Cinematography technique · used in 8 films
Showing a movie that the characters watch in a theater, as part of the story. The 2 films comment on each other, and the line between them can blur.
Examples
François Truffaut · 1973
Meet Pamela runs inside Day for Night. The cliched melodrama sits next to the true lives of its cast. The contrast shows how movies turn real feeling into a scene.
Where to see it: Alexandre's death. The star of Meet Pamela dies on the way to the hospital after a car accident, and the shoot has to continue.
Woody Allen · 1985
The film shows Cecilia's cinema and the movie she keeps watching, also called The Purple Rose of Cairo. You see the characters inside it stuck, waiting and arguing with the audience. The 2 worlds mix when Baxter takes Cecilia into the film.
Where to see it: Inside the screen. Baxter takes Cecilia into the film world, where he defies his scripted romance.
Woody Allen · 1986
Mickey, Hannah's hypochondriac ex-husband, has an existential crisis after a clean medical report. By chance he sits through a screening of Duck Soup. Seeing the Marx Brothers makes him laugh and finds him a reason to carry on. The film inside the film does what his thinking could not.
Where to see it: The Duck Soup screening. Mickey watches the Marx Brothers on screen and starts to find some meaning.
Robert Altman · 1992
A classic movie plays in a theater at the moment Griffin goes looking for the man he thinks is threatening him. The film on that screen is about a poor man searching for his stolen bicycle, which makes Hollywood's polish look even emptier.
Where to see it: The Rialto Theater: Griffin goes to a screening of The Bicycle Thief in South Pasadena. He pretends to recognize David Kahane in the lobby and offers him a scriptwriting deal.
John Carpenter · 1995
The last scene has John wandering into a cinema to see a movie of his own story. He watches himself say the line about reality, and he breaks down in laughter. The film closes with the film that has taken him over.
Where to see it: The final scene: John enters a cinema and watches the film adaptation of In the Mouth of Madness replay his story. He bursts into hysterical laughter.
Bernardo Bertolucci · 2003
Clips from old movies play across the screen and the characters act out scenes from them. The movies tell you how these 3 see the world, and where their game comes from.
Where to see it: The Louvre race: the three run through the Louvre to beat the record set by a scene in a Godard film. Bertolucci cuts to the original clip.
Todd Haynes · 2007
Robbie Clark is an actor who plays Jack Rollins in a biopic called Grain of Sand. So the film shows a fake movie about Dylan inside a movie about Dylan. Each version comments on how a life gets turned into a story.
Where to see it: Robbie's biopic. The storyline includes scenes from Grain of Sand, in which Robbie plays Jack Rollins.
Terry Gilliam · 2018
Toby watches his old student film on a DVD in a hotel room. The film shows who he was and who he has become. It also tells you how much damage it did to the people in it.
Where to see it: The DVD scene. Toby plays The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in bed with the Boss's wife and has to escape when the Boss returns.
Questions