Analysis of similar text: Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard

Sunset Boulevard is a 1950 American Noir film directed by Billy Wilder. I will be talking about the opening of this movie.
The film has an opening shot of a kerb which has the name of the movie written on it. It then pans across the road whilst the names of the actors, the director and so on appear on the road. The opening just like we would expect from film noirs is set outside as film noirs were well known for being set outside. Throughout the opening a tense music track is played over the top and this gives the viewer an insight into what they can expect from the movie.
Once the titles have finished a voice over begins and it starts to introduce the story and what is happening in the opening scene. As the voice over begins asynchronous sirens can be heard, then the police cars come into the shot and elliptical editing is used to show us the journey of the police cars, towards the scene of a murder where a body floating in a pool has been found. During this scene both the shots used and the voice over notify us of the backdrop of the movie, L.A as we recognise the big palm trees that are seen in L.A.
The movie has one clear narrative that we can see from the 3 minute opening and that we recognize as a narrative that is used in many film noirs and that is flashbacks. The whole movie is basically an entire flashback as it starts with the finding of the dead body and then the rest of the film goes back 6 months and tells us of how the murder came to happen. From the shot of the dead body in the pool a transition is used as the shot fades away from the body and brings in a shot of an L.A street. The shot then pans across to a small apartment block where one of the apartments has an open window which just like the narrative that we have seen fits with the typical settings of some film noirs as in many, film noirs small apartments or hotel rooms are seen a lot, take for example L.A confidential a neo noir, a small rundown hotel room is used as one of the settings of the movie, it is used as a place to take criminals and beat answers out of them. From the pan we are taken into the open window and there we see the narrator of the movie. Once introduced to him we recognise him from near the beginning of the movie as he was the body found floating in the pool, because of this we know what is going to happen to him but we don’t know how so this keeps the viewer guessing and make them keep watching as they will want to see if they guess right about why he gets killed and most of all who kills him.