Easy flashback examples movie#

This helps bolster the themes of immigration, American capitalism and family at the core of The Godfather series.įurthermore, a flashback at the very end of the movie helps give a devastating conclusion to the story. The Godfather Part IIshows the downfall of the Corleone family by contrasting it with its origins.įlashbacks to the young Vito Corleone establishing himself in New York in the dawn of the 20th Century help give context to the Corleone family story.

This flashback example brilliantly shows how flashbacks can compare and contrast the past with the present. It unlocks a previously closed off character and therefore unlocks a theme. This tiny flashback encapsulates the movie’s themes in a brilliantly efficient way. We understand what it means without dialogue. Furthermore, there is no dialogue to explain this revelation after the flashback ends.This is all done with a flashback containing no dialogue.This immediately fleshes out a previously unlikeable and impenetrable character.His mother’s cooking comforts him after he comes home in tears. One taste of the dish takes us to a flashback of his childhood. Our hero chef’s ratatouille transports the cynical and skeptical Anton Ego back to his childhood. Overall, we’ll demonstrate how best to use flashbacks to add to and accentuate your story.Ī flashback is used in Ratatouille to hammer home the movie’s ultimate theme – the power of food to transport. Furthermore, what flashback examples are innovative in how they use flashback? They might just feature once, or they might crop up a couple of times. Instead, we will look at flashback examples that feature briefly or intermittently throughout a screenplay. In this article, we’re not going to look necessarily at movies that are entirely built around flashbacks or told from the perspective of a flashback (like Memento, Forest Gump or Titanic for example). Use a flashback to add to the story rather than to run along side it.Know that you could frustrate your audience by patronising them, assuming they won’t be able to remember information and that you need to remind them of it.Or if you do this proceed with caution.Don’t use a flashback to just remind the audience of something they have already seen.But it’s important to hone in on why you are using a flashback. Often it will be expositional, often it will be to add dynamism.Īs audiences, we can usually tell when a flashback feels contrived or when it feels genuine and effective.įor a screenwriter, using flashbacks can be a very tempting way of making a screenplay more dynamic. Screenwriters and filmmakers will use them for a variety of reasons.

Easy flashback examples full#

Modern film and TV is full of flashback examples. But it is true that flashbacks are a key part of a screenwriting arsenal. It’s almost hard to think of a modern film that doesn’t have a flashback example somewhere within it.

Easy flashback examples how to#

15 Brilliant Flashback Examples That Show How to Best Use It