Cape Fear – Opening Scene

Laura Neale

Throughout the opening scenes there is a non diegetic sound track that causes a lot of tension due to the changes between minor and major key (makes he listener unsettled and confused) and the use of instrumentation – the trilling woodwind, the strings and the brass. There is also a build in volume and a rise in pitch throughout the clip which also adds to the tension. However the music drops in volume as the girl begins to speak so the audience can hear the diegetic dialogue, however the music is still there in the background, and so lowering but still keeping the tension there. There is also more diegetic dialogue later on when Cady gets released from the prison, and some the diegetic sound of thunder, but the main sounds in the clip is the non diegetic music.

Sound

During the title sequence we see a water effect that is quite confusing (we later find out from diegetic dialogue that it is there because Cape Fear is actually the name of a river), and is also quite disorientating to the audience due to the constant flickering.

Title Sequence 1

There is also a series of close ups and extreme close ups that fade in and out behind the water effect during the title sequence. There is a shot of a bird of prey, connotating the danger to come in the film, as well as more eerie shots like an extreme close up of an eye or a mouth to create tension and fear.

Title Sequence 2

During the title sequence, a shadowy figure is also featured, adding to the eerie effect that the close ups create, especially as you can’t see the figure’s head, only it’s body. There are dark colours throughout the sequence however towards the end it fades from the top to the bottom of the screen into red, with a drip of blood, the colour red connotating the danger, violence and evil that will be featured later on in the film.

Title Sequence 3

A close up of a very young girl’s eyes fades into the red screen, which then fades to blue, and then to normal (yet dark) colours. As the camera zooms out we see that she is older than we first thought, but is wearing what looks like a shirt from a school uniform, showing that she is still young. The shirt is also white, which has connotations of innocence and peace, yet the girl acts quite creepily and stared directly into the character as if she’s talking directly to the audience with the diegetic dialogue, and so these things contradict each other.

Title Sequence 4

As this scene begins, the camera pans down the wall, where we see lots of pictures of Stalin and militant figures, while brass instruments dominate the non diegetic music (important because brass instruments are commonly associated with war and militant action). The camera also shows a lot of academic books about things like law, telling us that the owner of them is violent due to the war associations, and intelligent due to the books.

Cady’s Release 1

As the camera zooms out we see a man exercising, with a religious tattoo on his back (explaining the Bible that was with the books earlier on), telling us that he is religious, which is odd because of the assumption that he is violent from earlier on, and stereotypically you wouldn’t think of religious people as violent. However as the camera continues to zoom out, we realise there is closed framing due to bars (there is also a deep depth of field at this point as the man is in focus but the bars are not), and we realise that the man is in prison.

Cady’s Release 2

As the man (who we now know is Cady due to the prison warden’s diegetic dialogue) is leaving the prison, we notice that other prisoners are in shared cells whereas Cady was by himself, and this leads us to assume that he was either dangerous, so couldn’t be with other prisoners, or was so well respected that he got his own cell. As he leaves the prison there is a sound bridge connecting the cuts between inside and outside of the prison, and the open framing of outside is in contrast to the closed framing from earlier, emphasising how he’s free. As he leaves there is a storm brewing, and we hear thunder and see lightning, foreshadowing that this character will be involves in danger and violence later on in the film.

Cady’s Release 3