Opening Shots Project
Opening Shots: Shotgun Stories
Through an open doorway we see a man without a shirt sitting on an unmade bed. In his hand is a white piece of paper. On his back is a spattering of circular, scarred-over wounds, like craters of flesh. Both membranes have stories inscribed on them. We just don’t know what they are yet. Maybe we’ll find out. Maybe we won’t. The man, Son Hayes (Academy Award-nominee Michael Shannon), reads the unfolded note, nods in acknowledgement, and looks up, as if to face himself in an off-screen mirror.
Opening Shots: ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’
From Nadia Aboufariss:
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” begins with a shot of a huge, wooded mountain side, shrouded in the mist. We can just barely make out the figures who are slowly descending the slope, little bigger than specks on the screen. As in other Werner Herzog movies (such as his recent film “Grizzly Man” ) this opening shot suggests the utter indifference of the natural world to the exploits of man. The Spanish conquistadors who are descending the mountain, with their priests, women, and slaves are embarking on a noble quest to find the lost city of gold, “El Dorado,” while simulataneously bringing the grace of God to the local savages.
Opening Shots: The New World
From David Nicol:
The camera drifts slowly across a stretch of calm water. Insects and birdsong can be heard. Raindrops begin to strike the water’s surface as we pass over a patch of water weed. And in voice-over, a young woman says, “Come spirit, help us sing the story of our land. You are our mother; we, your field of corn. We rise from out of the soul of you.”
This is the opening shot of “The New World” (2005), Terrence Malick’s dream-like interpretation of the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. The film depicts the interactions between the English colonists and the Powhatan natives, and in particular the relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas, who speaks the film’s opening words. As an opening shot, this image of placid river water is less spectacular than many of those that we have studied for Jim’s project, but its simplicity is deceptive and it contains all of the qualities of a great opening shot that Jim has been encouraging us to see.
Opening Shots: The Dark Knight
The corporate logos are deep blue and black: Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures, DC Comics. Then, out of a silent explosion of blue flames and black smoke, the familiar Batman shadow appears. Cut to bright afternoon daylight. The camera glides with surreal smoothness above a recognizably real American cityscape, over the rooftop of a large, squat building toward a cluster of shiny glass skyscrapers. This is not the forbidding, neo-Gothic Gotham City we expect to encounter at the beginning of a Batman movie, a densely stylized urban forest of inky comic-book noir. It’s almost like Phoenix at the start of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”: Anywhere, USA.
And that may well be the idea: The camera closes in on a colossal mirror, a wall of tinted windows in the side of a building. What are we looking for? How much closer can we get before something has to happen? (Where’s the helicopter? You’ll catch a glimpse of it at the far left, just at the moment your eye is distracted by an exploding window near center frame.) For a fraction of a second we may wonder about the fate of the people inside the room, and the pedestrians on the street below who are about to be showered with bits of glass. But before that can quite register we’re on the other side of the blown out window with a pair of clown-masked gunmen. This is part of some diabolical plan… which turns out to be a bank robbery in progress. (See other notes on this shot, and the rest of this sequence, here.)
Turns out, the building we’ve just passed over is the most important element in the shot; the glass wall is just a means to an end. Smoke and mirrors…
Opening Shots: Pan’s Labyrinth
So many movies have opening shots that are like overtures, condensed miniatures of the whole film. In Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” you might even say it contains the entire movie in one shot. Not only does it begin with the ending, but the movement of the shot (together with the next one) takes us from underground (the land of the subconscious, the imagination) up into the light of day — or, looked at another way, from political and psychological repression into the liberation of the open air. This presages the momentum of the entire movie.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” is so locked into the emotional and fantasy world of its protagonist, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), that the camera itself lies on its side next to her and is then plunges vertiginously into her pupil, entering her head, where the movie takes place. This initial dazzling sweep (actually a composite shot, but executed in once continuous motion) sucks us into the movie so quickly that we barely register what we’ve seen until the end, when we remember these prophetic first few seconds from the start of the movie.
