Why do actors, directors, and writers love to have characters turn to the camera and directly address the audience? What is it about breaking the fourth wall that makes it so popular a technique in films throughout the decades, from silent cinema (The Great Train Robbery) to New Hollywood (Annie Hall), and on to today’s modern blockbusters (Deadpool)?

With the written word, it's easy to convey characters' internal thoughts and feelings; the author can tell the reader directly through third-person narration, or write in the first person and have the character express their thoughts and feelings about the plot, other characters, and what is occurring. In theater, conventions such as soliloquy and asides have been with us for centuries; when Shakespeare took those conventions to new artistic heights, it became inevitable that they would stay as a central tenet of writing for the stage and eventually evolve into something similar but different after the invention of motion pictures. In movies and television, turning to the audience and directly addressing them can have much more impact.

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Due to the nature of the medium, addressing the camera can remind audiences that they are watching an artificial construct; conversely, it can also be used to strengthen the artifice, as characters draw us into their conflict, making us complicit. Such a powerful tool can only be employed sparingly (to draw specific attention to itself for humor or to make a point) or extensively (having a character address the audience at length throughout a picture, a one-sided conversation).

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Image Via Warner Bros. 

One of the earliest surviving examples of a fourth wall break is the closing shot in The Great Train Robbery (1903): in a standalone shot, separate from the train-robbery narrative, the leader of the gang draws his gun and empties the barrel right at the audience. This is not particularly remarkable by modern standards, but in its day, it was a unique selling point for the film, and those shots have reverberated through the history of film. When Martin Scorsese was making his masterpiece, the gangster odyssey Goodfellas, one of the greatest directors of all time gave a nod to this iconic scene: again divorced from the narrative, the film concludes with the psychopathic mobster Tommy (Joe Pesci), framed in exactly the same way as the cowboy, taking aim and shooting at the audience. The shot reminds us that little has changed in the world of organized crime in the 80-plus years between productions - criminals can make a lot of money on their way to the top, but it always ends in arrests and violence.

The shot of Tommy is the third fourth-wall break in Goodfellas, all of which happen in quick succession in the last couple of minutes of the movie. Henry (Ray Liotta) has been narrating in voice-over throughout - swapping with his wife (Lorraine Braco) whenever her point of view is required - but upon turning over his accomplices to the law, he turns his attention to us. The fantasy mobster-life comes to its inevitable conclusion and so does the artifice of Goodfellas; Henry, sitting in front of the star-spangled banner, looks straight at us and reels off a list of the perks afforded to him due to his gangster lifestyle which he is now losing to spend the rest of his life “like a schnook.” Just before Tommy’s emergence, we see Henry, the once sharp-suited gangster, emerge from his suburban witness-protection home to collect his paper in a grubby bathrobe, and he laughs to the camera, acknowledging the irony.

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Image Via Paramount Pictures

The restrained use of the breaking of the fourth wall can also be used for comedic effect. There is a rich tradition, with far more examples than in motion pictures, of addressing the audience in cartoon shorts. Perhaps the most beloved examples can be found in the Roadrunner series - usually involving Wile E Coyote glancing fleetingly to the camera as he realizes he has run out of floor in the split second before he plummets to the ground. The same technique can be applied to live-action for big laughs - take the comedy Trading Places, for example. The bigoted, rich, callous Duke Brothers (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche) carry out a plot to conduct a social experiment, switching the lives of their pompous managing director (Dan Ackroyd) and a street hustler (Eddie Murphy). In one scene, they begin explaining the concept of commodities in extremely patronizing tones; to acknowledge that he knows he is being spoken down to, Murphy cursorily stares down the lens before resuming his role in the narrative, never to reference the fourth wall again.

