The unnecessary American remake of the Swedish film “Let the Right One In”, starts near the beginning of the story and then goes back to the beginning. I’m guessing because the film makers thought they needed more excitement in the first reel of “Let Me In” to placate the impatient American teenagers that most movies are aimed at.
Should read, “…starts near the MIDDLE of the story and then goes back to the beginning.”
Dr. Zhivago.
One of my all time favorites: Heavenly Creatures
Catch-22 starts near the end, then goes back.
And that there was an episode written backwards, similar to Memento, where after a scene, you see the scene that preceded it.
I’ll take your word for it, since I didn’t actually like the show.
There was an episode of Frasier that did the same. (Except that every scene was months or years before the previous one, not immediately preceding it)
Neither did I but I did catch the finale.
Both the 1962 and 1997 versions of Lolita begin with Humbert Humbert driving to confront Claire Quilty, and then starting back at the beginning to tell the story of what led up to this encounter."
Another one:
Doesn’t American Beauty open with a voice-over by the deceased protagonist?
(I can’t find confirmation on either Wikipedia or IMDB.com.)
Oh, yeah-- Love Story. The Oliver character is standing outdoors alone asking “What can you say about a twenty-year old girl who died?”
Kinda’ gives away the most key plot element from the start. I recall my father finding it hard to “feel sorry” for her. Partly because it was incomprehensible to him that a college woman could cuss, and still be likable/lovable. (He was born in 1913.) He gave the inevitability of her death as a another reason it didn’t work for him.
See post 32.
Darn! And I even made a word search for American Beauty. There must have been a missspelink on my part.
The way I recall it, he says something like ‘a few months from now, I’ll be dead.’ But the story proceeds in linear fashion. It’s a prediction of what will happen before the end of the movie, but it doesn’t actually happen until the end.
Am I misremembering?
Just caught Catch Me if you Can on TV.
I missed the beginning, but if i recall correctly doesn’t it start out with a scene in France?
Yep, I was going to mention this one too.
Most of the movie Saving Private Ryan is framed in the context of a WW2 vet (revealed, unsurprisingly, to be the eponymous Private Ryan) visiting a grave site and remembering past events.
Interestingly, The Shawshank Redemption (as with the story the screenplay is based on) is told mostly in flashback - narrated in a voice-over in the past tense - but by the end of the movie, “catches up” to the present tense.
And of course, all movies involving time travel to the past (such as “Back To the Future”) are, in a sense, showing the ending first.