The Conversation, directed by Francis Ford Coppola (1978)
A brief description of what happens in the opening of this film is we see a group of people spying and listening on a conversation that a couple are having, the spies use a van with the label ‘pioneer glass’ as a base to report to and send back their information to. One of the couple notices one of the spies and tells her man and says ‘he’s been following us’. Elements of a thriller that I identified in this film are a puzzle because it makes me think, why are these spies doing this and what’s the purpose/reason behind their actions. I also identified suspicion, suspense and enigmas from the start.
No Country for Old Men, directed by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen (2008)
A brief description of what happens in the opening of this film is that we see an officer taking an arrested man in hand cuffs to his police car where he then drives him back to the police station, after which the arrested man kills the officer from behind using his hand cuffs after a struggle on the floor. The arrested man then pulls up an innocent driver using the stolen the police car, tells the innocent man to get out of the car and kills him with a gun with an appearance of an oxygen tank which in fact shoots out bullets like a hand gun. We then see a different scene, where a cowboy discovers a wounded dog in the country, he then looks at where the dog came from and makes his way there on foot. He then discovers a load of cars in the distance and as he gets closer he finds dead bodies both on the ground and in the cars and one barely alive. As the cowboy does some more investigation he finds a further man, dead, under a tree beside a suitcase full of money which he then picks up and walks off with. Elements of a thriller that I identified in this film is suspense, which I got from the weird oxygen tank before I knew it shot bullets because it was made out to be one thing but in fact was something totally different and it also questions me why does he have it? What does he use it for? When the cowboy discovers the dead bodies, I questioned myself, why are these people dead? What happened to them? What are in all the packages and what’s all the money about? By all this I assumed it was a drug deal which went wrong. During the opening there was no non-diegetic sound.
Seven, directed by David Fincher (1995)
A brief description of what happens in the opening of this film is we see detective Somerset getting ready from the beginning in an incredibly meticulous and organised method, which pretty much establishes his character. He seems to be an extremely methodical and careful character even from the beginning which makes me assume that if he’s that careful at getting ready in the mornings that he also does that for everything else he does, such as his detective work. Another character appears, Detective Mills and has a brief conversation with Detective Somerset which then quickly moves on to a scene with Somerset again but this time with the sound of a clock ticking which builds suspense because this could be suggesting that his time is running out. Along with the ticking I can also hear city noises, car alarms, and people shouting, despite this Somerset is perfectly still and quiet. I get the feeling that he is listening out for the city and that he cares, it’s as if the noise is intruding into his bed room which means he doesn’t quite have his own space and that the city is just a part of him that he will never escape from.In the first murder scene that I saw, the dialogue I get from that is death, uncaring character and a grisly murder, in other words not a nice place to be. The contrast that I have noticed between Mills and Somerset is that Mills is inexperienced, in this youth and has enthusiasm however Somerset is experienced, in his old age and ready to retire. Along with this Mills wants to get into the city however Somerset wants to get out of the city but despite these differences I have realised they probably have more in common than I first thought as I imagine that Mills will become somewhat a character like Somerset. The film is a thriller, crime convention like the film, Lethal Weapon, it contains scenes which overlap with the music and also jumps frequently. The mise - en scene of the title sequence included grotesque pictures, someone’s hand writing into a diary, finger prints being sliced off, something being read from a book, things being erased and cut out, grimy, dirty, unhealthy activity which made me feel uneasy. Also distorted music and as if someone had been denied a normal way of seeing things. The music was in the nature of a static, distorted, industrial rock and included the dialogue ‘closer to God’ and also showed a scene of cutting out the word god which link together. The editing included quick jump cuts, overlapping which gave it a fractured feel and doesn’t flow like I expected it to.
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