Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes

205 Pages·2017·8.859 MB·English

by  Annette Insdorf

HH O W T O R E AA D O PP E N I NN G S C E N E S
Cinematic Overtures
Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures
University Seminars
Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures
The University Seminars at Columbia University sponsor an annual series
of lectures, with the support of the Leonard Hastings Schoff and Suzanne
Levick Schoff Memorial Fund. A member of the Columbia faculty is invited
to deliver before a general audience three lectures on a topic of his or her
choosing. Columbia University Press publishes the lectures.
Charles Larmore, The Romantic Legacy 1996
Saskia Sassen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in the Age of Globalization 1996
David Cannadine, The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain 1999
Ira Katznelson, Desolation and Enlightenment: Political Knowledge After Total
War, Totalitarianism, and the Holocaust 2003
Lisa Anderson, Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public
Policy in the Twenty-First Century 2003
Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics
in Most of the World 2004
David Rosand, The Invention of Painting in America 2004
George Rupp, Globalization Challenged: Conviction, Conflict, Community
2006
Lesley A. Sharp, Bodies, Commodities, and Biotechnologies: Death, Mourning,
and Scientific Desire in the Realm of Human Organ Transfer 2007
Robert W. Hanning, Serious Play: Desire and Authority in the Poetry of Ovid,
Chaucer, and Ariosto 2010
Boris Gasparov, Beyond Pure Reason: Ferdinand de Saussure’s Philosophy of
Language and Its Early Romantic Antecedents 2012
Douglas A. Chalmers, Reforming Democracies: Six Facts About Politics That
Demand a New Agenda 2013
Philip Kitcher, Deaths in Venice: The Cases of Gustav von Aschenbach
2013
Robert L. Belknap, Plots 2016
Paige West, Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in
Papua New Guinea 2016
Cinematic Overtures
HOW TO READ OPENING SCENES
Annette Insdorf
Columbia University Press
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup .columbia .edu
Copyright © 2017 Annette Insdorf
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Insdorf, Annette, author.
Title: Cinematic overtures : how to read opening scenes /
Annette Insdorf.
Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2017] |
Series: Leonard Hastings Schoff memorial lectures | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017009183 | ISBN 9780231182249
(cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231182256 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780231544061 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1994 .I4645 2017 | DDC 791.43—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017009183
Columbia University Press books are printed on
permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover image: Film still from The Piano. Image provided by
the author with permission from Jane Campion,
the film’s writer and director.
Cover design: Lisa Hamm
Dedicated to the memory of Guy Gallo
X

Contents
Preface ix
1. The Crafted Frame (Saul Bass, Talk to Her,
Knife in the Water, Camouflage) 1
2. The Opening Translated from Literature
(The Conformist, The Tin Drum, The Unbearable Lightness
of Being, All the President’s Men, Cabaret) 14
3. Narrative Within the Frame: Mise-en-Scène
and the Long Take (Touch of Evil, The Player,
Aguirre: The Wrath of God, The Piano, Bright Star,
In Darkness) 35
4. Narrative Between the Frames: Montage
(Z; Hiroshima, mon amour; Seven Beauties; Schindler’s List ;
Three Colors: Red; The Shipping News; Shine) 55
5. Singular Point of View (The Graduate, Taxi Driver,
Apocalypse Now, Come and See, Lebanon, Good Kill ) 73
6. The Collective Protagonist (La Ciudad, 3 Backyards,
Little Miss Sunshine, Le Bal, Day for Night, A Separation,
Where Do We Go Now?) 96
(cid:2)
viii Contents
7. Misdirection/Visual Narration (The Hourglass Sanatorium,
Before the Rain, Ajami, Under Fire, The Conversation,
Rising Sun, Psycho, The Truman Show) 122
8. Voice-Over Narration/Flashback (Sunset Boulevard,
American Beauty, Fight Club, Badlands) 150
Notes 165
Index 175
Color plates follow page 58
Preface
F
irst impressions count. A strong opening sequence
leads the spectator to trust the filmmakers. My
experience watching films—as well as teaching
cinema history and criticism—suggests that a great movie tends
to provide in the first few minutes the keys by which to unlock
the rest of the film. Gifted directors know how to layer the first
shots in a way that prepares for their thematic concerns and sty-
listic approach. Sometimes the opening sequence is intention-
ally misleading, inviting the viewer into active participation with
the film, alert to the images and sounds that will be developed
throughout subsequent scenes.
This book initially took shape as a series of lectures I was
invited to deliver at Columbia University. In November 2014 I
offered three Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures—
“Opening as Prologue,” “Opening as Misdirection,” and “Open-
ing as Action”—including numerous film clips. Reshaping the
lectures into a book meant finding a new and more coherent struc-
ture, which led to these eight distinct approaches to opening a
motion picture. Because adaptation places cinematic storytelling