Blog 4: The Deer Hunter

Film Blog 4: The Deer Hunter

Because The Deer Hunter focuses less on the Vietnam war and battle scenes and chooses to focus on its effects on a group of friends in a small town the opening scene starts off in their small working class town of Clairton, Pennsylvania. If you just watched the opening sequence alone without any knowledge of the film you would not know that the Vietnam war would be of any significance to the fim. It begins with a wide shot depicting a factory in the background which it will eventually go into where we will be introduced to the main characters of the film at their workplace. There is then a few wide shots inside the factory which show what happens inside the steel factory. These shots hold little significance to the film as a whole but play a small part in characterising the main characters which is the whole purpose of the opening sequence to the film.

After the inside of the steel works has been shown the first character shot is shown to us in the form of a long shot taken in the dressing room of the factory. The long shot is used to frame the introduction of the films protagonist Michael while wide aspects of the frame are important to see the other people around him and his interactions with them. It shows him as he pats people on the back and shakes hands with numerous work mates with a smile on his face. We then get a cut into the next room where Michael is about to walk into; the shot is the same wide framed as before except in the centre of the shot is another major character who is being introduced, Nick. Now we have the same thing happening as before as both characters shake hands and smile with their work friends as they leave work for the day in the same shot. The diegetic sound throughout the sound comes from the dialogue but it maintains realism by us not being able to hear much of what is being said as there's so many different people talking and there is nothing significant being said anyway, it just wants us to see our characters in their normal environment.

Shortly after Michael and Nick and three others are now outside the steel factory. Another long shot with a wide frame is used to show all of them in one shot. The significance of this shot is that there are now no other people in the shot emphasising the friendship these people share as the next shot becomes a very wide shot with all the other workers from the factory behind them. But because of the former shot we now that the dialogue in this very wide shot is only between them now and not other workers. It also shows that work has finished for the day creating a realism. Also now the diegetic sound of the dialogue is made clearer as though we are next to them and not where the camera is. This is done to give the dialogue significance as they are talking about deer hunting and one of the characters getting married which forms the beginning and direction that the plot will take.

This style of this opening sequence is used primarily to build characterisation around the characters as the major theme of the film is the dehumanizing effects of war. This small town setting of the film chooses to show life before people go to to war and then how these characters are changed after the war and how they settle back into ordinary life. There is little focus on war scenes and what happens in Vietnam unlike the three other films I have looked at.

Works Cited:

The Deer Hunter. Dir. Michael Cimino. Universal Pictures, 1978. Film

Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White. The Film Experience: An Introduction. Third Edition. New York: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2012. Print.