Week 26.29 - Socials Roundup SPLIT SCREEN PHONE CALLS
13 July Month - 19 July 2026: people talking on the phone, but make it two - or three! - screens in one
Week 26.29 posts include shots from Indiscreet (1958); When Harry Met Sally (1989); Down With Love (2003); Broad City (2014-2019) and The Fall Guy (2014).
Indiscreet
This is a wonderful living room farce / comedy of manners, particularly if you ever wanted to hear an indignant Ingrid Berman declare “How dare he make love to me and not be a married man!”
Perhaps Pillow Talk (1959) is more famous for its splitscreen phone call, but Indiscreet did it a whole year earlier. It was clearly a template for at least two other shots today, from sexy insinuation to a Bergman shout-out.
This side-by-side of Philip and Anna (Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman) may seem simple, but several small moments show how seriously they storyboarded and choreographed it.
(0:05-0:10) as Anna rolls over, Philip pats her bum, and she chastely pulls the sheet up a bit further. Though they've clearly already slept together, and are having an affair (kind of), the Hays Code meant there was only so much impropriety they could insinuate in 1958!
(0:25-0:29) Anna ‘looks’ at Philip, and he immediately avoids the direct eye contact. Though we know they can’t literally see each other, the way the eyelines are arranged makes us feel as though they can.
(0:52-1:00) Both cameras move at the same time, changing their angles in the same ways, to bring Anna and Philip closer together.
The pillows and headboards remain aligned; though their design and sheet colour make clear they’re in two different bedrooms, the alignment helps maintain the 'so close they could touch' illusion.
(0:55-1:01) Anna puts her hand up, and Philip reaches his to the same place; both are cut off by the middle of the frame, implying they're holding hands as they say how much they belong together.
Just a delightful use of the technique!
Speaking of Pillow Talk and split-screen implications, the next scene from Down With Love takes it much further . . .
Down With Love
The scene starts with window panels making a ‘false’ splitframe (something The Fall Guy also does), introduces a yellow bar to artificially split the screen, then gets wilder from there!
Without the restrictions of the Hays Code, their innuendos are even clearer.
I would be remiss not to mention the dialogue during this scene — all about making dinner and being of service — is akin to yet another Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant scene, this time in Notorious, where they talk about ‘eating with our fingers’ . . . presumably, but not actually, about a roast chicken.
Finally, in a shameless bit of self-promotion, I [Mel] will link to this scene from “Become the One” which whole series I directed. The sequence riffs on this concept, including callisthenics, except with texting instead of a phone call.
Also, teabagging.
You’ll see what I mean.
When Harry Met Sally
The fact Harry and Sally (Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan) chat via phone call across splitscreen over an Ingrid Bergman movie feels like a definite nod to Indiscreet.
This establishes how they like to talk one the phone in splitscreen, then their next phone call makes it a four-way!
In an interview with CineFix, director Rob Reiner talks about how the phone lines were all connected so the actors could hear each other even though they were in three different places. They did the shot ‘live’ to get the timing right . . . which took 61 (sixty-one) takes.
“It looks like nothing, and it’s, to me, one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done with four actors.”
Broad City
Broad City 3.08 “Burning Bridges” cold open shows Abbi and Ilana in splitscreen before they converge, then cross.
Practically, the actors cross, before the cameras retrace their own steps, but it all serves to add a fun visual layer to a phone conversation which would be *substantially* less interesting with intercut shots.
The Fall Guy
We did a full breakdown of this nearly-four-minute scene in honour of our split-phone-call-week, but here’s the starting split, and some further gags.