“Pan’s Labyrinth” is riddled with pupils and irises, holes and portals that lead to new worlds. In this first shot, we appear to rise out of the ground (although it’s a right-to-left movement, reversing time), into Ofelia’s eye into a fantasy realm of her own creation, and then moves back to the right (setting the story into forward motion), following a running figure (Ofelia herself) up a circular stairway and through another doorway, into another chamber, with another stairway. The next shot follows her up the stairs, leading through a reverse of the opening pupil-shot: an eye-hole flooded with white light. And, with that, the movie-proper begins…
Roger Ebert has published a Great Movies review of “Pan’s Labyrinth. My own review, originally in the Chicago Sun-Times, is at RogerEbert.com, too, in the Editor’s Notes section.
Opening Shots: ‘The Rapture’
From Nathaniel Soltesz, Pittsburgh, PA:
One of my favorite opening shots is from Michael Tolkin’s “The Rapture.” First, a black screen, menacing ambient music, vague noises of typing, people speaking. The camera rises and we realize we’re looking at the side of a cubicle, and then we begin to move over a dark and shadowy cube farm, where average-looking phone operators perform and say the same maddeningly rote things over and over again. Eventually the camera focuses in on Sharon, our protagonist; but until then she could be anybody, another face in the crowd.
Opening Shots: The ‘Burbs
From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, Glendale, CA:
The opening of Joe Dante’s cruelly misjudged and overlooked comedy “The ‘Burbs” begins with a vertiginous and hilarious parody of the God’s-eye view shot. Fade in on the familiar Universal logo—the planet Earth spinning, surrounded by incongruously Saturn-like circles of galaxy dust, particle and stars. But the world looks a little off, a bit more animated, more cartoony than usual.
The camera begins to move in on the planet as the words “A Universal Picture sign dissolves away. The camera moves down closer and closer and closer onto the planet’s surface, onto the recognizable shape of the United States. Even closer now, dropping down into the Midwest somewhere, perhaps Illinois-ish. Closer. Closer. Now a city is recognizable. A neighborhood. A street. The camera continues “craning down from above the rooftops (obviously a miniature set), swooping left and down across the front of a row of houses.
Suddenly, Jerry Goldsmith’s score, which has had up to now a liltingly comic grace, turns mock haunted-house creepy with a thunderous, sinister organ chord as the camera glides over to a dwelling that looks a scosh more gothic than its surrounding neighbors. Just as suddenly, flickering flashes of light are visible through the windows into lining the goth house’s basement foundation, and crackling electrical sounds are heard accompanying the flashes. Something mysterious, and very un-suburban, is happening down there…
JE: Thanks again, Dennis! You submitted this along with several others back in July — and I had frame grabs for it and “Used Cars” ready to go before my “hard drive fatality.” Gotta go back and order “Used Cars” from Netflix again. Meanwhile, a happy belated birthday to Joe Dante ! Check out Dennis’s Dantean appreciation — as part of Tim Lucas’s recent Joe Dante Blog-a-Thon.
Also don’t let 2006 expire before you take Professor Dave Jennings’ Milton-Free, Universe-Expanding Holiday Midterm. It counts for 25 percent of your final grade this quarter.
(And, Dennis: Thanks so much for the Christmas gift!)
Opening Shots: ‘Dawn of the Dead’
View image: Waking into a nightmare.
From Brad Damare, New Orleans, LA:
“Dawn of the Dead” opens with an close-up of one of the lead characters, asleep against a blood-red carpeted wall. She seems both alone and surrounded by the red — an echo of what will be the film’s finale, in which she has to escape the mall rooftop alone, possibly alone in the world. But Romero jump-cuts with something of a joke: She’s only dreaming, and she’s actually in a room full of people. But that room full of people is in full-panic mode: She’s awakened from one nightmare into another.
