Re: Films whose first images are hard to identify

From: Erica Sheen [[email protected]]

Two obvious examples:

1) David Lynch, almost always.  See Anne Jerslev's essay in  Sheen and
Davison eds. _The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare
Visions_  (Wallflower), which starts from precisely this question.

2) Alain Resnais, esp. the opening of _Hiroshima mon amour_ (who/which
shares with Lynch an interest in the extent to which a focus on texture
will challenge the processes of recognition which come into play at the
start of a film. This one could be very interesting for your question
because Duras' screenplay specified that the opening image should be the
nuclear mushroom cloud  - than which nothing was more recognisable in the
decade following Hiroshima.

Erica Sheen

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