An opening scene can make or break the feeling of a film. It sets the stage for the environment the audience is about to enter. It is like that first bite of your hors d'oeuvres at that new restaurant you and your partner had been waiting months to get a reservation for. It is often critical to what the narrative intends to establish to keep the audience interested and entertained by the narrative. Recent memory forewarns audiences when it comes to behemoth franchises such as Star Wars, for movies as recent as The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, were heavily and justifiably criticized for lackluster beginnings. The former a pun-filled bombing run and escape that couldn't stop bumping into the faraway galaxy’s array of stereotypical actions and dialogue.
It's somehow one upped by the latter, a controversial and largely panned exposition dump with the infamous Oscar Isaac line, “Palpatine somehow returned” putting the end to countless fan and critical theories regarding the intergalactic soap opera's nine run Skywalker saga. The best opening scenes in film bring a thousand questions and no answers, and make the smallest details out to be the largest signifiers by the end of the movie's runtime. Films like The Social Network, Citizen Kane & The Dark Knight have this ouroboros element to them, the thematic and often emotional skin of the story and its main characters being exposed to the viewer in the beginning and end scenes, like a story that feeds on its own messaging. The director tells you the core message of the film in its first few minutes.
14 'Stand By Me' (1986)
Stand By Me opens with a monologue from an adult Gordie played by Richard Louis Dreyfuss, as he sits humbly in his parked car with a newspaper outlining the recent death of his childhood friend. The moment serves the narrative as the triggering instance in which the audience is transported back into the nostalgic memories and stories of Gordie's childhood. Specifically, in search of the dead body with some of the best friends he'd ever make.
The shots of Gordie as a middle-aged man alone sitting only with these thoughts to look back on works well in a dichotomic manner to the memories of the adventures he had as a kid which are shown in vibrant color, and full of noise, social commentary and laughter born from the imagination of young boys. Rob Reiner is trying to tell the audience what it might have felt like for Steven King to reflect back on these moments in his life. Even if King denies that finding a dead body as young boy had any relation to the inspiration behind the writing of his book The Body, which would later be adapted into this film by the late great Rob Reiner.
13 'The Hateful Eight' (2015)
Quentin Tarantino bakes you into his dark, cold western mystery thriller The Hateful Eight, by exposing you to a long shot of the sprawling Wyoming landscape. This is accompanied by a fantastic sinister score from Ennio Morricone and a Jesus Christ figure on the cross against the freezing bleach backdrop of the film's setting. The scene and opening credits, exit on a hurried stagecoach scrambling through the pass. It's classic Tarantino, with subtle metaphoric hints at the thematic backbone of another one of his blood-filled projects.
The darkly toned score coincides with the freezing Christ figure, to create this ironic framing device. This is something Tarantino has been known for as well, and he purposefully leaves the brutal, godless and avenge-filled world the characters live in absent from the first frames. This film lives in that post-civil war era setting full of racial tensions, greed, and bloodlust. Tarantino uses the crucifix to contrast the Christian ideals of forgiveness and sacrifice with the characters' relentless cycle of violence and lack of humanity.
12 'The Conversation' (1974)
What makes the start of The Conversation such a fascinating and lauded scene, isn’t just its unique manner in which Francis Ford Coppola and co. shoot San Francisco’s Union Square, it's the immediate tension that's built in a three-hour-long movie dedicated to spy surveillance. The scene may be long in duration, but in its nearly three-minute high zoom view, it establishes Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul as the surveillance expert he is, spying on a couple walking below. It uses the suspense of the distorted audio, and the line “He’d kill us if he had a chance” to set the film off on its thrilling journey.
Through this process, the audience can see what it looked and sounded like to spy on someone, the intricacies behind the machinery and the precision and technicality it takes to decipher what someone has said, and more importantly, what it might mean. As much as the scene is a love note to surveillance, its also a form of character exposition. What makes Hackman's performance as Caul so memorable is that the act and style of work in which he partakes also becomes a kind of personality trait of the man himself.
Caul is paranoid and profoundly isolated away from the world. Hackman portrayed him as famously unremarkable, somebody who easily blends into crowds and actively looks to be forgotten. Due to his knack for control and the paranoia that comes with it, he struggles to connect with others and lives mostly devoid of human connection. Ultimately that extreme vigilance is used against him.
11 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' (1981)
Immediate action works. It's worked for decades, and what better iconic sequence to choose from than Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark. He sets Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones through a maze of a booby-trapped Peruvian Temple in 1936, where, after recovering the shiny golden idol, he is betrayed by his colleagues.
It establishes the constant never let your heart stop danger that the archeologist puts himself through, and a lovable trope of the franchise that this movie kicks it off with. Never trust anyone. Similar to other films like No Country and The Dark Knight on this list, Spielberg builds drama through a slow-drawn-out facial reveal of the reckless adventurer. He builds the legend through shadows, cobwebs and a silhouette before fully exposing his face. In just a few minutes, without a word of exposition, the viewer learns that Jones is an expert in antiquity who fears just about nothing (except spiders) and a man full of constant betrayal.
