POSTED December 10 2013
Best movie opening sequence?
Janet Leigh at a motel, but not the Bates Motel, in A Touch of Evil
Sam Fuller was a journalist before he was a filmmaker (his mentor was crime reporter Rhea Gore, mother of John Huston). Fuller observed that journalism and filmmaking had a lot in common, that the opening sequence was like a headline that propelled you into the story.
As I struggle with a lead paragraph for something I am working on, I was thinking of movie sequences that grabbed me. I can’t think of anything grabbier than this three-minute opener from Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil. Can you?
(Yes, that’s Windward Avenue in Venice, California in the role of the U.S./Mexico border.)
Janet Leigh in a motel, before she stopped at the Bates Motel.
Is this the best movie opening sequence?
http://t.co/qPDgywLDEH http://t.co/SIQQmJ8ZXn
RT @CarrieRickey: Is this the best movie opening sequence?
http://t.co/qPDgywLDEH http://t.co/SIQQmJ8ZXn
RT @CarrieRickey: Is this the best movie opening sequence?
http://t.co/qPDgywLDEH http://t.co/SIQQmJ8ZXn
RT @CarrieRickey: Is this the best movie opening sequence?
http://t.co/qPDgywLDEH http://t.co/SIQQmJ8ZXn
I also love the crazy opening of Sam Fuller’s Naked Kiss. And why not Welles’s Citizen Kane? And The Searchers and Vertigo and Tokyo Story and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Mean Streets and Blade Runner and of course Pierrot Le Fouu. They all in different ways grab you and will not let you go..
I really like that first-person-perspective opening for the theatrical version of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT which switches point-of-view when its boxer looks in the mirror, revealing Anthony Quinn. The moment segues into the bold-type credits scored quite dramatically by Laurence Rosenthal.
RT @CarrieRickey: Is this the best movie opening sequence?
http://t.co/qPDgywLDEH http://t.co/SIQQmJ8ZXn
RT @CarrieRickey: Is this the best movie opening sequence?
http://t.co/qPDgywLDEH http://t.co/SIQQmJ8ZXn