JE: Thanks, Brad, for mentioning one of my all-time favorite horror movies. It’s like she’s in a red-shag womb, about to be born into a world that’s worse than anything she could have dreamed. That jump-cut happens as she cries out, waking herself up — and at the same instant a man pops into the frame and grabs her: “Are you alright? The shit’s really hitting the fan.” And the zombie head is really hitting the helicopter blades… A TV station colleage, watching a debate on a monitor (“We don’t know that,” says a man on the screen. “We gotta operate on what we do know!”), observes: “Still dreaming…”
Opening Shots: ‘Flowers of Shanghai’
View image
From Girish Shambu, Buffalo, NY:
“Flowers of Shanghai” (1998), by Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien, has an opening shot that lasts — I kid you not — eight minutes! Jazz bassist Marcus Miller once said about James Brown’s music that no matter how small a piece of it you took, like DNA, it had the “funk in it.��? That’s how I feel about this shot: it contains, in its eight minutes, the entire film.
The camera is an observer at a table in a 19th century Shanghai brothel or “flower house,��? where several clients are playing a drinking game. Most of them are young, dressed in dark and gleaming silk robes. The only light in the shot is provided by a couple of curved lamps. (In fact, we will discover that the film will never venture outdoors.) Next to the patrons, standing, are their “flower girls.��? Every now and then, promptly but gracefully, they light opium pipes or pour wine for their clients. Like a plaintive sigh, a melancholic melody-drone accompanies the shot.
Opening Shots: ‘Superman,’ ‘Lost in Translation,’ more
View image: The opening curtain.
View image: A 1936 comic book.
View image: A child reads the comic book.
From Mark Roberts, Calgary, Alberta, Canada:
I am such a fan of movie opening moments (sounds strange I know, but a great opening moment is something I really treasure), that I had to respond to your call for favourite moments (and I’m going to have to see “Barry Lyndon” now too…). They’re all pretty literal… nothing terribly deep in terms of artistic impression… but that shouldn’t disqualify a great opening.
“Superman”
I always get caught up by the opening moments. As the child narrator speaks about the Daily Planet, the curtains pull back to reveal the first issue of “Action Comics,” moving to the “live” shot of the Daily Planet, and then into space and the opening credits. John William’s score draws us through the open curtains and into the other world of the movie. I still get a little leap in my chest when the theme reaches its first crescendo and the title “Superman” leaps into view.
Opening Shots: ‘Cutter’s Way’
From Robert Horton, film critic, The Herald, Everett, WA:
How technical do you want to get about “opening shot”? Is the opening shot literally the very first thing that appears onscreen? Or is it the first shot proper, the thing that tells the people behind you to stop talking and pay attention? In the 1931 “Dracula,” the former is a wonderfully archaic credits plate with an art-deco bat, accompanied by a scratchy, mood-setting snippet of “Swan Lake” (without that bat and the music the movie that follows would somehow not be the same); the latter is the post-credits shot of a lusciously suggestive Transylvanian crossroads. Both count in “Dracula.”
View image
Most movies now begin with credits over a shot, making it hard to define the beginning-proper (and making it hard for the people behind you to know when to shut up already). The credits play over the opening shot of the 1981 film “Cutter’s Way” (aka “Cutter and Bone”), a film very people have heard of, let alone seen, but which is nevertheless one of the key American films of the 1980s (a crucial film in connecting the post-sixties hangover and the corporate runamuck of the eighties).
View image
The opening shot is dreamlike, stylized, drained of color—quite the opposite of the remainder of the film—and looks dead-center down a warm Santa Barbara street as an Old Spanish Days parade approaches the camera. It begins in black-and-white and bleeds slowly into color, and it’s in slow motion; the odd music by the late great Jack Nitszche seems to be running in slow motion, too. A band marches, banners wave, and front and center is a blonde in a white dress, like a bride, dancing in the Fiesta. Nothing really unusual about a blonde in a small-city parade, but when you watch the movie, you realize that this might be the kind of pretty girl who could end up dropped in a dumpster on a side street in the middle of the night because she made a bad decision about which rich guy to blow.
