freezeframes in movies

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do any of u learned film students know who started this device and in what film?

the device frames "the good the bad and the ugly" (and i think it's used for a transition in either "dollars" or "few dollars more" - indio's face is freezeframed amd turned into the picture on the wanted poster...?)

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 09:23 (twenty-two years ago)

but i can't believe it was INVENTED by s.leone: transformed possibly

anyway, if you know of earlier uses, from wherever...?

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 09:25 (twenty-two years ago)

haha ok well i just discovered that edison used one in an 1895 film called "mary queen of scots", to do the decapitation - but what i'm after is its use in mainstream movies i think, not pioneering melies-style experiments

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 09:30 (twenty-two years ago)

That's a brilliant question... but impossible. Mind gone blank. Can think of the inverse of what you want: 'La Jetee'.

― Enrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 09:34 (twenty-two years ago)

it's almost *certainly* a nouvelle vague thing i'd have thought.
bringing it to popularity i mean. 400 blows has em big time no ?
inspired obviously by something else previously, but it's from that gang that it then gets thru to scorsese et al. ditto jump cuts.

gallipoli has a good one - the very last shot where mark lee is caught at 'the moment of death' in homage to that robert capa photo from the spanish civil war.

goodfellas has em in spades.

― piscesboy, Tuesday, 14 October 2003 11:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Well obv the freeze frame = a latern slide vis a vis magic laterns and hence existed before cinema actually existed (though since idea of cinema has pretty much always existed it probably comes a lot later).

Freeze Frame to jump cut, Freeze Fame for segue or freeze frame as interruption (the masterful one in Election is possibly where Reese Witherspoon got her career from).

Mark, If... is on at the NFT in December btw.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 11:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Roadrunner cartoons?

If... avail to rent in my local vid shop

― Alan (Alan), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 11:36 (twenty-two years ago)

If... availible to buy plenty of places. But big screen, big screen....

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 12:43 (twenty-two years ago)

400 blows is a plausible answer, i'll rewatch that tonight if i have time

i also wondered godard but i can't actually think of any

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 14:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Possibly in photography sequence of 'Le Petit Soldat'?

― Enrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 14:05 (twenty-two years ago)

good call: have never seen it sadly

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 14:09 (twenty-two years ago)

photo sequences are slightly difft but i'd like to know who used them first also

(ans = chris marker prob?)

also rostrum camera zooms

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 14:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Alain Resnais also a good bet. Marker, Resnais, Godard - all regulars on UK airwaves, of course...

Serious point: why do they show such bollox in the middle of the night? Wd it be too much to show some good old Varda movies for me to tape? How many people are watching at 4am on a Tuesday?

Anyone from BBC who can help to thread!

― Lemmy Caution (Enrique), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

i am pretty sure that truffaut started it with the 400 blows and since then it has been killed as an effective (and shocking) way to end a film. at least truffaut has been credited with making it "mainstream" to use the freeze frame

― todd swiss (eliti), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 15:04 (twenty-two years ago)

ok that makes sense totally

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 15:13 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the close-up as a means of encouraging audience identification is a totally played-out strategy after DW Griffith, who made it 'mainstream' with 'Birth of Nation'.

― Enrique (Enrique), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 15:20 (twenty-two years ago)

samurai movies (and i'm almost certain The Seven Samurai among them tho a quick googling turns up no proof of this) were using the freeze before Leone and that's almost certainly where HE nicked it from - but yeah 400 Blows is the widely-accepted pop startpoint (tho i swear there's at least one in It's a Wonderful Life)

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 15:34 (twenty-two years ago)

with the layer change on DVDs, every movie these days seems to have a surrealistic pregnant pause!

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 16:24 (twenty-two years ago)

if anyone knows of any reasonably foursquare FFs in 30s or 40s Hollywood movies, even if it's just an iris out...

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 16:50 (twenty-two years ago)

mark i thought i had It's A Wonderful Life on tape here somewhere but i can't find it - i really am almost positive it freezes on stewart at least once

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:04 (twenty-two years ago)

two websites which cite 400 blows as "first use":
http://www.admin.mtu.edu/alumni/movies/joek266.htm
http://spot.pcc.edu/~mdembrow/400_blows.htm

also the first use in Dr. Who:
http://www.eyespider.freeserve.co.uk/drwho/tb/4e.html

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:31 (twenty-two years ago)

(google says it happens during the first reel of IAWL, so at the big plot twist obviously. sorry - i wish i could verify this)

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:41 (twenty-two years ago)

It's in the scene Where George goes to buy a suitcase - "I wanna BIG one!"

― retort pouch (retort pouch), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 17:51 (twenty-two years ago)

YES thank you!

GEORGE: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Now, look, Joe. Now, look, I . . . I want a big one.

Suddenly, in action, as George stands with his arms outstretched in illustration, the picture freezes and becomes a still. Over this hold-frame shot we hear the voices from Heaven:

CLARENCE'S VOICE: What did you stop it for?

JOSEPH'S VOICE: I want you to take a good look at that face.

CLARENCE'S VOICE: Who is it?

JOSEPH'S VOICE: George Bailey.

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 18:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh okay and speaking of standout uses of this device aka fourth wall breaking or something there's Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lily".

also freezeframes as moment-of-victory and self-aware freezeframes as moment-of-victory (end of How High = best use EVER)

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 14 October 2003 18:29 (twenty-two years ago)

And 'Manhunter', obv. Great music, too.

I'd put money on 'Hellzapoppin' having a freezeframe. It has everything else.

