The big reveal has been a staple of the Hollywood film pretty much since Charlton Heston found out, to his great shock, that the apes lived on his own planet.

When the maneuver is handled well, the surprise finale can provide more viewing pleasure than almost any other device. But it's also trickier to pull off than the Double McTwist 1260. Offer too many clues along the way and it's hardly a surprise; point the arrows too far in the other direction and the audience will feel cheated.

M. Night Shyamalan executed the reveal to perfection in "The Sixth Sense" -- in which the conclusion was both an utter surprise and impeccably logical -- before botching it with the left-field contrivances of "Unbreakable." Alejandro Amenabar offered a similar, and similarly pleasurable, twist to "Sixth Sense" in "The Others" (a particular feat since it came just two years after the M. Night film came out, when the audience was primed for a maybe-they're-dead-the-whole time surprise). And the list continues: "The Usual Suspects," "No Way Out," "The Crying Game" (and, as horror fans may remember, the gender-bending twist of kitsch-horror classic "Sleepaway Camp" -- see our poll below to weigh in with your favorite).

Martin Scorsese tries a version of the trick in his just-released "Shutter Island" (warning: major spoiler alert ahead -- skip to the next paragraph if you've yet to see the film). In the Paramount release, Leonardo DiCaprio, having spent hour after furious hour as a detective investigating a crime at an insane asylum, is revealed (probably) to be a patient suffering delusions who's simply engaging in a role-playing game initiated by his doctors. While that twist has the effect of making too many of the scenes that preceded it feel irrelevant, it certainly packs a wallop. And it's likely to make you both talk about the ending and revisit many of the earlier scenes, as all good whoppers aim to do.

The question is how much a reveal can help or hurt a film after word begins to spread. On the one hand, a twist ending can turn a movie into a conversation piece since it is, quite literally, the last thing seen before leaving the theater. And because it often makes us go back and reinterpret the entire film, it can keep the movie both in our individual and public consciousness long after the credits end. In other words, it becomes water-cooler conversation. And in box-office terms, it gives a movie legs.

Paramount executives believe that that's pretty much what will happen here. "There's nothing that keeps box office going like people's desire not to hear how a movie ends before they see it," says Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore. "That sense of 'Don't tell me; I haven't seen it' has historically added more interest."

Fair enough -- if you can avoid finding out. But there's undoubtedly a risk for a movie that relies on a surprise ending these days.

As recently as a few years ago you could get away with much of the moviegoing population not hearing about a surprise ending for a long time. Several months after "The Crying Game" came out, Harvey Weinstein was still begging journalists not to give away the ending. It's hard to see him making that request today, or hoping that it would have any effect. Twitter, fan sites and every other medium known to man are a minefield of information; avoiding a big reveal can feel like Tivo-ing a sports game and trying not to finding out the result until days later. And once you know how a film ends, do you still want to see it?

"Shutter Island" had a big opening last weekend. Now that everyone's talking about the ending, we'll see if audiences continue to flock to it -- or feel like they already know too much.

--Steven Zeitchik

Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo in "Shutter Island." Credit: Paramount Pictures

A diverse crowd of stylish hipsters, film buffs and art lovers filled the seats of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing Theater on Wednesday evening, when the museum hosted a conversation between filmmaker Martin Scorsese and LACMA Director Michael Govan.

Though the two appeared congenial, they had a seemingly more contentious relationship last summer, when Govan announced the museum would have to suspend its film program due to funding issues. The news sparked an outcry from the public as well as from Scorsese, who in August wrote an open letter published in The Times urging LACMA to keep the film program running. That letter prompted the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. to donate $75,000 to save the film program, and Time Warner Cable and Ovation TV donated an additional $75,000 that will allow the program to run until the end of June.

Though Govan has previously laid out his intentions to increase the program's annual budget by about $150,000 and raise a $5-million endowment, the museum director did not go into further detail about the fundraising efforts during Wednesday's discussion.

Instead, the conversation mostly centered around Scorsese's devotion to the art of film preservation -- a passion he said was ignited back in the 1970s in the very theater in which he was seated.

After months of public debate over the future of LACMA's film program, museum director Michael Govan and filmmaker Martin Scorsese will join together this evening (Jan. 20) for a public conversation about the role of film at museums.

The discussion, which will take place at 7:30 p.m. in LACMA's Bing Theater and costs $10 for LACMA members and $12 for the general public, will also touch on the topic of film preservation.

It's an issue that's important to Scorsese, who accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday. When asked by a reporter backstage at the award show what he would do if he could not continue making films, Scorsese replied: "I would continue working in film preservation and teaching."

Back in August, he wrote an impassioned open letter published in The Times urging LACMA to keep the film program running.

"The film department is often held at arms’ length at LACMA and other institutions, separate from the fine arts, and this simply should not be," Scorsese wrote. "Film departments should be accorded the same respect, and the same amount of financial leeway, as any other department of fine arts. To do otherwise is a disservice to cinema, and to the public as well."

That letter prompted the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. to donate $75,000 to save the film program, and Time Warner Cable and Ovation TV donated an additional $75,000 that will allow the program to run until the end of June.

It seems Govan and Scorsese have made peace since the filmmaker spoke out: The museum director traveled to Scorsese's home last summer to discuss how the two could locate potential donors in Hollywood.

Presumably, the two will also be discussing further plans for the program -- and Govan's intentions to increase the program's annual budget by about $150,000 and raise a $5-million endowment -- this evening. 

For a full report on the discussion, check back with 24 Frames.

-- Amy Kaufman

Photo: Martin Scorsese. Credit Peter Kramer/Associated Press