Sin City Opening Scene Analysis

Before we even see anything on the screen we are greeted by the Diegetic sounds in the background and the music already kicks in. Here, the audience expectation is that the scene is going to tell us how the film begins, but the Jazz music already being played before we see any visuals, shows that the director wants the audience to already feel a sinister emotion, before the scene happens. The scene transitions with a fade in from black to the first opening scene.

In this shot everything is in a black and white contrast except for the woman’s dress. The woman is a femme fatal and her dress being the colour red represents seduction. The male emerging from the darkness could suggest that he is an evil character as darkness relates to evil. The Backlight/High contrast could show that there are no good guys at this point or in this scene and that the Femme Fatal is quite trapped. Leading from this the camera shot is a high angle shot which shows that the woman is isolated or vulnerable. Before the scene even starts up. You can hear the non-diegetic sounds of Jazz music, which is a theme of crime in the 1930s. You can also hear the Diegetic sounds of sirens of police cars, traffic and the wind to set the location and the isolation of the city. During this scene, a non-diegetic voiceover is heard; the voice of the person talking is quite sinister and dark and uses a lot of poetic language. This ties in with the sinister lights, angles and sound to give this scene a dark atmosphere.

In this shot, we see a change in camera angles and a close up shot of the femme fatals face. Her away from the black and white colours, her eyes are green this is a emphasis on when the man says to her “your eyes” and explains what he likes about her eyes just after he lights her a cigarette.

In this shot, we have another camera angle change and it’s an over the shoulder shot of the man to the femme fatal. At this point in the film, the setting is quite mysterious and sinister with the high lighting contrasts of the buildings in the background.

In this shot, the camera zooms out of the usual close up shot to a medium long shot. The whole picture changes as an effect is used called Chiarascuro; Chiarascuro is contrast of light and dark and features a lot of bold contrasts affecting the whole composition. Here, we can see that the all of the mise en scene in her, changes to a white bold colour, with the rain still beaming in, in the background.

In this shot, the man has embraced the woman and proceeded to shoot the woman. When the shot was fired, there was a quick and big white flash on the face of the woman to emphasise the gunshot. Here the camera does a close up of the man with the woman slowly dying on his shoulder, with the gun that was used to kill the woman. The light shines on the face of the man to show his reaction to what he has done. At this point the rain gets a lot faster. The rain represents the sadness and the sorrow of the death of the girl and even the character feels this emotion when he realises that he has killed her.

In this last shot of the opening scene, while the man holds the dead woman in his arms as she falls slowly to the floor. There’s a top angle shot looking down on the pair, as if what it would be like if god was looking down. To add to this the man is looking up to the sky, looking up at god. This represents the drama and the evil at this point in the film as he is looking up at god to show what he has done and to show that he has committed a murder. After this, the camera then zooms out of the pair, in a spiral, and we see the skyscrapers and large buildings of New York City. This then transcends into darkness and the credits for sin city begin.