10 '1917' (2019)
This one directly refers back to my ouroboros theory. 1917 literally mirrors its ending, with the beginning having corporals Blake and Schofield sitting quietly awaiting the action violence and danger of war. The ending is Schofield returning to sit against a tree, the journey complete but without Blake to see it through.
The backdrop of the meadow creates the illusion of a peaceful reality, and the jarring contradiction of that picture to the chaotic nature of WWI. Director Sam Mendes establishes a unique perspective through the film's continuous uninterrupted camera shot that locks you into the character's emotional state with a sense of urgency. The first shot parallels the final in showing Schofield finding a peaceful second to rest in the midst of the disorder, albeit one with Blake there and one without.
9 'Touch of Evil' (1958)
Another legendary unbroken shot to start a film like 1917 or The Conversation. Orson Welles breaks you into this one with a tracking shot that lasts three and a half minutes. Welles creates a masterful duality of contradiction between a newly married couple and a car holding a bomb across a town at the U.S - Mexico border. The scene culminates in a kiss with the couple and the bomb being set off, off-screen.
In an incredibly efficient and engaging manner, Welles has constructed the dangers of the border. He established the main characters and built tension from the combination of radio music and long continuous camera motion. But what makes the sound of this opening scene so unique is the ticking clock of the bomb. Welles creates this frustrating sense of dramatic irony, with the audience knowing the bomb will go off while the characters are left for minutes operating unaware of the disaster to come. This scene was created pre modern day steadicam technology, so his feat required attaching the camera to an immense, heavy crane to cover the immense amount of actors and props used in this scene without a single cut.
8 'Ratatouille' (2007)
There's a memorable freeze-frame of Patton Oswalt's Remy establishing who he is, how he sees himself to be different from the rest of the rat colony, that promptly introduces Remy as someone who goes against the grain, to a fault. This is followed by an immediate action sequence in the old french lady’s house where the rest of the rat hive resides. Her response to their exposure of the rodent domicile above her chandelier is the moment that sparked the tension and the thematic core of the film.
When Remy is watching the documentary celebrating the life of Chef Gusteau, he fixates on his shared love for food as a true art form. Remy’s idol whose motto “Anyone Can Cook” is mentioned throughout the film numerously, the moment takes a darker turn. When its revealed he had passed after his restaurant was relinquished of one of its Michelin stars, it causes Remy to react loudly enough to wake up the owner of the home.
7 'No Country For Old Men' (2007)
Roger Deakins opens this film with these beautiful vast and all encompassing shots of the deserts of West Texas at dawn and dusk, and with no score, the Coen Brothers are foreshadowing this sense of dread and senselessness.
Similar to Ratatouille, the Coen brothers set a very specific tone for their neo-western, separate from the often comedic and absurdist aesthetic taste that their projects like Raising Arizona or Fargo have come to make them known for. No Country For Old Men begins with a monologue from a frustrated past his heyday, Tommy Lee Jones.
Jones speaks as Sheriff Bell and juxtaposes the nostalgia for the past with the unpredictability of the present. As he is reflecting on his career as a lawman, he remarks on the irrational and disturbing nature of the violence he sees corrupting modern society. The scene acts as a prologue to the introduction to Anton Chigurh, often referred to as one of the most accurate cinematic depictions of a murderous psychopath, and who is initially only seen from the shadows or from behind portraying a faceless evil.
6 'The Social Network' (2010)
The first minutes of The Social Network are as iconic for what they are as for what they aren’t. It’s the first true cinematic depiction of Mark Zuckerberg, the man behind social media and a person who would go on to dominate the sociopolitical design of our modern culture and is finally given the stage for his true origin story. And what does David Fincher do? He puts the audience opposite Mark on a six-minute breakup date at a Harvard bar.
Zuck's girlfriend leaves him after realizing how disgustingly arrogant and dismissive he is after he rambles on about his omission from a social club, the very literal technological vehicle he designs to become the titan tech mogul he is today through a virtual platform. It further confirms his zero-sum view on life, and validates the emotional isolation he uses to fuel the creation of Facebook. It's a master class of writing and acting and says exactly what Fincher wants the viewer to know about the man and all the insecurities that lead to his persona.
5 'Strangers on a Train' (1951)
Alfred Hitchcock introduces the audience to the two main characters (strangers), by only showing and focusing the camera on the lower legs and shoes of the characters. What it depicts is Bruno in his flashy, eye-catching upper-class black and white two-toned loafers, and Guy in his normal dark shoes, holding a case with his tennis rackets. The camera cuts back and forth between the two sets of shoes, revealing the subtle details of the personas of both Bruce and Guy.
Hitchcock sets up a collision course between the men (and feet) as they both join the train, and Bruce’s foot accidentally hits Guys, sparking that fateful conversation. The contrasting editing and stark difference in appearance and class based purely on footwear, sets the film up for its central theme of "doubles." The train itself serves as a mundane, undeterring, community-filled space, perfect for Bruno to take advantage of someone in a place where societal rules don't always apply.