I chose the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off and it was released in 1986. I chose this film because it is a major memory in my childhood. It is about a high schooler named Ferris who is infamous for missing days of school with elaborate schemes in order to make his parents believe his is very ill. The entire film is based around one day where he wants to skip school as usual but he wants to make it special. He convinces his friend Cameron who is supposedly sick to come to his house for a day of fun. They then get Ferris' girlfriend Sloan out of school with a fake family emergency. They proceed to hit the town and engage in numerous activities, all while Cameron is worried sick about his father's car that Ferris convinced him to let them take on their little adventure. The film is mostly comedic but there are a few problems that are unearthed between Ferris and Cameron as well as their immediate families. The film has a few moments where it is just Ferris and the audience; mainly giving advice and acknowledging the fact that it is indeed a movie. He even at the end says, "It's over, go home." I watched the film through DVD, as I own the movie.
Prior to watching Sherlock Jr. I had never seen a Buster Keaton film and I had only heard about him. I believe he was such a great actor because of his ability to control the room. Even without words you have to focus on him throughout the movie because he never breaks character in the slightest. He had the ability to be very animated and it feels as if he would have a full conversation with the audience with just a few simple expressions. As if right when he looked at the camera, you knew exactly what he was thinking. He created humor by his extreme animated movements and by being able to perfectly act out an emotion or thought. This unique talent is what created humor throughout his films.
All of these films, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Sherlock Jr., and Ferris Bueller's Day Off deal with breaking the fourth wall, all in their own ways. The Purple Rose of Cairo literally has a character leave the screen and come into real life. The whole plot is dealing with a character, Tom Baxter, leaving the scene of a movie and causing panic amongst movie goers and the company responsible for releasing the film. It focuses on the limitations movie characters have, as he knows only what his character in the movie knows. In the end, the girl he left the movie for, Cecilia, chose the real person and not the fictional character she fell in love with. This is especially disheartening because the actual actor in the movie stands her up. This shows how there is a fourth wall in the real world, as the actor would never go for a girl of a lower social status. Sherlock Jr. is very different because it was made completely for a comedic purpose. Because there are no words the connection between the main character and audience is much harder to form. Without this connection between Buster Keaton and the audience, the movie would be awful since it relies on this connection. Unlike Ferris Bueller's Day Off and The Purple Rose of Cairo, you never know exactly what is happening in Sherlock Jr. unless you are paying attention the entire time. In the other films, the scene could be explained through the characters conversing with each other. Sherlock Jr. relied the most on the connection between the actor and audience. Ferris Bueller's Day Off acknowledged the audience the least in overall time yet still the most directly. Ferris in multiple scenes completely cuts away from the movie to talk to the audience, almost as if the movie is paused without him. Ferris almost acts as a narrator for the movie he stars in, yet he is looking right at the camera and directly talking to the viewers. All these movies deal with the connection between characters and audience and the success of the movie depends on the success of this connection.
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