The most important thing that the opening of a film must accomplish is to establish a tone so that the audience fall into the same mood as the film they are watching. It doesn’t have to be a big budget explosive opening in order to grab the audience’s attention and sometimes an over the top opening like this risks upending the structure of the film with a sense of where do we go from here?
Usually the most successful film openings bring a well developed sense of intrigue that will leave you settled into your seat desperate to know more about the story and the characters that are going to occupy your time for the next one and a half to two hours. If it is particularly inventive there will be some dramatic foreshadowing that will enable to hint you at the problems that are going to occur throughout the story.
The Shining
The opening of The Shining is visually outstanding because mood and metaphor is established without us even needing to see a single character’s face. The shot begins by panning through a lake which immediately creates a feeling of disorientation. Then from a birds eye position above the trees we watch a small vehicle make its way along the cliff-top roads. There is a clear sense of the passengers being shown to be quite isolated and as if they are heading into the unknown. Dramatic foreshadowing is then used to good effect as we watch the car move along the edge of the clifftop, a perfect connotation of a family on the edge of a collapse.
The use of sound is also expertly handled and in regards to sound I’d like to make a comparison to a similar opening adopted in the film Shutter Island. Scorsese’s film (which by the way is absolutely fantastic and if you haven’t seen it already then head to your nearest cinema as soon as possible) begins however with a very overbearing soundtrack which distracts from the images on screen.
Basically Martin Scorsese handles everything perfectly apart from the sound. The detectives are on the boat heading to Shutter Island, straight to the point, no messing around. We quickly learn about the characters and their purpose. This is all fine. Then however as they approach the island itslelf which is a very impressive visual spectacle this blaring, gnawing sound suddenly shrieks over the action in a manner which completely takes you out of the moment.
Whereas in The Shining the sound blends in with the imagery and acts as an undercurrent to the horror on the surface, Shutter Island uses its over the top sound effects in order to basically shout at the audience ‘YOU ARE WATCHING A PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR FILM.’ It was a surprisingly amateurish moment that felt as if some indulgent film student had suddenly taken over from the master and injected his own misguided sense of pacing and atmosphere.
There are so many scenes praised in The Shining but I still think the opening overshadows them all. It’s just pure brilliance with a director who perhaps used space and location better than anybody before him or since. After the first three minutes we haven’t seen a single face but there are already several connotations connected towards the figures in the car.
Watch the opening of The Shining (cannot be viewed in school)
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