Multiple responses re: Films whose first images are hard to identify

Multiple responses:

From: Leo Enticknap [[email protected]] 
	
Robin Curtis writes:

> I'm wondering if you can help me out in thinking of films whose openingimage offers a perceptual challenge to the viewer?

Off the top of my head:

- The montage of components of a reciprocating compressor in motion in 
'Metropolis' (1927, Fritz Lang)
- The extreme close-up of a rotating hub-cap in 'Blackmail' (1929, 
Alfred Hitchcock)
- Humphrey Bogart's PoV, hiding in the oil drum in the opening shot of 
'Dark Passage' (1947, Delmer Daves)
- The boat in 'Fanfare' (1958, Bert Haanstra)

Whether the first two were intended simply to convey the idea of 
machinery in operation in a general sense (which is pretty obvious and 
which I suspect most viewers would recognise immediately), or pose a 
conceptual challenge to the viewer (i.e. the filmmaker intends the 
viewer to want to know what specific machinery is in motion and/or why) 
is open to speculation, I guess.  The latter two are very definitely 
deliberate perceptual challenges on the filmmakers' part, I would argue.

Leo

Leo Enticknap
Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds
http://www.enticknap.net
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/people/leo-enticknap
http://leeds.academia.edu/enticknap

--
Henry Bacon [[email protected]] 
	
It's not at the very beginning of the film but otherwise the effect is 
just what you are after: the really extreme close-ups of Julie's eye 
which begin the sequence of the opening car accident in Kieslowsky's 
Blue. They are difficult to figure out even at repeated viewings -

Henry

--
malcolm cook [[email protected]] 
	
Robin

A particular kind of this experience was a part of the lightning
cartoon/sketch act which was an important precursor to animation, and is
seen in early films by James Stuart Blackton, George Méliès and Walter
Booth, among others. I've termed the guessing game this act involved the
'narrative of perception' and written about it in some depth in my article
'The lightning cartoon: Animation from music hall to cinema' in Early
Popular Visual Culture, which can be found here:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460654.2013.817146

Best wishes

Malcolm Cook

--
Stephanie Sarah Lauke [[email protected]] 
	
Filmmaker Katharina Pethke makes use of exactly this approach in her 
short documentary "Anophtalmus" from 2005.
More information you may find here: 
http://www.khm.de/pm/projekte/projekt/paview/1948/

Best,

Stephanie Sarah Lauke
Academy of Media Arts, Cologne

--
Gavriel MOSES [[email protected]] 

- Altman, Three Women

- Kieslowski, Blue

--
Kara Abd [[email protected]] 
	
Try "Lost in Translation" and "Bist" by Abdolreza Kahani. It's an Iranian
film.

Best,
Kara

--
Catherine Clepper [[email protected]] 
	
Campion's The Piano.

Catherine
--
Norman Rosenberg [[email protected]] 
	
JFK

--
Bill Schaffer [[email protected]] 
	
The beginning of Fightclub (inside a brain)
--
filmgene [[email protected]] 
	

John Frankenheimer's Seconds, Alfred Hitchcock's credits in North by Northwest..

Gene Stavis
--
Hauke Lehmann [[email protected]] 
	

Hi,
I would suggest Straw Dogs (original version).
Best regards, Hauke
--
Patrick Kinsman [[email protected]] 
	

Some texts about phenomenology and film include examples of images that 
are impossible to clearly identify.  For example, Jennifer Barker's 
book The Tactile Eye has some extended discussion of the ambiguous 
images which open Resnais' Hiroshima mon Amour.

Must these strictly be opening images?  If not, one thinks of the early 
snowglobe images in Citizen Kane, etc.
--
Vivian Sobchack [[email protected]] 
	

The opening shots of Aguirre, the Wrath of God: the perceptual challenge here is a sudden and radical 'readjustment" to one's comprehension of distance from far to near.

Also, the opening shot of The Piano in which a blurred image turns out to be a subjective view through fingers.

Vivian Sobchack
--
Jackson, Tony [[email protected]] 
	

depending on what you mean by perceptual challenge, also try minority report, memento, fight club

tony e. jackson






--
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www.viviankleiman.com
1.510.652.8185

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