Evocative phrases borrowed from film and theater

Jargon, as we’ve been talking about for the past two weeks, often gets a bad rap, but there are useful and often intriguing terms of art in many professions. This week, let’s look at a few common words that got their start as entertainment-industry jargon.  

The movies gave us the evocative cliffhanger and flashback. Cliffhanger first appeared in the Hollywood trade journal Variety in 1931, referring to the popular serial films that ended each episode with the hero or heroine in peril – tied to railroad tracks with the train approaching, surrounded by bandits, or, as in the blockbuster silent film “The Perils of Pauline,” literally hanging off a cliff. By the 1950s, the word had expanded to refer to “a contest whose outcome is in doubt up to the very end” – a close sports game, for example – or, even more broadly, any “suspenseful situation,” according to Merriam-Webster. 

Flashback also debuted in Variety, describing the film technique of making an abrupt jump back to previous events. While interrupting a chronological sequence to go back in time is an ancient narrative technique, flashback first appeared in 1916. Today a particularly vivid memory can be called a “flashback” as well.

Various “curtain” idioms originated in the theater, referring to the large drapery used to signal important junctures in a play’s performance. When the curtain goes up, the performance begins; raise the curtain figuratively means to start something. At that point, what’s behind the curtain is revealed – raise or lift the curtain can also mean “to make something public, disclose.” When the curtain goes down, it indicates the play is over; to bring the curtain down is to end something. If the audience has really enjoyed the performance, they may clap so loudly that the actors come out to do one or more curtain calls, bowing all over again in acknowledgment. The final curtain call, or simply the final curtain, is the absolute end of the play, and is often metaphorically used to mean “death.”

Musicians may perform an “encore” during the curtain call. Encore is a common French word meaning “again” or “more,” but in English has a much narrower sense. In 18th-century Britain, audiences began to call out “Encore!” and “Ancora!”(“again” in Italian) when they wanted to hear more from the performers. Ancora has mostly fallen by the wayside, but encore has become an English noun: “a reappearance or additional performance demanded by an audience.” More generally, it can be applied to any repeat performance or “second act,” as in the “encore careers” that some people begin later in life after retirement from their first job.