Cinematic Overtures ─ How to Read Opening Scenes

A great movie’s first few minutes are the key to the rest of the film. Like the opening paragraphs of a novel, they draw the viewer in and set up the thematic concerns and stylistic approach that will be developed over the course of the narrative. A strong opening sequence leads the viewer to trust the filmmakers. Other times, opening shots are intentionally misleading as they invite alert, active participation with the film. In Cinematic Overtures, Annette Insdorf discusses the opening sequence so that viewers turn first impressions into deeper understanding of cinematic technique.

From Joe Gillis’s voice-over in Sunset Boulevard as he lies dead in a swimming pool to the hallucinatory opening of Apocalypse Now, from a stream-of-consciousness montage as found in Hiroshima, mon amour to the slowly unfolding beginning of Schindler’s List, Cinematic Overtures analyzes opening shots from a range of Hollywood and international films. Insdorf pays close attention to how the viewer makes sense of these scenes and the cinematic world they are about to enter. As she looks at the strategies of opening scenes, Insdorf also examines how films critique and explore the power of the camera’s gaze. Along with analyses of opening scenes, the book offers a series of revelatory and surprising readings of individual films and the works of some of the leading directors of the past seventy-five years.Erudite but accessible, Cinematic Overtures will lead film scholars and ardent movie fans alike to greater attentiveness to those fleeting opening moments.

Annette Insdorf is a professor in the Graduate Film Program of Columbia University’s School of the Arts and host of the Reel Pieces series at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y. Her books include Indelible Shadows: Film and Holocaust (1983) and Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski (1999).