The Best Fourth Wall Breaks

[Johnny Textface]

It doesn't happen very often in the movies, but when it does (and it's done well) then huzzah..

Here's two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emvySA1-3t8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEXLCOqapWk

[Kane Jones]

One of my favourites from Top Secret!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSZwlMDSOvY

[Jemble Fred]

Ha – I KNEW that first one would be Murphy's BLT moment. The Airplane moment's nowhere near the same league, because it's a wacky unrealistic comedy from the start, but I'd love to know the story behind Eddie's glance to camera there, completely out of step with the tone of the rest of the film. One of the most inspired moments in comedy cinema.

It's not fourth-wall breaking, but isn't there a sequence in the first Pet Sematary where some nasty freaky creature emotes direct to camera? I seem to recall being scarred by it as a teen, and have never revisited the film.

[Gulftastic]

From Animal House:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KiY2sJHu8I

[Gulftastic]

And a wonderfully neat one from 30 Rock:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEfiwPUL4u4

[Consignia]

It's not a film and they break the fourth wall all the time, but this from the Young Ones has me giggling all the time even years after not seeing it:


This is actually very serious

[Beep Cleep Chimney]

The master.

[Thomas]

It was also good when James Bond wee'd out the screen onto the audience in GoldenEye.

[mr. logic]

"She said 'wife', right? You heard her."

[goldrush almighty]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU1CoYdctNw#t=3m56s

(contains simulated urination and one use of very strong language)

[Johnny Townmouse]

When I was a kid I ranked Eddie Murphy's look-to-camera as the funniest moment in any film.

I used to rewind the VHS tape to watch it over and over again.

I thought he was looking at the camera because what the old man said was so randomly specific, but I found out only a couple of years ago that the look is because he is being so patronising.

[Cerys]

One of my favourites from Top Secret!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSZwlMDSOvY

Yup, that's the one I had in mind as I clicked on the thread.

[small_world]

My favourite is in The Rock.
Sean connery and nick cage are dismantling a rocket, and Sean connery is being a bit rough with it.
Nick cage tells him off and Sean connery looks at the camera.
Fucking epic!
Massively against the flow of the movie.

If someone can find a clip of this, it's great to see.

[non capisco]

I have it in my head that at some point in the original Star Wars trilogy R2D2 swivels the top of his 'head' to 'look' at the camera in a slightly sardonic way, probably after C3P0 is fussing about over something. Does that happen? Probably not.

Oliver Hardy though, I agree with BCC, the absolute fucking master. The ones he gives in 'Dirty Work' where he's sitting in a fireplace covered in soot with bricks sporadically raining down on his head from an open chimney. Magic.

[Nobody Soup]

one of the coolest ones is from the beginning of harold and maude. having just faked his own suicide by setting himself on fire he walks into the room, freaking out the girl that was there to see him and feeling rather chuffed with himself...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa_H2zd8Ybs

[Custard]

Eddie had some choice ones in Bottom. Usually a simple shake of the head at Richie

[dr_christian_troy]

The entire series of It's Garry Shandling's Show consistently plays around with the concept of the fourth wall, often hilariously. This needs to be elaborated on in detail at some point, but for now I'll just recommend that you investigate if you haven't already.

[zomgmouse]

There's the rather famous one from Funny Games.

[gmoney]

[The Roofdog]

The Deadpool to A.C. Slater's Wolverine.

[Don_Preston]

Didn't Keenan and Kel used to bookend the show by talking to the audience, presumably out of character, to review the events in front of a stage curtain? If they were the same 'characters' as those in the actual show, it's a great piece of Absurdist existential theatre, especially regarding the honky shopkeeper.

Christ knows how I remember that as I loathed that programme.

[Tiny Poster]

Didn't Keenan and Kel used to bookend the show by talking to the audience, presumably out of character, to review the events in front of a stage curtain? If they were the same 'characters' as those in the actual show, it's a great piece of Absurdist existential theatre, especially regarding the honky shopkeeper.

Christ knows how I remember that as I loathed that programme.

That was a revival of a classic vaudeville tradition (and it predates that by centuries too, I bet). Jack Benny would do it on his show, as would George Burns and Gracie Allen. Naff as K&K could be, it was stuff like that which meant I could never hate them.

It was fun to point out to studenty Boosh fans a decade ago that they were just ripping off Kenan and Kel.

[billtheburger]

Right at the end of Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot, Barbara Harris' character winks at the audience and seems, to me, to suggest that Hitchcock knew it was his last film and that he's really enjoyed taking us for the ride.
I think it's the only instance of this happening in his films unless you count his cameos.

[Swoz_MK]

[BlodwynPig]

What's that Finger of Fudge?

Oh, The Omen. silly me.

[Serge]

"You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the World."

Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter all look at the camera in 'Fight Club'. Norton quite a few times, though my favourite is when he turns from the table wiping his mouth to tell us about Tyler's night job as a waiter. Marla looks at the camera at one point when she's on the phone to Norton, though off the top of my head, I can't remember which scene. But Pitt does the best one after Marla's line, "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school."

[Doomy Dwyer]

Here's nearly the moment when 'Joliet' Jake Blues (John Belushi) comedically breaks the forth wall in order to highlight a particularly clumsy piece of exposition by Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd).

"This is glue. Strong stuff"

I don't now how to do a screen grab, or if that's even the proper term for the thing I should be doing, so this'll have to do. It's during the 'Minnie the Moocher' sequence performed by Cab Calloway.

There's also this fantastic example of camp malevolence from Tony Sales during Iggy Pop's understated performance of 'Lust For Life' at the Manchester Apollo. I know it's not a film moment strictly speaking. It's much better than that. It's about thirty seconds in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD5X5OGLySI

[zomgmouse]

[Thomas]

Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter all look at the camera in 'Fight Club'. Norton quite a few times, though my favourite is when he turns from the table wiping his mouth to tell us about Tyler's night job as a waiter.

I think, in the commentary, they all have a laugh about Norton's mouth-wiping, which really is a great touch to the scene.

I'm not sure where I've got this information from, though, as I don't ever remember watching the film with the commentary on. In fact, my copy of Fight Club doesn't even have a commentary. But I also somehow remember them joking about the bit where Norton is sat on the toilet reading the IKEA catalogue. The plot thickens.

[Doomy Dwyer]

Martin Scorsese's 'Goodfellas' (1990) breaks the fourth wall, not just once. But twice. Firstly, and most stunningly, during the climactic court room scene where Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) steps out of the narrative with the words "Didn't matter".



Around him events continue as normal as he walks toward us, the audience, uttering a lament for his lost life, and by association, a condemnation of our dull existence. The second breaking comes within this first breaking of the fourth wall, wherein Henry breaks a fifth wall, and his judgement on us, the audience, is delivered in the harshest terms and he informs us that he, and by extension, we - the audience -  "get to live the rest of my life like a schnook" because he can't get the spaghetti he likes.



In 1990 Scorsese posed the question – has Henry entered our world? Or have we entered his? It is now 2013 and we, the audience, have yet to formulate a satisfactory response.