This is very good, but the best repeated-slap of all (starting at 1:21) is self-administered. Anyone can slap anyone else, but when you whack yourself in a fit of self-loathing…watch out. Name the actress and the film. Hint: The self-slapper is being honored tonight at the Santa Barbara Film Festival.
My personal favorite isn’t included. That would be James Cagney‘s one-two-three slap of a bartender in William Wellman ‘s Public Enemy (’31) — choreographed as carefullly as one of Cagney’s dance steps in Yankee Doodle Dandy. First a backhand, then open-handed and downward, and then an upwards backhand on the chin. It starts at 1:15:
