Watching The Longest Yard the other night, I was once again irritated by that split screen thing that was popular for a few years. Example: Whole screen is devoted to one shot, then that screen moves into its own landscape window at the bottom, then two more portrait windows open at the top showing different reactions to the bottom window, etc.
I can also think of Bullitt, Charlie Varrick and The Thomas Crown Affair that all did this, the latter being the worst offender. I recall one shot of Steve McQueen on a polo horse split into something like 75 tiny windows. Ugh.
So, how many movies used this gimmick? Can we list them? It stopped pretty abruptly too - was there a public backlash that caused everyone to stop doing it? How long did it last? What was the first/last movie* to do it?
*I realize there have been recent movies using this as gimmick (Timecode) or homage (Ocean’s Eleven) - I mean what was the last movie to do it back when it was commonplace.
It seems to have been a 70s thing and mostly died out by the early 80s. I’ve always been rather fond of the technique, personally, at least when it is used well.
Robert Aldrich (who also directed The Longest Yard) used it rather effectively during a missile launch sequence in the 1977 thriller Twilight’s Last Gleaming. The movie is okay, but the sequence is worth watching to see splitscreen used well. I’m sure others can think of later films to use it.
I remember a 1996 TV or cable movie called Mistrial with Bill Pullman that used it, but very badly.
I think the movie The Boston Strangler started this trend. You see it in a lot of late 1960’s, early 1970’s movies. The documentary Woodstock used it very effectively, and I think it was used in several caper-type movies where it could effectively show a plan going down on several fronts, but it was also used for no particular reason in movies such as Airport.
Don’t forget 2000’s Timecode, in which the entire film is shot in one take from four cameras following four “stories” (sort of). Each camera gets one quadrant of the screen for the entire film, with no cuts at all. Interesting and grand experiment, pulled off pretty well I thought. Not a great film, but certainly an admirable attempt at an almost unworkable concept.
This was what I thought about when I saw the title. Timecode, as you said, wasn’t a good film at all - I think it collapses under the weight of it’s own gimmicks (in addition to being four stories simultaneously - none of which are overly interesting - there’s a lot of improv, and it shows).
Still, it’s a neat concept. I think you could make a really cool Aliens-ripoff movie using this technique, following different folks through the abandoned spaceship or whatever as they’re hunted by the creatures.
. . . Eve saunters in to mention that the same split-screen approach was used in Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927) and a very early (c1910) silent movie who’s name I can’t remember right now.
De Palma used the technique pretty effectively in Carrie, too. It worked because it wasn’t used at all until the deadly prom scene, so it had more impact.
Also wanted to point out “More American Graffiti” as another movie using this technique. I figure no one mentioned it because I’m the only person who saw it.
So, sounds like although it was used as early as 1927, it became really popular following the IBM exhibit in 1964. I’d still like to know if there’s a reason why it sort of petered out in the late 70’s…
