Jack Elam, at the end of Support Your Local Sheriff!, has a killer wrap-up of the movie which he delivers right into the camera.
Right past a befuddled tourist who wasn’t supposed to be there!
The end of Monty Python’s the Holy Grail, surely? Not as obvious breaking of the forth wall as some of the other examples, but it clearly is:
The only other example that Monty Python is less obvious than is Blazing Saddles, and that only slightly.
Well, its not addressing the viewer directly which is the most obvious “breaking the fourth wall.” It wouldn’t be at all (just another cinematic world, of cops finding a murderer, on top of the medival one) if it wasn’t for the final shot where the cop notices the camera.
A non-humorous fourth wall breaking occurs in the movie “The Conversation” - Gene Hackman, an expert in covert surveillance comes to believe that his apartment is bugged, and tears the place apart looking for the devices. He doesn’t find them, but as the view pans past his pathetic form to show the wrecked rooms, the pan stops, and reverses. We’re watching the surveillance!
Is that fourth wall breaking? That’s just good cinematography. Gene Hackman’s character doesn’t show he knows he’s a character in a movie.
I figured it puts the viewers in the place of the unseen characters who installed the equipment and are using it, breaking the wall. YMMV
So if we are talking about borderline cases what about actors playing themselves (in films not specifically about Hollywood). Does that count as breaking the fourth wall? E.g. something that just came up in This thread, Bill Murray in Zombieland:
“Breaking the fourth wall” is kind of an inaccurate phrase. What it really is, is acknowledging that a fourth wall doesn’t actually exist except in the viewers mind.
The final shot of Medium Cool has the camera turning to film the audience. That’s keeping with the theme of the film that the media influences everything.
I don’t think so. Bill Murray isn’t aware that he’s a character in a movie. He’s playing a character in the fictional Zombieland universe - it’s just that some famous actors from our universe, like Bill Murray, are also famous actors in that universe. Some of the humor does come from the frisson of Bill Murray playing Bill Murray while other well-known actors like Woody Harrelson are playing completely fictional characters, but that’s not really the same as breaking the fourth wall.
Come to think of it, wasn’t the 1991-1994 teen sitcom Clarissa Explains It All largely based on fourth-wall-breaking (or fourth-wall-nonexistence)?
As I’ve read about the show (I never watched it myself), a routine feature of the series is Clarissa talking directly to the audience about things going on in her life. (And come to also think of it, didn’t Dobie Gillis regularly do this too?) It was reputedly popular with teenagers of all then-known genders, shattering the presumption that teen boys would never be interested in a teen-girl sitcom.
I never watching this show (not being too interested in the inner-monologues of teenage girls as a teenage boy) but weren’t those soliloquies ? That seems more a way to explain the inner-thoughts of a character without having a ton of expositional dialog, rather than breaking the fourth wall.
And I just realized the literal interpretation of this phrase for the first time.
It’s Gary Shandling’s Show broke the fourth wall constantly, starting with the theme song. Here’s one version that’s a double fourth-wall break:
In addition, he would include the studio audience (one time he talked about a big band, only to cut to the studio audience playing on toy trumpets). And when a scene skipped several hours, Gary would so his “time thing” to get there (he once missed an important dinner because someone else used it).
Hang on a second there is clearly only one answer to this question (or at least a couple from the same show): The awesome 80s BBC show the Young Ones had a couple of amazing fourth wall breaking moments. This is the best one IMO, which also leads with one of my favourite lines from the show (it’s a satire of the classical Oxbridge-educated shakespearean-trained “lovey” actors who dominate British acting):
Mr. Roper would often mug at the camera after a particularly harsh insult to his wife on Three’s Company
The current sit-com “Call Me Kat” opens with Mayim Bialik talking to us, and then closes with everyone in that show’s cast popping into the last scene and waving goodbye (and often some commentary during the episode).
As an aside, if you’re looking for a decent, not-great show - this one works. Wasn’t sure on the first episode (the fourth-wall stuff in particular was somewhat jarring) but it grew on us.
What is the sitcom that ended at the airport with them saying, “No, wait, we can’t go. It’s cancelled.”
“What, the flight?”
“No, our show!”
And it shows the set and everyone waves goodbye. What an ending. What show was that?