Opening Shots: "Satantango" (Bela Tarr, 1994)

In honor of the DVD release of Satantango, I have decided to write an entry for Jim Emerson's ongoing Opening Shots Project for it. The entry will give away no significant details of the film's plot and should help create a framework to view the opening shot, if not the entire film. It does discuss some major themes and ideas, so if you want to go in with no knowledge, then I suppose there are spoilers ahead. For reference, the still below is not from the opening shot. The opening shot can be viewed at the bottom of this post. Again, a special thanks to Jim Emerson for the spearheading this project and keeping these discussions alive.


By showing a herd of cows move across a damp, tepid landscape filled with decrepit buildings, houses, and barns, Bela Tarr’s eight minute opening shot to his seven-and-a-half hour masterpiece Satantango quietly manages to set the strange tone and mood of the entire film, while also metaphorically illustrating the journey the characters will take over the course of the film. Satantango is a long journey where characters wander, stroll, and plod through their village waiting on a mysterious visitor to bring them money to close down the farm. Taking place near the end of Communism in Hungary, a collective identity is very much at stake, and this highlighted by the wonderful opening shot.

Surrounded by a howling wind (and accompanied by an eerie score), a group of cows graze together deep in the frame. Signs of the Satantango’s black comedy are present when several cows unsuccessfully attempt to mount the others. A single cow moves down in the frame and walks out of the frame to the right and then to the left. Mooing get louder and works as a signal for the cows to follow each other across the field. The camera glides along the group as the cows slowly progress in the same direction, following each other across the muddy land. The cows continue walking and mooing until they walk to the back of the frame and vanish behind a set of houses.

J Hoberman says every edit in a Bela Tarr film is an event, and that description is perfectly apt for the transition from the field of cows into the next shot. There is no real reason this shot couldn’t have gone on longer if the cows kept walking, but their exit from the frame after this long walk is what most keys the audience in to Tarr’s major themes and, in a narrative sense, the characters they will soon meet. It is an event not only in that the shot has (finally) ended, but the shot itself is a whole story that the rest of the Satantango will thematically follow. Where the cows go beyond the houses is uncertain, but the collective movement and disappearance of the entire group of cows mysteriously, and miraculously, reflects the motif and progression of Satantango’s plot. Without introducing a single character, this opening shot can be seen, if only after a complete viewing, as a precursor to the events that will come. Moreover, it establishes the type of world the characters inhabit and creates a bookend with the incredible final shot that leaves an engaged viewer in a stirred daze.

In the equally great opening shot to Tarr’s film Werckmeister Harmonies (2001), Tarr shows us how the entire world of the narrative will work by showing us the characters in their typical locale illustrating the earth revolving around the sun. Drastically different in its approach, Satantango does the same by merely following a herd of cows wandering through a field. Tarr may be the modern master of the single shot, and Satantango, as well as Werckmesiter Harmonies, illustrate Tarr as the master of the brilliant opening shot. Satantango’s opening shot is just as striking, at least to me, for its lack of characters and willingness to mimic the narrative with an unflattering metaphor. The characters in Satantango are this herd of cows, wandering through the remains of a destroyed society until they, and the society itself, vanish.

by James Hansen

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Classics... in the making

While I continue working on my review of the glorious Edge of Heaven (is that enough a review for now? If it is in your town, GO SEE IT!), I thought that this recent article in Jim Emerson's Scanners was well worth a look. We continue to talk about lists and what is "the best" or "a classic" and this ponders that a little further. If anyone is up for further discussion, let's get something going in those comments!

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Special Thanks and Congratulations

With all the new film releases out this weekend (reviews of "Atonement," "Juno," and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" are in the works...stay tuned!), it's a busy time for everybody, but there is time enough to mention that Brandon Colvin's earlier post was accepted on Scanners, Jim Emerson's wonderful site, for their Opening Shots Project. A big congratulations to Brandon and a special thanks to Jim Emerson for taking the time for consideration and the addition to the project. There will be many more entries from Out 1 to come!

There is a link for Scanners on the side, but you can also get to here. Continue reading...

Opening Shots- "Le Samourai" (1967)

A quick preface to this series that we will be tackling from time to time...a little while ago Jim Emerson on his Scanners site started a project called "The Opening Shots Project." The idea was to analyze and argue for the greatest opening shots in cinema. What makes them work. What they set up for the rest of the film. The definition of a great opening shot varies, but when you see one it can be recognized immediately. We really like the project so we decided to do some of our own entries, which we will be sending to Emerson in hopes of inclusion on his main site. Even if that doesn't happen, consider these our additions to the project anyways. Be sure to take a look at the project here. It hasn't been updated for a bit, but we hope that it keeps going strong. -James Hansen


The opening shot of Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1967 noir masterpiece “Le Samouraï” establishes the tone of Melville’s contemplative crime film, defines its amoral protagonist Jef Costello (Alain Delon), and introduces the connections between Costello, a hired assassin, and the concept of the Japanese samurai, particularly the ronin, or masterless samurai. The nearly three-minute shot maintains a simple but wonderfully expressive composition throughout, remaining within the drab gray-blue confines of Jef’s apartment.

Jef lies stiffly on his white mattress with black polka dots in the bottom right corner of the frame. Two windows, overflowing with soft light, balance the composition by providing visual anchors in the center of the frame. Jeff’s pet bird chirps away in his birdcage, resting on a table centered between the two windows. Chairs and dressers crowd the outskirts of the frame, completing the layout of Jef’s ascetically simple, disciplined apartment. For minutes, the only sound is the constant drizzle of rain outside the windows and the intermittent whooshing of cars on the street below, punctuated by the light cries of Jef’s bird. Jef’s lights a cigarette and when he puffs, the smoke floats up softly, stagnating in the light of the windows, rolling around as if trying to escape. The completely still shot seems as if it’s attempting to emulate the frozen camera of Ozu. Jef lies with solemnity and his imprisonment in his dreary apartment is analogous to the situation of his caged bird.

Following the credits, text appears in the top right corner of the shot. The text reads, “There is no greater solitude than that of a samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle . . . perhaps . . .” The quote is attributed to Bushido (Book of Samurai), which Melville fabricated for the film, and illustrates the connection between Jef’s disciplined isolation and the social exile experienced by great warriors, like samurai. Particularly interesting is the connection between Jef and ronin, or masterless samurai. Ronin are noted in Japanese storytelling for their lack of morality and existential listlessness, caring for themselves above all and feeling no loyalty to exterior forces. Jef exemplifies this sort of selfish existence, which, as with the ronin, fates him to a sense of dread and, ultimately, death.

Immediately after the text appears in the frame, the shot begins undulating violently from rapid zoom-ins and zoom-outs. The jarring mutation of the shot results in the shot actually being wider, the camera further away from Jef. His isolation and distance is intensified, correlating with the revelation of Jef as a type of modern ronin. Following the widening of the opening shot, Jef sits up in his bed and turns his back to the camera, facing the windowed wall, smoky light dancing over his head. He has turned away from the camera, away from the audience, delving further into his own separation and loneliness. This is Jef’s acceptance of his role as the necessarily solitary warrior, an enforcer of the zeitgeist of “honorable” violence.

The slow, lingering pace of the opening shot of “Le Samouraï” sets the momentum of Melville’s film and the gray-blue dreariness of the color scheme is consistent throughout, almost as if Melville is attempting to make a color film in black and white. This anachronistic quality is ultimately what defines Jef, a remnant of the past, of the legend of the ronin, a pre-vanquished anti-hero seemingly awaiting his own extinction.

by Brandon Colvin

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