Screenwriting : Flashbacks by Louis Macovsky

Double Indemnity uses flashbacks as THE story, so I guess thats not backstory. Vertigo.

The end of most sherlock holmes and agatha christie movie were they recap the entire story to explain the crime.

Memento used flashbacks a good bit as memory serves.

Martin Lambert I wanted to say Memento. But I saw Nolan explaining it as an intercut story with two story lines. One going in reverse and one going forward. The movies ends at the midpoint.

He makes my head hurt. I mean I love his work. But he does make stuff overly complex on occasions.

Louis Macovsky, consider Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction.

Sunset Boulevard is told entirely in a flashback.

I would not consider Pulp Fiction as using flashback as it is a non linear story structure.

True, Stephen Olson, but if I recall (it's been years since I watched the movie) early on there's a flashback with Christopher Walken's character. I remember something about a little boy sitting on the floor watching TV and Walken's character telling the boy the story about the gold watch.

Tons of movies use flashbacks, so I'd argue with your premise that TV uses them more. I just watched Iron Man again. (Starts with him getting kidnapped, then flashes back to a day before.)

Minority Report has precognition scenes as well as flashbacks to reveal aspects of the mystery.

I often think of Hitchcock's rule for flashbacks. He did a flashback in Stage Fright that showed what "could have happened" but was untrue. He later regretted it and advocated for never showing the audience a lie. This rule is actually what makes me dislike the Usual Suspects, where most of the flashbacks are lies.

This probably does not really count, but think how many shows begin with a highly dramatic scene and then go "Three days before..." or "24 hours ago" and go into the backstory/flashback. A factor of the so-called short attention span of contemporary viewers...who will spend 10 hours binge-watching a series, so what?..... Anyway, flashbacks used to be something to avoid, now they seem something to use as a fish-hook.

One of the distinguishing marks of noir(ish) film is that it usually has a 1st person POV and begins with a flashback. Think Sunset Bouevard..it begins with a talking corpse in a swimming pool. Bill Holden is a good actor, but in real life, people don't usually die and then tell their story ... Out of the Past doesn't begin with a flashback, but Bob Mitchum invites the woman he loves to ride with him to Lake Tahoe, and as they drive along, he tells her all about femme fatale Kathy Moffat in a flashback that is actually most of the movie. The Usual Suspects movie is told in flashback---it begins and ends with the fire on the boat. I think movie-makers know that most people understand life as a series of cause & effect, so, if the movie begins with the effect, it better show us the cause. But, it's your story, tell it your way.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and honestly, done perfectly. I cringe when screenwriters use too many flashbacks to foreshadow. While I agree with he purpose, it's few and far between that it's done well and/or correctly. Dig in to your characters and see if there are other ways to foreshadow within the scene. Like, instead of going back to show the death of a child, show the parent/parents in the scene reacting to a photo, or the childs unchanged bedroom, starting to collect dust. There are so many ways to foreshadow without using a flashback.

I think one's definition of "flashback" informs their answer. Here's a basic definition, and one that I think about first when the topic comes up.

"Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory."

In this context the most often cited criticism when employed is that it's artless.

I would say Goodfellas does a great job. (Actually a lot of gangster movies use flashbacks well.) The Notebook does a decent job.

"Arrival" is a good study on a flash-forward plot looking like flashbacks. At the end, the audience knows what will happen to Main Character's child in the future.

The Godfather.