By this I mean films that let us KNOW we are watching a movie.
Funny Games
The Holy Mountain
The Boss Of It All
This is all I can think of at the moment. How about you guys?
Rubber (2010)?
shareLet's start in 1930 and Groucho Marx having a "strange interlude" in Animal Crackers.
Shall wait and see if anyone can come up with an even earlier example...
"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan
Edwin Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" in 1903 maybe?
The final shot of the bandit shooting at the audience...
Agreed, he doesn't actually "speak" to the audience, but I suppose shooting at it is *some* form of "radical" communication?
Also he's not shooting at anybody inside the diegetic space: he is really shooting "at" the audience and this is not just a matter of subjective camera placement.
Here: https://youtu.be/BINBZE5XFR4?t=795
Just found out about this other early instance of 4th wall breaking: in Abel Gance's 1927 "Napoleon", in the sequence where everybody sings the French national anthem ("La Marseillaise") a man wearing a phrygian cap on a balcony in the foreground turns to the camera and asks "Why are you not singing too?".
shareDeadpool (2016)
(Probably not what you had in mind, though.)
C'est pas moi, je le jure! (2008)
share