A more elaborate breaking of the cinematic illusion for comedic effect takes place in Annie Hall. Alvy (Woody Allen) and Annie (Diane Keaton) are in line at the movie theater. Alvy becomes increasingly irritated by a pretentious loud-mouth in the queue, pontificating to his date about his interpretation of the media theorist Marshall McLuhan. When he can take no more, Alvy pulls the real-life academic into the frame to address the trumpet-voiced nuisance. “You know nothing of my work…How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing!” Alvy then turns to the camera, smiling, and says “Boy, if life were only like this!” In a film full of memorable one-liners and comedic set-ups, it stands out as perhaps the funniest and most ingenious moment.

Sometimes, addressing the audience directly can be used to help get an audience on side with a flawed character, to help us understand their thought process and improve the chances of us finding them likable, or at least make us want to spend time with them as they go about morally questionable activities. High Fidelity is a superb example, taking its cue from the 60s British comedy Alfie and running even further with the idea. It helps that it was adapted from a book (by Nick Hornby) written in the first person, and also that John Cusack is so inherently engaging as Rob, the music-obsessed narcissist trying and failing to get to grips with his disastrous love life. Despite his myopic selfishness and self-obsession, we come to empathize with Rob simply through spending so much time with him as he explains why he is terrible without ever seeming to catch on to that himself.

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Image Via BBC

A more extreme version of Rob can be found in Pheobe Waller-Bridge’s instant-classic sitcom, Fleabag. The titular main character (Waller-Bridge) doesn’t just break the fourth wall, she climbs out of the TV and watches the show with you. As she goes about her daily life, stealing precious art from her step-mother, fighting with her brother-in-law, and trying to seduce a Catholic priest, she turns to the camera often mid-sentence (or mid-sex) to make a sly comment on proceedings, or even just pull a face to express her delight or fury. Despite being one of the more morally dubious characters in recent memory, we go along for the ride, almost entirely because of this extensive use of fourth-wall-breaking (and Waller-Bridge's effortless charm).

Sometimes a fourth-wall break can be used in order to comment on the film itself, or even the genre the film belongs to. In Deadpool, in the tradition of the source comic book, once he becomes the Merc with a Mouth (Ryan Reynolds), he offers opinions on superhero cliches, sometimes directly addressing the audience such as in the scene where he informs us he had to give Wolverine sexual favors to get his own spin-off movie. The result is surprisingly subversive. However, when the same technique is explored by Michael Haneke, the effect is devastating. In his critique of violent cinema, Funny Games (first made in 1997 in Austria, then remade almost shot-for-shot in 2007 with an American cast), he takes the concept of a home invasion movie and turns it on the audience.

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Image Via Concorde-Castle Rock/Turner

Two mysterious young men turn up at the holiday home of a wealthy family and proceed to mentally and physically torture them in ways far more disturbing and realistic than the usual horror fare; at various points, one of them looks to the camera and smirks, at one point asking “Don’t you want to see how it ends?” as the movie becomes unbearable. When the mother gets the upper hand and one of the antagonists is shot, the surviving sadist finds the remote control, rewinds the movie, and lets it play out again without the mother getting the upper hand - the protagonists are doomed, and so is the audience. Unlike the other movies on the list, Haneke breaks with cinematic convention in order to call out his audience for the very act of watching violent films.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Adam McKay uses a unique and hilarious spin on the concept in The Big Short. A movie about the financial crisis of 2008 could run the risk of being too involved and complicated for a mainstream picture intended to entertain, so McKay uses a series of celebrity cameos to explain dry or potentially boring concepts in a self-referential, engaging way. The most notable example is a lesson on sub-prime mortgages delivered by Margot Robbie as she sips champagne in a lavish bubble bath, but there are other examples dotted throughout the film to explain to the layperson what happened to the financial world and why we should be angry about it, along with fourth wall breaks from the narrator, Ryan Gosling.

There is a lot of potential for diverse interpretations of the breaking of the fourth wall. It can be funny or thoughtful, incisive or inclusive. It is little wonder there are so many and varied examples throughout the history of movies. Now, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) - You’re still here? The article’s over! Go home.