― Enrique (Enrique), Wednesday, 15 October 2003 11:49 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

Purple Rain ends with a great one

― jones (actual), Monday, 28 March 2005 19:54 (twenty years ago)

search: Fargo.

― sunburned and snowblind (kenan), Monday, 28 March 2005 20:11 (twenty years ago)

also:Blue Collar

― Doobie Keebler (Charles McCain), Monday, 28 March 2005 20:12 (twenty years ago)

every episode of CHiPs

― The Sensational Sulk (sexyDancer), Monday, 28 March 2005 20:25 (twenty years ago)

The end of Animal House, et. al.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 28 March 2005 20:28 (twenty years ago)

I like freeze-frames that aren't (i.e. "Beautiful Girls" in Singin' in the Rain).

(the masterful one in Election is possibly where Reese Witherspoon got her career from).

Election's freeze-frames are gloriously cruel.

― Eric H. (Eric H.), Monday, 28 March 2005 20:58 (twenty years ago)

there are free frames in epstein's "coeur fidele" from uh, 1924 or so? also a film by germaine dulac whose name i've forgotten. in any event the french impressionists used freeze-frames on many occasions.

the "definitive" postwar freeze frame is undoubtedly the one at the end of the 400 blows. beacause truffaut in effect defined a certain *meaning* for the freeze frame, or rather, a certain artistic function. but they had been used before.

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 28 March 2005 22:31 (twenty years ago)

Didn't that TV show by the makers of Airplane etc (Leslie Neilsen franchise, can't remember the name) end with fake freeze frames, where the actors froze as best they could but the camera kept running? Surely this killed the FF.

― nickn (nickn), Monday, 28 March 2005 23:23 (twenty years ago)

POLICE SQUAD!

― Doobie Keebler (Charles McCain), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 01:36 (twenty years ago)

Garage Days uses them a lot.

― Remy (x Jeremy), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 01:37 (twenty years ago)

the end of 400 blows gives me chills every time.

― cutty (mcutt), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 01:38 (twenty years ago)

where the actors froze as best they could but the camera kept running

The sex scenes between Keanu and River in My Own Private Idaho were done this way. Posed tableaux, camera running. Creepy and effective.

― Curious George Finds the Ether Bottle (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 01:44 (twenty years ago)

i like the soderberg version where there's a little still visual hiccup but the sound is kept constant (cribbed from music video probably)

― f--gg (gcannon), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 03:13 (twenty years ago)

>The sex scenes between Keanu and River in My Own Private Idaho were done this way.<

Actually, it's one scene with the two of them and Udo Kier, then one with Keanu and the Italian girl and Keanu.

Big-budget Reagan-era comedies ending with a FF of the star smiling, a mindless cliche of the era, like the one of Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:21 (twenty years ago)

'reagan era' as put-down is intriguing. like 'the godfather' is a 'nixon era' film.

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:34 (twenty years ago)

i think "nixon-era" is a pretty good thumbnail of the things that are wrong w.the two godfather movies!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:37 (twenty years ago)

it peeves me cos it's like the godardian 'nixon-paramount' 'brezhnev-mosfilm' thingum. people would never say 'die hard 2' or 'goodfellas' were bush 1 era... or would they?

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:43 (twenty years ago)

IT IS INFALLIBLE!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:45 (twenty years ago)

>'reagan era' as put-down is intriguing. like 'the godfather' is a 'nixon era' film.<

There have been several books on '80s commercial film using "Reagan" in the title (esp w/ ref to the Rambos, Top Gun etc), so it's somewhat accepted shorthand -- at least among academics and critics --for how fucking stoopid American film culture became, following the lead of pretending that a B actor with early Alzheimers was The Great Communicator. (Not that it isn't worse now, just as Washington is.)

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:47 (twenty years ago)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is what I most associate with the freezeframe, fwiw.

― Markelby (Mark C), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

i did actually read where the first ever ff was, and thought of this thread. i've forgotten the answer, but amateurist probably has it upthread.

― N_RQ, Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:52 (twenty years ago)

markelby, this thread wz started to trawl for evidence for my "theory" that butch cassidy wz as (nixon-era) remake of if....!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 13:53 (twenty years ago)

I may be drunk, but I seem to remember a really cool one in Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera(1929).

― Will(iam), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 14:08 (twenty years ago)

There are number in Road to Utopia, at which point Robert Benchley comments on the action.

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 29 March 2005 14:45 (twenty years ago)

FIRST BLOOD!!!!! RAWR!!!!!

― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 29 March 2005 16:37 (twenty years ago)

Speaking of which, uh, Rocky...

― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 29 March 2005 16:37 (twenty years ago)

six years pass...

the answer to this could be len lye's 'n or nw' (1937)

― HOOSy woosies (history mayne), Monday, 29 August 2011 12:01 (fourteen years ago)

it also possibly invented the jump-cut

― HOOSy woosies (history mayne), Monday, 29 August 2011 12:04 (fourteen years ago)

put in all the scare-quotes you like obviously, i know no-one ever invents anything blah blah blah

― HOOSy woosies (history mayne), Monday, 29 August 2011 12:04 (fourteen years ago)

I've got it in my mind that Boogie Nights has a couple, but maybe I'm thinking of stuff like the iris-in when PSH looks at Wahlberg for the first time, or some speeded-up footage. Boogie Nights tries just about everything.

― clemenza, Monday, 29 August 2011 13:06 (fourteen years ago)

the one in goodfellas that happens in the middle of young henry getting his ass beat by his dad always makes me laugh my ass off

― http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_qxQztHRI (Princess TamTam), Monday, 29 August 2011 13:15 (fourteen years ago)

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