Chasing the image: Barred
Both movies begin with a close-up of metal barrier at night. A hand grabs it, and a man pulls himself up into the frame, suggesting a transgression of some kind is occurring. In "Vertigo," the man is a criminal suspect on the run from a policeman (and, we soon learn, James Stewart); in "Munich," he is one of the Palestinian Black Septemberists, climbing over the gate into the Olympic Village where he and his terrorist cohorts will murder 11 Israeli atheletes -- the event that sets the movie's story in motion.
More on both these movies in future Opening Shots. Just wanted you to see the effective way Spielberg begins his movie with a visual quotation from Hitchock's. I've heard from people over the years who don't think critics should mention other movies in reviews -- like it's just some kind of arcane "film geek" thing. (I got an e-mail just last week, scolding me for mentioning Spielbergian suburban-myth movies -- "CE3K," "E.T.," "Poltergeist" -- in my review of "Lady in the Water"; I don't see how you could review that movie without mentioning predecessors like those in the work of a filmmaker who has spoken publicly about Spielberg's influence on him. That's a critic's job -- to offer context and analysis.) Artists in all fields borrow and comment upon each others' work all the time. (You don't have to know, for example, that Nirvana thought "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was just their Pixies rip-off -- but you may hear it with new ears once you do.) In this case, Spielberg is grabbing an image that has resonance, for him and the audience, even if you don't consciously notice it when you see it. It has impact, some of which reverberates all the way back to "Vertigo" in 1958 and the way that movie made you feel in its opening sequence....
Comments
I can see the argument against making too many outside film references in film criticism from a "know your audience" standpoint; if you're reviewing a movie that's targeted at kids, and the review will mostly be read either by kids or their parents who are just looking for something to keep their kids quiet for 2 hours, it doesn't make sense to say "Well, the visual style is an homage obvious to Obscure Japanese Movie #43829." Making references to other films only works if a significant portion of your audience has actually seen one or more of the films you're talking about.
On the other hand, if someone's complaining that you're being overly wonkish for referencing SPIELBERG....well, they need to get a life.
Posted by: Ali Nagib | July 24, 2006 09:45 AM
Yes, that's the thing, Ali -- the comparisons or references, obviously, have to be relevant. So, if you're reviewing a kid's movie, you may find it appropriate to make a comparison to some other kid's movie it resembles -- whether it's "The Wizard of Oz," or "The Little Mermaid," or "Pinocchio" or "Finding Nemo"... "Lady in the Water" even paraphrases "CE3K" -- but whereas Spielberg's character was caught up in the mythic suburban mystery and said: "This is important. This means something," Shyamalan's character adopts a Tinkerbell strategy and exclaims: "You have to believe that this all makes sense somehow!" As I said in my review, it comes off as special pleading, directed not only at other characters, but at the audience. And there's the rub: I don't think Shyamalan had enough conviction to trust his own bedtime story. And if it doesn't work for him, it sure won't work for us.
Posted by: jim emerson | July 24, 2006 02:23 PM
The opening shot of "Field of Dreams" (1989) is a zoom out of a sepia photo of a young boy in overalls sitting in a field. The voice over is Kevin Costner saying: "My father's name was John Kinsella." Of course the entire movie is about Ray Kinsella's struggle to deal with his relationship with his father. This struggle is resolved in the final shot of the film, which shows Ray "having a catch" with his eventual father. But you're right, the entire story is revealed in the first shot.
Posted by: Ed Mildon | July 27, 2006 12:06 AM