Ghost Town Frolics (1938, Dir. Lester Kline)

FILM: Ghost Town Frolics
YEAR: 1938
DIRECTOR: Lester Kline
PINBALL MODEL(S): N/A (animated)
GAME LOCATION(S): haunted tavern / flop-house

Mikey and Nicky (1976, Dir. Elaine May)

FILM: Mikey and Nicky
YEAR: 1976
DIRECTOR: Elaine May
PINBALL MODEL(S): 
Egg Head (1961, Gottlieb)
GAME LOCATION(S): Bar/Diner

Thieves' Highway (1949, Dir. Jules Dassin)

FILM: Thieves' Highway
YEAR: 1949
DIRECTOR: Jules Dassin
PINBALL MODEL(S): 
Smarty (1946, Williams)
Super Score (1946, Chicago Coin)
GAME LOCATION(S): Bar/Diner

The Lady from Shanghai (1947, Dir. Orson Welles)

FILM: The Lady from Shanghai
YEAR: 1947
DIRECTOR: Orson Welles
PINBALL MODEL(S): 
Stars (1941, Exhibit Supply Co.)
GAME LOCATION(S): Restaurant
NOTES: Though the appearance of this pin is brief and seemingly inconsequential, I'm not bold enough to apply that designation to anything that the genius Welles decided to include in-frame.  The oblique perspective of the pin/wall/phone set at-angle against the hard profile of Welles' face accomplishes a kind of deepening of the frame, despite the rather tight field of the shot.

À Toute Vitesse (1996, Dir. Gaël Morel)

FILM: À Toute Vitesse
YEAR: 1996
DIRECTOR: Gaël Morel
PINBALL MODEL(S): 
Baywatch (1995, Sega)
Maverick (1994, DataEast)
Indiana Jones: the Pinball Adventure (1993, Williams)
Batman Forever (1995, Sega)
GAME LOCATION(S): Arcade
NOTES: I've discussed the significance of pinball as a component of French youth culture in previous posts, but this particular scene reveals perhaps the most widely recognizable connection between pinball and cinema: licensing.

Game design has long established itself as a useful vehicle for promoting various products during pinball's long history, but tables that bear a movie theme have proven to be a more reliable strategy in ensuring unit sales as pinball has struggled to remain a marketable entertainment commodity during the past two decades. The arcade featured here in Morel's film is a useful example of this narrowing of potential design themes in favor popular cultural properties (movies, tv, bands) over more original/abstract ones, whilst also alluding to the ongoing ability of Hollywood to maintain its pop-culture dominance on a global scale.

Electra Glide in Blue (1973, Dir. James William Guercio)

FILM: Electra Glide in Blue
YEAR: 1973
DIRECTOR: James William Guercio
PINBALL MODEL:
Sing Along (1967, Gottlieb)
GAME LOCATION(S): Tavern
NOTES: What we have here is a fairly run-of-the-mill sighting of a pin-table in a small town Arizona saloon.  But maybe the presence of this pin is not so banal when one considers the importance of spatial dynamics to the film as a whole.  The immensity of the deflated, barren filmic space in which Electra Glide in Blue takes place is extraordinarily well rendered, but so too does this lead to an interesting effect when the film moves into more domestic, enclosed areas.  These scenes feel claustrophobic and cluttered in contrast to the larger stage of expansive horizons and roads to nowhere that define the American southwest.  The inclusion of a pin-table resonates a familiar semblance of Americana iconography, but also graphically fills the frame space, increasing its visual pressure.

Guerillere Talks (1978, Dir. Vivienne Dick)

FILM: Guerillere Talks
YEAR: 1978
DIRECTOR: Vivienne Dick
PINBALL MODEL(S):
Space Odyssey (1976, Williams)
Eight Ball (1977, Bally)
Big Hit (1977, Gottlieb)
Evel Knievel (1977, Bally)
GAME LOCATION(S): Arcade
NOTES: The 'No Wave' creative movement of the late 1970s in New York was earmarked by a breakdown and outright rejection of aesthetic boundaries.  Films such as this segment from Vivienne Dick's debut filmmaking effort, demanded not only a new way of engaging with art, but new ways of talking about it as well.

On one hand, 3.5 minutes of anti-narrative footage featuring a pinball player and a mostly-unintelligible soundtrack would seem to align this segment with the 'actuality' shorts of early cinema.  However, this kind of realism was not incidental, but rather took on a new kind of meaning in its outright resistance and rejection of cultural and commercial aesthetic normalcy. 

Pinball, with its historical reputation as being an entertainment outlet of marginalized youth, takes on a somewhat ironic quality here, as the camera visually resists the anarchic essence of an aggressive and frantic counterculture. Instead, the soundtrack alone imbues this essence, while the lens surveils the relative calm surrounding the space of the pin-table and its player.

Thelma and Louise (1991, Dir. Ridley Scott)

FILM: Thelma and Louise
YEAR: 1991
DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
PINBALL MODEL(S): The machine inside the home is a non-commercial Fireball model (1976, Bally).  The cafe machine is more difficult to identify, but I believe it is a Meteor model (1979, Stern).
GAME LOCATION(S): residence, cafe
NOTES: Since the earliest days of narrative cinema, filmmakers have been toying with various ways by which shots can connect two (or more) separate locations. Cinema language taps into the functional essence of the telephone, and its particular identity as a bellwether of modernity, as an effective and readily familiar method in bridging these gaps of distance (Tucker's 1913 A Traffic in Souls is an early example of this).  But a cleverly designed mise-en-scene will sometimes also feature additional visual cues to establish a linkage between filmic spaces.  In the case of this scene from Thelma and Louise, pinball machines are present at both locations in which the phone conversation is taking place, thereby providing such a link in the mind of the viewer; even if only on a subconscious level.

Pinball itself—with its nature as a game of counterforce and barely-controllable action—can be read as a metaphorical reflection of the conflict in which the titular heroines are engaged; while both the game and the film conclude in a similar "over the edge" death motif.