View image
The camera has watched this, panning finally to accommodate the blonde’s sideways movement. The whole thing has the drowsy long-lens shimmer of midsummer. The blonde has gotten close enough to the camera to pass out of the frame, but as we peer at the people in the distance, now coming into focus, she abruptly passes by again—and as her white ruffled dress rustles by, the image in the background is wiped away and replaced by a whole new shot…if you like, the first shot proper of the story: an exterior, in the magic hour of dusk, of the outside of an unmistakably Southern California hotel.
Opening Shots: The 400 Blows
From Gavin Breeden, Charlotte, NC:
When I think of great opening shots, my mind quickly goes to Francios Truffaut’s 1959 masterpiece, “Les Quatre Cents Coups” (aka “The 400 Blows”). I may have to break the rules a bit here and consider the entire opening credits sequence rather than the first shot though I think Truffaut would approve since he broke many cinematic conventions of his day with this film.
Opening Shots: ‘Femme Fatale’
From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule:
Brian De Palma’s exceedingly stimulating and sensational consideration of femme fatale iconography and the possibility of redemption within it begins with one of the director’s customarily brilliant, multilayered opening shots.
Under the black of the producers credits, familiar voices are heard. It’s Fred MacMurray. Fade up on a shot of an extreme close-up of a TV. It’s MacMurray, 525 broadcast lines blown up to big-screen size, in “Double Indemnity”. But a close examination of the image reveals a splash of color — something else is visible here, contrasting with the black-and-white images of Billy Wilder’s film. It’s a reflected image of a half-naked woman stretched out perpendicular across the TV screen. She is watching “Double Indemnity”, and we see her watching the movie in her reflection off the glass TV screen. “Double Indemnity” continues to play out, crosscutting between MacMurray and the original femme fatale, Barbara Stanwyck (as Phyllis Dietrichson).
The image of the young woman becomes clear, yet remains slightly ghostly, as the image in Wilder’s film darkens. MacMurray moves to close a window, when a shot rings out. Stanwyck has betrayed him with a bullet, and the title credit “Femme Fatale” pops on screen at the same time, as the ethereal image of the woman, reclining on her side, dispassionately watching the movie, lingers. (The title credit “A Film by Brian De Palma��? was earlier synchronized with Stanwyck’s first appearance on the TV.) Now De Palma’s camera begins to pull back. We see the cabinet of the TV, and we can now also observe that there are French subtitles superimposed on Wilder’s film. The image of the woman reflected in the TV seems even clearer now, as we continue to pull back, seeing her much more clearly in the flesh, gray tendrils rising from the cigarette she’s smoking while watching the TV. At this point there is double layering of the woman’s image, the reflection and the person being reflected, over the image of Stanwyck, who has taken a dominant position over her wounded lover as she confesses her machinations against him.
Opening Shots: Watchmen
In some editions, the opening shot begins on the cover of “Watchmen”: A black oval on a field of yellow with a drop of red liquid splashed on it. (“Bean juice?” “Human bean juice.”) The first “shot” proper (comic book, not movie — though the filmmakers find their own take on it) begins with the smiley in a sea of blood.
The “camera” pulls back from directly above the button. Carried by the flow, the smiley falls into the gutter as the blood pours down a drain. As the camera recedes further we see a man is washing away the stain with a hose. A pair of boots belonging to another, red-headed man carrying a “The End Is Near” sign wade right through the blood puddle and tracks red footprints down the sidewalk. From several stories up, we see a large delivery truck with a triangle on top. This will mean something, but we don’t know it yet.
For now, the triangle that most draws our attention are the converging lines of windows down the side of the building that has come into view on the right. The lines point directly to the splash of red.
(Click to enlarge frames below…)
Opening Shots: ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’
View image
From Edward Bowie, US Army:
I have a counter-intuitive nomination for best shot: The opening segue from the Paramount “mountain��? to the unspecified Andean mountain in “Raiders of the lost Ark.��? Indicative, I think, that what we are about to see is “…only a movie!��?
View image
Perfect for the “just for fun��? spirit that Lucas and Spielberg intended for their paean to the Saturday serial while demonstrating the technical wizardry that gives their “effects��? movies their dazzle (and their point.) Relax, get out the popcorn, their won’t be a quiz….a masterpiece!
