Textual analysis - Sin City

Sin City - Opening Sequence:


- This film is a modern or 'neo' noir
- Opens with establishing shot of a balcony overlooking a busy American city, which is a typical setting for a noir style film.
- It is filmed in black and white however selective colour is used on parts of the image such as the woman's dress and lips, to highlight them. I believe her being highlighted is meant to show her vunerability. Her coloured dress also makes her seem very isolated from the rest of the background, as if she is being portrayed as lonely or alone.
- The selective colour gives a very theatrical feel to the sequence while the highly contrasted black and white filming gves it a very typical noir look.
- The voice over is obviously the voice of the man shown in the scene and is a very cool and calculated voice, showing him to be a very intelligent and confident character.
- His tone of voice also leaves an air of mystery about him as it is very quiet, almost a whisper but is still filled with confidence as if he has been in this kind of situation many times before.
- During the dialogue actions seem long and drawn out, as non-digetic music that is quiet and jazzy kicks in. All this helps to keep the mysterious and stylish theme going.
- Due to the mood so far the gunshot shocks the viewer with it's sudden sharp sound and bright flash of light. However the gun is silenced so there is still no significantly loud contribution to sound as of yet. It would appear that this kind of quiet but slick and stylish scene is prevalent in the noir film genre.
- Another typical noir film feature shown in this scene is bad weather and time of day, with many noir films taking place mostly at night when it is pouring down with rain, perhaps trying to achieve some kind of pathetic fallacy.
- The scene uses low key lighting for a very dark and mysterious look, with most of the light focusing on the woman in the scene, this may be as we are hearing the story from the man's point of view and she is his main focus at this point in time.
- The mise en scene is very slick and stylish, both characters are well dressed and the events seem to be taking place in around the 1960s. Both the costume and time frame are very typical of noir, and neo noir films
-There are minimal special effects in this scene, which aso seems to be a recurring theme in noirs, with the focus placed more on psychological impact s opposed to trying to impress with visual feats, often being much more crafty and subtle.
- The voice over creates psychological impact as we are allowed to really see what he is thinking and his words in places are almost poetic, he is a hitman although in the voice over and dialogue we hear compassion and emotion.
- My favourite features of this scene are the characters and the stylistic features.