10 Meta Movies That Break the Fourth Wall and Blur Reality & Fiction (The Playlist)

""…the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat," says Cary Grant in 'His Girl Friday.' At which a certain portion of the audience presumably smiled to themselves. 'Archibald Leach' was the unglamorous moniker that Grant was born with, & while by no means integral to the plot, that knowing reference does give the remark an extra layer. A meta-textual layer known in these po-mo times as 'meta' for short. Meta can be a simple cameo, an arch one-liner or even a quick glance to the camera. Meta can be autobiographical, satirical, it can be in service of a postmodernist, deconstructionist agenda or unmoored from any agenda at all. It can be intentional, as it is in the films on this list, or accidental. Done well, it can add density to a serious subject. Done excessively it can just be tiresome. Here's an eclectic list of ten films from diverse corners of our film collection that we think embody the term nicely." - theplaylist.net