View image
JE: Nothing counter-intuitive about this one — it’s intuitive all the way! I recall seeing it the weekend it came out with a friend and film professor of mine. We took in a matinee double-bill — first “Clash of the Titans,” followed by “Raiders.” Within the first few seconds, I remember her leaning over and whispering: “Isn’t it great to see somebody knows how to make MOVIES?!?!” Yep, it is.
View image
Watching this shot repeatedly (I like to get my hands dirty, as it were, while getting frame grabs), I thought of a couple basic principles of improv comedy: 1) always add information to the scene; and 2) always say “yes” — never contradict what somebody else has brought into it. Of course, this shot is anything but improvisational; it’s artfully choreographed all the way — and Spielberg is saying “yes” and adding information second by second.
Opening Shots: ‘Little Murders’
View image Rise and shine…
What do we have here? It’s the opening shot of one of my favorite 1970s comedies, a dark absurdist urban paranoid masterpiece called “Little Murders” (1971) written by Jules Feiffer (“Carnal Knowledge”) and directed by Alan Arkin (as was the second, successful run of the play in New York in 1969; the first staging a year earlier closed in a week). As you might guess, it’s a movie about windows and frames. Look out any window, and there’s another one looking right back at you — with a telescope, a camera, maybe even a gun. After a while, you don’t want to know what’s out there. You shut off the TV, bar the windows and bolt the door just to keep the madness… out?
Elliott Gould plays Alfred, a listless, benumbed photographer who shoots piles of dog shit. That’s his subject. In this shot, Alfred is somewhere outside the window, getting beat up. That’s Patsy (Marcia Rodd) in bed. The sounds of Alfred’s mugging are drifting in her window, but that’s not what awakens her. It’s the phone — another call from the heavy breather (in an era where “obscene phone calls” were the latest in pornographic technological phenomena). But although the image may at first remind you of Kitty Genovese (the murder victim whose screams were ignored by neighbors in Queens), Patsy intervenes. And that’s the way it all begins.
Arkin jump-cuts into the scene a few times as the credits appear, in a way that reminds me of the percussive cuts of Harvey Keitel waking up (to the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”) at the start of “Mean Streets” (1973). By the end of the film, the windows will be flung open again, to let the fresh air in… and the sniper rifles out.
P.S. Roger Ebert’s original 1971 review of “Little Murders” gets at why I think it’s such a good, and disturbing, comedy. It doesn’t tell you when it’s OK to laugh:
Arkin said, shortly after the film was released, that he’d only seen his movie once in a theater, and he was afraid to go again. When he saw it with an audience, he said, he thought it was a flop because there was no pattern to the laughs. People were laughing as individuals, almost uneasily, as specific things in the movie touched or clobbered them.
That’s my feeling about “Little Murders.” One of the reasons it works, and is indeed a definitive reflection of America’s darker moods, is that it breaks audiences down into isolated individuals, vulnerable and uncertain. Most movies create a temporary sort of democracy, a community of strangers there in the darkened theater. Not this one. The movie seems to be saying that New York City has a similar effect on its citizens, and that it will get you if you don’t watch out.
Opening Shots: Silent Light
View image “Stellet Licht,” Heilige Licht.
From Paul Clark at ScreenGrab.com:
Despite the sensational buzz for Carlos Reygadas’ “Silent Light” at Cannes, I approached the film with a bit of trepidation when I got a chance to see it in Toronto. I didn’t much care for Reygadas’ previous features, Japon and Battle in Heaven. I could see that he was a talented director, but his attention-grabbing tactics and leaden symbolism made it feel like he was trying too hard. A director who films a shot of a man writhing in agony next to a horse’s corpse is just aching to be taken seriously as an artist.
But all of my doubts melted away during the glorious opening shot of “Silent Light.” The film begins with an image of a starry sky, with nothing but chirping crickets on the soundtrack. The camera then tilts slowly downward until we see the horizon in the distance. After this, the sun slowly rises, and we begin to make out the rolling hills, and a few trees. As the sun continues to rise, the soundtrack begins to teem with life- chickens, cows, and the like- and we see a farm. All the while, the camera ever-so-slowly pushes forward toward the horizon, as the sun rises higher and higher above the hills.
