Before the climax to Gaspar Noé’s I Stand Alone (Seul contre tous), a provocative warning appears: “You have 30 seconds to leave the screening of this film”. Noé borrowed the idea from the black-and-white thriller Homicidal, which has a forty-five-second ‘fright break’ “to allow anyone to leave this theatre who is too frightened to see the end of the picture.” Of course, rather than prompting nervous viewers to flee in terror, these gimmicks are designed to create anticipation.
On the other hand, the breaking of taboos on screen is all the more transgressive if the act is unsimulated, as Amos Vogel wrote in Film as a Subversive Art: “When confronted by visual taboos... such as real sex or death—we immediately feel an element of risk and primordial danger”. A surprising number of films, all listed here, contain images of real sex and death.
On the other hand, the breaking of taboos on screen is all the more transgressive if the act is unsimulated, as Amos Vogel wrote in Film as a Subversive Art: “When confronted by visual taboos... such as real sex or death—we immediately feel an element of risk and primordial danger”. A surprising number of films, all listed here, contain images of real sex and death.
