What major motion picture, released since, say, 1960, has the smallest cast?
By “cast” I mean “people who appear on the screen, whether or not they say anything (and that includes extras).” I don’t mean “people whose photographs appear on the screen.” Crowd scenes are included, so if, for example, the movie shows only one guy for the first 119 minutes, then in minute 120 he’s in a full baseball stadium, then the cast is >1.
I nominate The Others (2001). IMDB only lists 14 people, and most of those are on-screen for a minute or less (some of them for only a few seconds, and don’t say any words). Of the fourteen, only six of them are in the movie for more than a few minutes. But they’re on the screen all the same, so they count.
Three cast members. I saw it on television after it came out, and it was the first “post-apocalyptic” scenario I’d ever seen. Kind of freaked me out as a kid.
*Give 'em hell, Harry *, a one man show about Harry Truman should be considered a major motion picture. James Whitmore was nominated for an Academy Award.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf had four cast members: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Sega and Sandy Dennis. The IMDB page says there was a fifth, a Frank Flanagan who played the “Host of Inn (uncredited)”. I don’t remember him, nor do I remember anything about an inn.
IIRC, there are a number of people in the background during their conversation, and Wallace Shawn looks out the window from his cab on the way home, so that’s even more people (according to the rules of the OP).
Yeah, but this is essentially a one-man stand-up concert performance. It’s not a fiction film, which I think should be a condition, plus…are you absolutely sure there are no shots of the audience at all?
Is it really fair to include one-person shows? Several comedians have concert movies and there are broadway one-person acts that are filmed, so it seems that the criteria should include a film or play with dialogue and a person in one character for the duration of a single story.
How many did Castaway have with Tom Hanks? They compared it to the Jimmy Stewart movie about Charles Lindbergh, in that a fine actor had to carry the bulk of the movie alone.
