Film Vocabulary: The Fourth Wall

The Fourth Wall

The fourth wall is the imaginary invisible wall at the front of the stage in a theatre, or the screen of a film, and generally refers to the boundary between the fiction and the audience.

The term "breaking the fourth wall" is used in film, theatre, television, and literary works. It refers to a character directly addressing an audience, or actively acknowledging (through breaking character or through dialogue) that the characters and action are not real. The audience is made explicitly aware of the fact that they are viewing fiction. Various artists have used this jarring effect to make a point, as it forces an audience to see the fiction in a new light and to watch it less passively.

The sudden breaking of the fourth wall is often employed for comical effect, as a sort of visual non-sequitur; the unexpected breaking from normal conventions of narrative fiction can surprise the audience and create humor. Some regard especially sudden breaking of the fourth wall so jarring that it actually detracts from a story's humor. However, when employed consistently throughout a story for narrative effect, it is usually (and arguably, paradoxically) incorporated into the audience's normal suspension of disbelief. [Source]

Some examples of Breaking The Fourth Wall:

Blazing Saddles - Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) speaks to the camera several times, and, at one point, rides his horse past a full orchestra playing the score for the movie; an old woman takes a break from being beaten by thugs to remark to the audience "Have you ever seen such cruelty?", and Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman) questions exactly how he will pull off his evil plan before looking into the camera and saying "Why am I asking you?" Later Lamarr tells his group of henchmen, "You will only be risking your lives, while I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor!" Near the end of the film, the characters leave the fictional realm of Rock Ridge and enter the actual Warner Bros. studio, literally breaking a wall in the process. One character, just before he punches the director of another film, shouts "Piss on you; I'm working for Mel Brooks!". When Lamarr tries to escape into a movie theater, the movie he watches turns out to be Blazing Saddles itself, and he sees that the hero is still on his trail.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - The titular character and his superior, Basil Exposition try to explain the workings of time travel to each other before Austin says "I've gone cross-eyed." Basil replies that it's best not to think too much about how it all works, and turns to the camera and says, "That goes for you all, too" as Austin grins sheepishly at the camera. Later, as Austin and Felicity are driving down a highway, Austin remarks how England looks in no way like Southern California, where the film was shot. As he says this, he looks directly at the audience. Later, Powers also addresses the audience when he introduces a musical performance by Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Ferris (Matthew Broderick) addresses the audience directly on several occasions, including a famous scene at the end where Ferris comes out in his bathrobe, looks directly into the camera, and says "You're still here? It's over. Go home."

Spaceballs - There are several instances where the actors know they are making a movie, such as Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) accidentally killing a camera man during a lightsaber scene, crashing into a camera during a close-up, etc. At one point, after a lengthy, obvious piece of plot exposition by Colonel Sandurz (George Wyner), Helmet turns to the camera and says "Everybody got that?" During the diner scene, John Hurt (playing himself) says "Oh no, not again", due to the fact that this has happened to him before in Alien. When they have lost Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) and Princess Vespa (Daphne Zuniga), Dark Helmet and Colonel Sandurzz watch "Spaceballs, the Video" to find out where their quarry has gone. Also, the video collection in which Spaceballs was found included several other Mel Brooks films. In a particularly ironic moment, as they fast-forward through the video, they come to the exact moment when they are watching the video and they watch themselves watching the video of themselves watching the video of themselves, etc. Later in the movie, Yogurt (Mel Brooks) reveals the several pieces of merchandise made for the film to our heroes, including Spaceballs the Cereal, Spaceballs the Coloring Book, and Spaceballs the Flamethrower. Also, as Lone Starr leaves, he asks if they'll ever meet again. Yugurt replies by saying they'd definitely meet again in the sequel Spaceballs II: The Search for More Money. Yet another such moment is during a chase where Vespa, Lone Starr, Barf and Dot Matrix jump through a closing hatch, only to be captured by soldiers. They are paraded in front of the general, who asks them to "turn around", and it is revealed that they are not the real characters, for example Vespa being shown as a man with facial hair, smoking a cigar. The general responds to this by shouting at the guards: "You idiots! These are not them! You've captured their stunt doubles!"