Opening Sequence one analysis- Goodfellas

 

The opening sequence of this film introduces the characters through suspense and tension within the opening thirty seconds. We see three individuals driving in a car, the driver looking quite shifty and unnerved. The suspense introduces the main character (Henry Hill played by Ray Liotta) in this unnerved way to raise questions as to why he is acting on this manner and what the mysterious noise is in the backseat. We also get introduced to the laid back character sitting in the passenger seat (Jimmy Conway played by Robert De Niro) who is sleeping at the beginning of sequence. The character sitting in the backseat (Tommy Devito played by Joe Pesci) is also introduced as a psychotic murderer as can be seen when he brutally stabs a man to death in the trunk of the car. We can tell just from this stabbing and the fact that the three men have another man locked up and injured in the boot of their car that they aren’t good characters.

 The Genre of the sequence is easily determined from the central character saying in a freeze frame “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster”. This establishes the genre as ‘gangster’ instantly, but the genre is also determined in a number of other ways. First the characters are driving in a shady vehicle in the middle of the night swerving between lanes with a thumping in the trunk of the car, general conventions in the gangster genre tend to have bodies being hidden in these places; another way in which the genre of this sequence can be established is the brutality in which the man in the car (Billy Batts played by Frank Vincent) is murdered. He is first repeatedly stabbed then shot four times just to make sure the job is completed which is again a convention in the gangster genre.

 The enigma that is created in this opening film sequence is the man in the trunk of the car. It makes the audience wondered who he is? Why he is being murdered? Who are the people committing the murder? The overall mood you get from this sequence is that it has dark violent undertones that will lead to inventible dire consequences and mystery; this is achieved through the performance of the characters in the first two minutes and also with the gangster genre revealed the conventions are always that the gangsters have short lived glory before their downfalls.

 The narrative is set up in the opening seconds as it says in the credits, “This is based on a true story” and another credit is brought up about the location that the characters are in and the year (New York 1970). This sets up narrative because within these opening sixteen seconds you get the narrative of it being a true story and one of the themes of its violence because in the time period you view, crime and gangsters were at large then. The narrative is also set up by the murder of the man in the trunk of the car and the theme of murder set up because of this.

 Finally the most interesting micro-feature in this opening sequence is the non-diagetic music played during the freeze frame editing. It starts with an almost pantomime villain sound showing the characters to have dark undertones but continues on into an upbeat jazz sound. The effect that this gives is that it glorifies the violent actions of the characters and makes the film sound more light hearted than what it actually is, overall creating a very effective opening sequence.

 

By Jack Quinlan