Breaking the Fourth Wall: A Supercut

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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]

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
  2. The 400 Blows
  3. (500) Days of Summer
  4. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
  5. Alfie (1966)
  6. Alfie (2004)
  7. Alphaville
  8. Amelie
  9. American Beauty
  10. American History X
  11. American Hustle
  12. Anchorman
  13. Animal House
  14. Annie Hall
  15. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
  16. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me
  17. Black Swan
  18. Boogie Nights
  19. Bronson
  20. Bruce Almighty
  21. A Clockwork Orange
  22. Crazy Stupid Love
  23. The Dark Knight
  24. The Dark Knight Rises
  25. Death Proof
  26. Django Unchained
  27. Do the Right Thing
  28. Donnie Darko
  29. Escape from L.A.
  30. Evil Dead
  31. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
  32. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
  33. Fight Club
  34. The Fountain
  35. Four Rooms
  36. Full Metal Jacket
  37. Funny Games (1997)
  38. Funny Games (2007)
  39. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
  40. Goodfellas
  41. The Great Train Robbery (1903)
  42. High Fidelity
  43. Hot Tub Time Machine
  44. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
  45. The Ides of March
  46. Inglourious Basterds
  47. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
  48. Kick-Ass
  49. Kill Bill Vol. 2
  50. Lord of War
  51. Magnolia
  52. The Mask
  53. The Master
  54. Melancholia
  55. Poetry
  56. Psycho (1960)
  57. Pulp Fiction
  58. Requiem for a Dream
  59. The Royal Tenenbaums
  60. A Scanner Darkly
  61. The Shining
  62. Shutter Island
  63. The Silence of the Lambs
  64. Silver Linings Playbook
  65. Spaceballs
  66. Superman
  67. This is the End
  68. This is England
  69. Trading Places
  70. Trainspotting
  71. Vanilla Sky
  72. Vertigo
  73. Wanted
  74. Wayne’s World
  75. We’re the Millers
  76. The Wolf of Wall Street
  77. The World’s End
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