There was also Timecode which was shown from four different points of view simultaneously without any cuts (I think).
Although I didn’t much care for that movie.
Just Imagine was a science fiction musical comedy and probably one of the more influential SF films of the 30s (it flopped so badly that Hollywood didn’t try any feature-length SF for years).
The Women (1939) not only had an all-woman cast of over 130, but all animals in it are female, and none of the art on the walls ever showed a male.
Two movies had their entire cast nominated for Best Actor Oscars. One was Give 'Em Hell Harry, a one-man show by James Whitmore. The other will have to go in a spoiler box. Sleuth. And don’t be confused by the IMDB credits – the movie added names of nonexistant actors to the credits, which the IMDB duly reported.
Reservoir Dogs is a movie about a robbery, but the robbery itself is never shown.
Didn’t George Lucas invent the “no credits” thing? I seem to recall an industry furor from the Director’s Guild that the first Star Wars movie didn’t give any credits in the beginning (it’s on IMDb trivia).
Clue , which was based on the popular board game, was filmed with 3 different endings.
During its original theatrical release, the ending you saw depended on which theatre you saw the film in.
There have been several movies with this gimmick, but the one I recall starred Veronica Lake (grrrrrwwwllll…Veronica Lake):
The protagonist of the film is never shown, you just see things through his “eyes” and hear his voice.
The name of the film escapes me. I want to say it also had that it had Alan Ladd in it, but I may be mistaken.
Plnnr, I think you’re thinking of Lady in the Lake, mentioned above by ArchiveGuy.
There’s another sub-category: black & white movies with color segments. Wizard of Oz, of course; plus Picture of Dorian Grey – the picture was in color. * Mighty Joe Young * (the original) IIRC had a burning building in color.
“The Women,” mentioned above for its all-femaleness, also has a color segment, a fashion show. It’s interesting to see how styles that look natural enough in black and white are atrocious eyesores in their actual colors.
Although, I believe a lot of movies of the era had fashion shows in them, so I don’t claim that as unique. Singin’ in the Rain has one years later.
I don’t know for sure, but was Lawrence of Arabia’s start unique, in that it consisted of a black screen for the entire length of the title music? This was so that people could concentrate on the music, and I susspect so that with eyes adjusted to the darkness, it makes the desert seem all that much brighter at the start of the film.
Caligula is probably unique for many bad reasons.
Guy Ritchie uses a similar gimmick, but not with every single violent action, in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.
Don’t know if you’d call this unique, but the movie Riff-Raff was subtitled in the US, because the cast had such thick “scouse” accents that the director feared Americans wouldn’t understand a word. He was mostly right.
A bunch of “epics” in the '50s and '60s began with Overtures, many that even showed a title that said “Overture”. I just saw Khartoum recently, and I’m pretty sure it begins this way.
Interesting theory, but Lawrence doesn’t begin in the desert-- it begins with shots of Lawrence preparing to ride his motorcycle.
I read it, I read it. In fact I fired up my DVD to look for the scene. I’m not up to sitting down at this late hour to watch the whole thing in its entirety, so I’ve been skipping around to find that scene.
Regardless, i did find a non-seamless cut. The scene where Janet makes an appearance starts with a direct cut to her from Ken.
But like I said, the intent was to make the movie appear seamless, thus maintaining the real-time aspect and the feel of the original play. The fact that I had to consciously look for a direct cut in a movie I’ve seen a dozen times indicates that Mr. Hitchcock succeeded. Or that I’m very much in love with Joan Chandler.
Getting back on topic, as far as I know, Fargo was the only movie that indicated it was based on a true story, when it fact wasn’t. Liars.
Then there’s The Terror of Tiny Town, perhaps the only all-midget western.
and props to ArchiveGuy for the mention of Skidoo and its all-sung credits. I used to work at a radio station that had a copy of the sound track album. IIRC, the majority or the whole of side 2 was devoted to the sung closing credits.
The 1968 film is also noted as the sadly last movie for Groucho Marx, who plays God.
It also may be the only movie to list bit parts for both Harry Nilsson (tower guard) and Slim Pickins (telephone operator).
In fact, the plot just plain sucks, but the plethora of cameos in sometimes odd choices keeps one mesmerized - Arnold Stang, Mickey Rooney, George Raft (!), Jackie Gleason, Frankie Avalon, Frank Gorshin, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith (hey, a triple reunion of TV Batman villians!), Peter Lawford, Carol Channing and football star Roman Gabriel. Whew!
Oh, and don’t forget the LSD…
Blair Witch Project, too.
The psychic Criswell’s closing warning to the audience in Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959):
An extreme example of this is The Message (1976), a dramatization of the origins of Islam. However, to quote IMDB:
So you don’t even get to hear the protagonist’s voice!
One movie that contains a scene combining both a camera-POV and jsc1953’s “splash of color in a black-and-white-movie” is Spellbound (1945) - Hitchcock yet again! The movie ends with a character’s suicide by gunshot into the camera, with a red splash screen underscoring the result.
MASH*, like Citizen Kane, had its end credits spoken.
You can add Farenheit 451 to the list. No text was shown in the movie at all, except for glimpses of the books as they burned.
DD
The novel and movie were MASH, the TV series was MASH*.
All of the credits for Citizen Kane were printed on screen, none were spoken. You may be thinking of The Magnificent Ambersons.