How Has The Director Tried to Engage the Audience in the Narrative in the Opening Two Minutes of Once Upon a Time in The West?

A film opening should encapsulate the overall theme and flow of the whole movie in as little time as possible. It should engage the viewer and provoke specific emotions in them, providing an overall clue of the viewing experience in as few as 2 minutes. As an audience we should be able to identify the setting, characters and genre of the film from the opening. A good example of a movie that pulls this off seamlessly is; Once Upon a Time in The West – a “Cow-Boy/Western” released in 1968.

From the first few seconds we can immediately identify the setting and genre of this movie. The views from the windows of the small shack show a sprawling, dry expanse – that of which is similar to most Wild West films. The area is extremely rural and un-built up, as shown by the rickety, unfinished design of the building that the characters are in. This immediately begins the story of the movie, we know where it is set, the types of characters we will be dealing with (due to genre stereotypes) and we can guess some of the movies themes. By allowing the opening scene to be easily identifiable, the director has captured their target audience’s attention; no one is going into this film thinking it is anything other than a western.

The opening scene uses representation very well, we see very stereotypical costumes that separate each of the character’s roles; bounty hunter, train conductor, and maid. Each of the costumes conforms to its character’s stereotypes, the bounty hunter’s clothes are dirty and well-used whilst the conductors and maid’s are job specific, professional and clean. The director used this to show us the distinction between the different characters. We can also see that the middle-aged men are the power in the room, as the woman is a maid and the older man is shown as weak and a bit of a pushover.

The use of sound in the opening 2 minutes is handled very cleverly. There is no music and very little dialogue (the only speech coming from the train conductor), the audio is instead focused on the over emphasis (Foley) of certain sound effects; like the creaking of the door and the scrape of chalk on a blackboard. The director used this media strategy to create a feeling of tension with the audience along with a sense of mystery as without dialogue we cannot identify why the bounty hunter-esque characters are there. Whilst not forwarding the narrative directly, the added suspense allows the narrative to become more appealing to the viewer, as it is not laid out before the movie has begun.

The lighting in the scene takes on two distinct forms, whilst the scene is set during the day (so the outside is lit up with high key) the inside of the shack is rather gloomy and dark, using a more low key lighting. The way the director used lighting actually does further the narrative, we see that outside it is bright and sunny, whilst inside it is dark and foreboding – eluding to something bad that is about to happen inside this house. The usage of low key inside also fits both the genre and context as, during the Wild West era there was no electricity, so lights would not have been a necessity in homes (as all they could use were fire lamps). People would use the light from outside to brighten their living spaces, which we can see through the vastly open windows.

There are a variety of camera angles and shots used in the opening to the movie but the ones used to the most effect are close ups on the more foreboding characters’ faces. This lets the director show us how hardened they are and allows us to match their faces to characters as they will obviously be important later in the film. There is also a close up of the train conductor’s face, showing the contrast between his cheerful demeanour and the “Cow-Boy’s” grim expressions. The close ups are spliced between a wide shot of the whole shack, which progresses the setting and shows all of the character in one place at the same time.

The editing in the scene is slow paced to build up tension. It switches between the shots slowly, so the viewer can truly take in everything before it moves on. This allows them to identify different parts of the narrative, like the setting and the character’s faces and costumes. There are practically no transitions, an action the director took in order to hold the audience’s attention and to maintain the level of tension in the scene.

In conclusion, the director of Once Upon a Time in The West uses the opening 2 minutes to introduce us to multiple characters and to build up their grim personalities and to show us both the genre and setting of the film. Finally, he uses key media strategies to build up tension and draw in the audience, convincing them to continue watching.