SHADY BUSINESS…
1 WITHNAIL & I
A moment of cool amidst a distinctly grim 60s London, as Marwood (Paul McGann) lurches his battered Jaguar into shot, pausing to flip down the lenses on his John Lennon-style shades, before peeling off to Jimi Hendrix twanging the guitar.
2 GET CARTER
It’s a power move, removing someone else’s glasses. Jack Carter (Michael Caine) lets old acquaintance Eric Paice (Ian Hendry) know who’s boss – revealing his eyes, he declares, ‘Still the same… piss-holes in the snow,’ as he stares into his soul.
3 MEN IN BLACK
The shades are part of MIB’s anonymous ‘uniform’, and when Agent J (Will Smith) cooly dons them, it’s hard to disagree with his: ‘I make this look good.’ But the Ray-Bans also serve a purpose, shielding wearers from the effects of the memory-wiping neuralyzer.
4 THEY LIVE
Wholly integral to the plot, the shades Nada (Roddy Piper) discovers enable the wearer to see subliminal messages in the media that control the population. There’s also the bonus feature of revealing which people are actually aliens walking among us in human form.
5 CASINO
In a memorable moment, Scorsese uses Sam Rothstein’s (Robert De Niro) sunnies as a framing device. In close-up on glasses so enormous they match the casino boss’ ego is a reflected wide shot of a car approaching in the desert for a tense, clandestine meeting.
6 THE MATRIX
A tough choice in a film with so many characters wearing them, but Morpheus’ (Laurence Fishburne) nose-clip sunglasses frame the film’s defining image: Neo (Keanu Reeves) facing the choice between the wonderland rabbit hole of reality or an artificial world.
7 THE BLUES BROTHERS
