In the opening moments of Vladimir, Netflix\u2019s new erotic drama series, the protagonist M (Rachel Weisz) is sprawled on a couch in her negligee, writing in her notepad. She leans towards the camera, then stares into the lens to address you, the viewer, on your couch. <\/p>\n
In film and television, this is called \u201cbreaking the fourth wall\u201d. It is a ploy of metafiction<\/a>: a kind of self-aware mode of storytelling.<\/p>\n The fourth wall is the invisible plane<\/a> through which the camera observes the action. To break the fourth wall is to play with \u2013 or sever \u2013 audiences\u2019 suspension of disbelief, and abandon the norms of screen narration. <\/p>\n The history of breaking the fourth wall is almost as long as the history of cinema itself<\/a>. Edwin S. Porter\u2019s film The Great Train Robbery ends with an outlaw firing his gun directly towards the camera. Back in 1903, audiences ducked for cover.<\/p>\n Nearly a century later, director Martin Scorsese paid homage to Porter in Goodfellas (1990) in a scene where Mobster Tommy DeVito (Jo Pesci) fires his gun directly at the screen. Here, the fourth wall break is used in an existential moment for Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) \u2013 rather than for pure shock.<\/p>\n In fact, the shock value of the technique has depleted over time, as audiences have become more media literate.<\/p>\n Making the invisible visible<\/p>\n The fourth wall breaks from early cinema fast disappeared with the industrialisation of the medium. The rise of the American studio system privileged some film techniques over others.<\/p>\n The \u201cClassical Hollywood<\/a>\u201d style \u2013 think Casablanca (1942) \u2013 was built on a premise of invisibility, from the carefully directed eye-lines of actors, to \u201ccontinuity\u201d editing that stitched together different camera angles.<\/p>\n In Breathless (\u00c0 bout de souffle, 1959) Jean-Luc Godard opted for jump-cuts<\/a> and \u201cdirect address\u201d. This is when a character speaks to, or looks directly at, the viewer. <\/p>\n Today, direct address is used widely across genres, from Barbie<\/a> (2023), to Marvel\u2019s Deadpool films (2016, 2018, 2024), and Jane Austen adaptations such as Persuasion (2022).<\/p>\n On television, we\u2019ve seen women creators and characters explore the power of direct address in a re-calibration of the \u201cmale gaze<\/a>\u201d. <\/p>\n One example is Phoebe Waller-Bridges\u2019 confessions to the camera in Fleabag (2016\u201319). Cinematographer Tony Miller notes how<\/a> creative camera choices work in conjunction with direct address to make viewers \u201ccomplicit in her [character\u2019s] journey\u201d.<\/p>\n The direct gaze<\/p>\n A fourth wall break is not always dialogue-driven. In Persona (1966) film auteur Ingmar Bergman directed his actors to stare deep into the abyss of the camera lens, delivering existential malaise. <\/p>\n This direct gaze has been remediated for streaming programs, including in the Fourth wall breaks can also be graphic. In Pulp Fiction, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) traces a square of light on the screen with her finger instead of calling Vincent Vega (John Travolta) a \u201csquare\u201d. <\/p>\n And in Michael Haneke\u2019s films Funny Games (1997, 2007) a home invader literally \u201crewinds\u201d the story when a victim kills his accomplice. These kind of wall breaks call attention to the invisible membrane of the screen.<\/p>\n As filmmaker Mark Cousins attests in The Story of Film: An Odyssey<\/a>, the medium has advanced over time through innovation and the recycling of techniques such as fourth wall breaks.<\/p>\n Is breaking the fourth wall back in vogue?<\/p>\n With the dominance of literary adaptations for the screen (and IP-driven screen stories in general) we\u2019re likely to see more cases of direct address, as screenwriters seek to creatively refashion texts for the screen. Vladimir, for instance, is an adaptation of Julia May Jonas\u2019 2022 novel of the same name. <\/p>\n While breaking the fourth wall may have lost its shock value, it remains a bold storytelling device which, if done well, can set apart one screen production from another.<\/p>\n Actor Matt Damon<\/a> recently pointed out how streamers such as Netflix are discussing the potential to reiterate \u201cthe plot three or four times in the dialogue\u201d of a film, to account for people who scroll on their phone while listening to \u201cbackground TV<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Having a character speak directly to a distracted audience may be one way to return their gaze to the bigger screen.<\/p>\n Hyper-reality in unscripted TV<\/p>\n Breaking the fourth wall sits within a wider envelope of \u201cmetafictional\u201d storytelling. <\/p>\n As screen culture becomes increasingly aware of its own machinery, unscripted genres such as reality TV are not merely breaking the fourth wall, but abandoning the conceit of separation entirely. The boundaries between cast, camera, story producers and audience have become increasingly porous. <\/p>\n Alex Baskin, executive producer of the long-running series Vanderpump Rules (2013\u201325), describes this as \u201chyperreality<\/a>\u201d. In the wake of Scandoval<\/a>, the cheating scandal of Tom Sandoval, the reality TV cast started to intervene in the producers\u2019 narrative arcs by speaking on camera about audience feedback, and providing meta commentary on their own \u201cedits\u201d.<\/p>\n When Ariana Madix (Sandoval\u2019s ex) refused to film with him, it disrupted plans for a neat season finale based on his apology. Madix left the set, effectively ending the entire show. Fellow cast member Tom Schwartz called it a \u201cplot twist\u201d. Unsurprisingly, Scorsese is a fan<\/a> of the show.<\/p>\n Meta and hyperreal storytelling will continue to be on the rise as screen creators seek to imbue a point-of-difference in a congested market \u2013 serving an ever-distracted audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the opening moments of Vladimir, Netflix\u2019s new erotic drama series, the protagonist M (Rachel Weisz) is sprawled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-389910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nintense close-up shots of Carmy (Jeremy Allen-White) in the final season of The Bear (2025), and knowing glances from the troubled Rue (Zendaya) in Euphoria (2019\u201326).<\/p>\n