. I can picture them in their early days, figuring out what these "rules" are, and then methodically finding creative ways to break them. Sort of anti- establishment in a way. Some examples follow; The "cheese shop" scene when the background music is getting noticably louder and all of a sudden John Cleese turns to the Greek Musicians and tells them to shut up. Kind of a surprise since you've been cinema-brainwashed to think that the music was coming from nowhere. "Holy Grail" scene where the young maiden (a Python in drag) in the castle is about to break into song as you can hear the music building in the background. All of a sudden King Arthur yells out to stop the music (and it does) as he will not put up with any of this foolishness. "Forest scene" where a group of the Pythons are in an African jungle and they seem to be hopelessly lost when all of a sudden they realize that there is a cameraman there and maybe he knows the way out. They repeat this scene about three times, forcing you to realize that no matter where they go there is someone taking their picture. "Wrong sketch" scenes where one of the python members goes into a room only to find out he is in the wrong sketch. There is a variation on this when one of the members leaves the room and actually gets involved in both sketches as he walks in and out of the door. The odd part is that when he goes out the door he winds up on a boat in the middle of the ocean. I guess I'm starting to ramble but I think you get the idea. Peter Meng
urban@spp2.UUCP (Mike Urban) (04/05/85)
In article <864@homxa.UUCP> mengm@homxa.UUCP (P.MENG) writes: > This seems to warrant further discussion, this business >of breaking traditional rules of the cinema. > Monty Python are famous for this kind of thing. I can picture >them in their early days, figuring out what these "rules" are, and then >methodically finding creative ways to break them. Sort of anti- >establishment in a way. Some examples follow... The only non-comedic example of this "breaking the rules" sort of meta-cinema that I can think of is the (relatively recent) "French Lieutenant's Woman" in which you watch not only a historical film but a second story involving the (fictitious) actors who perform in that film. Quite remarkable. The earliest comedic example I can think of is in the Marx Brothers' "Animal Crackers" in which Groucho announces that he's about to have a "Strange Interlude" at which point the other actors freeze and Groucho performs a weird soliloquy directly to the camera. There are later examples in the Marx Brothers films as well. -- Mike Urban {ucbvax|decvax}!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban "You're in a maze of twisty UUCP connections, all alike"
wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (04/08/85)
The main film figures I think of when discussing "stepping out of the movie" are Groucho Marx and Bob Hope. Both of them made their asides to the audience a well-known feature of their films.
albert@ucbvax.ARPA (Anthony Albert) (04/09/85)
>The earliest comedic example I can think of is in the Marx Brothers' >"Animal Crackers" in which Groucho announces that he's about to >have a "Strange Interlude" at which point the other actors freeze >and Groucho performs a weird soliloquy directly to the camera. This was a spoof of the recent broadway hit by Eugene O'neill called "Strange Interlude", in which the characters do just what Groucho does i.e., soliloquize. This was made into a movie with Clark Gable a few years after Animal Crackers: 1932.
tlh@akgua.UUCP (T.L. Harris [Tom]) (04/10/85)
...
The first film that comes to mind when the subject of "stepping out
of the movie" is brought is *Tom Jones*. Some of his one-liners were
classic!
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From the Pond of the Phrog
akgua!tlh ... AT^3