If I wasn’t sure before whether Reygadas was worth taking seriously, this shot put my misgivings to rest. Simply put, it’s a stunner, partly because Reygadas makes it feel so effortless. It’s an extremely patient shot, taking at least five minutes, and in this time he acclimatizes us to the deliberateness of the film’s world. “Silent Light” is set in a Mennonite community in Mexico, far removed from fast-paced modern life, where people speak slowly and aren’t prone to snap decisions. The film’s opening shot prepares us for this beautifully.
Opening Shots: ‘Star Wars’
View image: The crawl recedes…
View image; The camera tilts down.
View image; The surface of a planet spans the lower part of the frame as a ship passes through the top.
“Star Wars” has, not surprisingly, been the popular favorite among Opening Shots contributions. Here’s how several of you saw it:
From Barry Toffoli:
“Star Wars” opens with a shot of space and the soft sound of John Williams score, then the shot shifts to a planet. So right away we know we’re in for adventure on foreign soil, in outer space no less. Then a small vessel comes from the top of the screen. This is quickly followed by a series of blasts as the score turns into that famous booming on sound, akin to Gustav Holst’s ‘Mars’ [from “The Planets”]. This is all quickly followed by the enormously famous and copied shot of a behemoth star cruiser coming in from the top of the screen and going on forever. It doesn’t take long to figure out that this story is a tale of good versus evil, the little guy getting bullied by the big guy. Even the planet in the shot plays into the theme, representing a new undiscovered world a new hope for freedom and life. But we know the journey will be hard as the star cruiser looms over everything from the rebel ship to the planet below to the audience watching it in the theatre.
And long before the death star ever shows up we fear this massive beast could blow up the planet below just as easily as it could blow up the tiny ship, setting the stage for one of the greatest adventures in film history.
Opening Shots: The Girl Can’t Help It
View image
Welcome back to the Opening Shots Project — which has been on a bit of an unscheduled hiatus simply because I’ve had too much else going on. To get us back into the swing of things, I present the introduction to the great 1956 rock ‘n’ roll musical musical comedy, “The Girl Can’t Help It,” directed (unmistakably) by former Looney Tunes animator Frank Tashlin.
View image
View image
Our tuxedoed host (and co-star) Tom Ewell — coming off a pairing with another pneumatic blonde, Marilyn Monroe, in the previous year’s “The Seven Year Itch” — introduces the film with the proper gravitas. No, this is not the spokesman for Mr. Carl Laemmle, warning us that we may be horrified or even shocked by the specter of “Frankenstein.” Mr. Ewell, instead, plays our genial — if a bit formal — emcee: “Ladies and gentlemen, the motion picture you are about to see is a story of music.” The set — with musical instruments tastefully floating around the soundstage — looks like it could be from a live-action black-and-white version of “Fantasia.”
View image
Ewell modestly explains his role in the story and proclaims: “This motion picture was photographed in the grandeur of CinemaScope, and… gorgeous, lifelike color by DeLuxe.” It takes a little effort, but he manages to push the frame into the proper aspect ratio and add color to the emulsion.
[Discreet cut to medium shot here.]
In short order, the music Little Richard bursts from a jukebox — “not the music of long ago, but the music that expresses the culture, the refinement and the polite grace of the present day” — drowning out out Mr. Ewell completely. The montage that follows, of colorfully lit couples tearing up the soundstage floor will be evoked in the credits for David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” years later.
But for now, it’s Jayne Mansfield who explodes onto the screen in the grandeur of CinemaScope and in gorgeous, lifelike color by DeLuxe — or rather, garish, lurid color by DeLuxe, and we wouldn’t want it any other way. Then it’s one politely graceful act after another: not only Ms. Mansfield and Little Richard, but Fats Domino, Abbey Lincoln, The Platters, Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, The Treniers, and Julie London, Julie London, Julie London and Julie London. She can’t help it.
