Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 6, Week 4

Here's an idea for a fun (but rather useless) list -- films that include scenes of people watching another film. Barry Levinson has done it, as have Theo Angelopoulos and Buster Keaton (who might have been the first to do so). Yet it was a wonderful sequence shot in Radio City Music Hall that was the source of last week's quiz -- Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur. The film is part of the recently released Alfred Hitchcock Masterpiece Collection, which is absolute treasure (and a damn fine birthday gift -- thanks Aaron!) This week's screen capture comes from a prophetic film -- one that is perhaps even more relevant today that it was when it was first released. Name it. Submit your answers to this address. Good luck!

Comments

[otis]

Surely the best film for scenes of people watching another film is Arizona Dream. I get all teary-eyed when Vinnie Gallo does the scene with Cazale and Pacino from Godfather 2 after everyone else has gone to bed.

[davis]

I'm not sure if you're referring to Keaton's Sherlock Jr. (1924), but Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) beats it by a decade when Mabel Normand and Charlie Chaplin step into a picture show. Even that may not be the first.

[Jessica]

What a crazy picture. Something I thought I would never see in my life. The cowboy outfit is hilarious!!

[girish]

Rob--One candidate might be DW Griffith's Those Awful Hats (1909) which is about the pesky annoyance of sitting behind people who wore tall Edwardian hats in a movie theater. It's part of the Griffith "Years Of Discovery 1909-1913" box set.

[girish]

And to add to the list: my favorite instance is probably (and appropriately, here) a teary-eyed Anna Karina watching Passion Of Joan in Vivre Sa Vie.

[burritoboy]

As girish has mentioned, such scenes are a hallmark of the French New Wave.

Nice examples include:

The Newton Boys
Faces (well, the vast bulk of the movie is a movie within a movie)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (of course)
Crossfire (though I think we never see the actual movie they're watching)
Clash by Night
Cleo from 5 to 7
The Man Who Put His Will on Film
Waking Life

[otis]

Woody:
Annie Hall (The Sorrow & the Pity)
Hannah & Her Sisters (Duck Soup)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (The Lady from Shanghai)

Marty:
Mean Streets (The Searchers, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Big Heat)
Taxi Driver (Kärlekens språk)
Cape Fear (Problem Child)

Bogdanovich:
Targets (The Criminal Code, The Terror)
The Last Picture Show (Red River)
Nickelodeon (The Birth of a Nation)

Hitch:
Sabotage (Who Killed Cock Robin?)

[DEF]

One of my favorites is of Bridget Fonda watching the great Beast with a Gun on TV in Jackie Brown.

[dvd]

There's a somewhat memorable viewing of Evil Dead in Donnie Darko, but I especially like the film its paried with on the theater marquee: Last Temptation Of Christ. There's a double feature!