In my assignment, I explore the use of the direct address in the cinema. We recognize direct address as the point, when the fictional film character starts to acknowledge the presence of the viewer, makes eye contact with the camera and directly addresses the viewer. General presumption of film theory is, that direct address by a film character breaks the illusion of the cinematic world and introduces an alienation effect incompatible with the viewers immersion or emphatic relation with the on-screen action. Since direct address is present as a method of breaking the fourth wall in art as well as mainstream cinema and its' occurrence can be traced to the very beginning of the film art, the initial question of this assignment is »Whether direct address provides solely the function of the alienation or are there multiple functions tied to it?« In my assignment I demonstrate Brecht's theory of the alienation effect, Brown's seven function categorization and differentiation of the direct address usage based on verbal and/or visual implementation. Based on examples of fifteen movies, I argue that direct address can generate empathy for the observed material and consequently increases immersion in cinematic fiction, hence its' function not being solely creating distance between the viewer and the observed film fiction.
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