History Film / TheFall

* AnnoyingArrows: [[spoiler: The ones that kill Ota Benga barely pierce him.]]

** [[spoiler: Ota Benga shields Alexandria with his own body, taking so many arrows in the back that they ''support his body weight.'']]

** TheBigGuy: The Indian and Ota Benga.

* StormingTheCastle

* TagalongKid: Alexandria, in-story.

* TuckAndCover: The escaped slave does this for the little girl.
* TheVoiceless: The Indian only speaks one or two words during the whole movie. He speaks when [[spoiler: he cuts the rope (killing himself and a handful of the mooks), saying "''How!''" (the joke being that he's a movie stereotype Native American Indian in Roy's narration and a from-India-Indian in Alexandria's imagination)]]. Ota Benga is almost this.
* WalkingShirtlessScene: Ota Benga and the Mystic. The latter in particular as his costume is little more than a LoinCloth and, eventually, full-body tattoos.

* PromotionToParent: Roy gives the Black Bandit a couple of the traits that her father would have, such as a gap in his teeth and Alexandria originally pictures him looking like her father. Alexandria eventually [[spoiler: appears in the story as the Bandit's daughter and during the surreal sequence after she falls, Roy appears as her father.]]

''The Fall'' tells the story of Roy, a crippled stuntman in early 20th-century Hollywood, and Alexandria, an inquisitive 5-year-old girl he befriends during his hospital stay. Roy has a broken heart and a death wish: during his last (and so far only) film, he tried a stunt his fellow stuntmen called downright suicidal, and was left crippled by his fall.

* {{Retcon}}: In-story example: the Masked Bandit was a Spaniard at first due to Alexandria telling Roy about her father; in fact she imagined him to look like her father. Eventually she asked why he kept speaking in an accent and requested he speak normally. He explained that the Masked Bandit was no longer a Spaniard, but a Frenchman; thus Alexandria imagined him to look like Roy.

** TheLancer: The Italian.

* EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses: [[spoiler:Subverted.]]

It is not based on, and should not be confused with, the Albert Camus novel of the same name. Nor does it have anything to do with the PostPunk band led by Mark E. Smith also called Music/TheFall.

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** The ArtShift after [[spoiler: Alexandria falls in the pharmacy, with wooden doctor-puppets taking apart and then reassembling and injured Alexandria doll,]] closely resembles a contextually similar scene in ''Film/{{Frida}}''.

* MatchCut: The butterfly fading into the reef and island; the priest's face and collar fading into a desert landscape. The latter one, in particular, is ''incredibly'' well-done.

* WalkingShirtlessScene: Ota Benga in all of the scenes he's in.

* CoolMask: Worn by the Red Bandit.

* MoodWhiplash: A lot of the more depressing scenes have elements of this. [[spoiler: While the Red Bandit is being beaten to death and starts drowning, Odious points out in exasperation that the pool is only "a few feet deep". In the same scene, Roy keeps trying to justify killing off the Red Bandit by listing his misdeeds: he's a [[DirtyCoward coward]], a liar, and he [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking had his fingers crossed when he took his oath]].]]

* PromotionToParent: Roy gives the Red Bandit a couple of the traits that her father would have, such as a gap in his teeth and Alexandria originally pictures him looking like her father. Alexandria eventually [[spoiler: appears in the story as the Red Bandit's daughter and during the surreal sequence after she falls, Roy appears as her father.]]

* MoodWhiplash: A lot of the more depressing scenes have elements of this. [[spoiler: While the Red Bandit is being beaten to death and starts drowning, Odious mentions that the pool is actually only "a few feet deep" reveals it doesn't reach higher than their waists. In the same scene, Roy keeps trying to justify killing off the Red Bandit by listing his misdeeds: he's a [[DirtyCoward coward]], a liar, and he [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking had his fingers crossed when he took his oath]].]]

* CreatorBreakdown: [[spoiler:In-Universe. Roy, at the end of the story, killing nearly all of the characters off.]]

* ChildrenAreInnocent: A lot of scenes deal with Alexandria overhearing conversations and not understanding the gravity of them, mostly due to the fact she's only five years old. At one point she steals communion wafers from a priest and starts eating them, even offering them to Roy, but it's made very clear she has no idea what their intended purpose is or even what they are. This is deconstructed VERY hard where she [[spoiler: gets pills for Roy, not understanding that he will use them to commit suicide]].

* PracticalEffects: There is no, repeat, ''no'' CGI or green screen used in the location shooting whatsoever, anything that is possible to do for real was done that way. Every single instance of grand SceneryPorn and impossibly fantastic architecture was shot at a real place and on location. In fact, except for the scene where a moving map appears on a person's body, there's no CGI in the film ''at all''.

* PrettyButterflies: ''Americana Exotica'' is merely the apotheosis among appearances of ''[[{{Motifs}} Lepidoptera]]'' in the film.

Confined to his hospital bed, Roy has a plan: he begins weaving for Alexandria the most epic adventure story ever told. It stars seven heroes -- the Black Bandit, an Italian, an Indian, a Mystic, ex-slave Otta Benga, Charles Darwin, and Wallace the monkey -- on a quest of revenge against the evil Governor Odious, each for their own reasons. With the story, Roy tries to get Alexandria excited about bandits, and about stealing… and for each instalment of the story he tells her, he wants her to steal a little something for him in return.

* JustifiedTitle: Both Alexandria and Roy are in the hospital because of injuries sustained in falls--and each undergoes a loss of innocence.

* MoodWhiplash: Oh, ''God''.

* MeaningfulName: Governor Odious.

* AdultFear: [[spoiler:A 5-year-old child climbing on shelves. And falling.