Don't Look Now

Don't Look Now - Opening Scene

The extract begins with two children outdoors. Diegetic music is playing, it is very simple and it is obviously someone playing the piano. This makes the prologue seem calm and a bit playful in my opinion. The camera is very focused on the characters. The children do not talk, but one of them is holding a doll which talks when you pull its string. You do not really know what to expect in this scene as it is very mysterious in result of no communication whatsoever. 

In the first scene you can also se a horse running off, but it is not something you pay much attention to. A boy who is on his bicycle, is riding it around and the squeaky noises it makes are distinguishable from all background noise. There is also a girl who at first has a wheelbarrow, but she leaves it behind as something else has caught her attention. The camera follows her as she walks around, and she disappears behind a tree for a moment. When the girl is playing with her doll, the camera is positioned on a lower level than her, and the sun is directly in the background, not making her the centre of attention. You can see their house in the background when the girl is looking around near the pond, and it makes it quite clear that they are siblings. When the ball is thrown around by her, it makes a loud splashing noise which is similar to the distinguishable noises that the boy's bicycle produced, as mentioned earlier. When the girl is reaching into the pond for her ball, you can hear a crow cawing. Crows usually are a sign of death or an incident of some kind, and here I also noticed how the trees are missing all their leaves, signifying a sinister setting. The music slows down as the camera zooms into a small pond, and then completely stops as the camera zooms out of a fireplace indoors.

Two adults are sitting in a room that I would call a lounge, and the camera is several times zoomed on the male character's face. As he is observing his pictures, the woman is in the background. She is not in focus during this scene, instead focusing on the male character. 

When the camera is focused on one of the pictures, a distinguished triumphant sound can be heard. We move back outside, to where the girl is located by the pond. We see her reflection in the pond instead of following her directly. The pond seems to play a big part in this prologue, and I can feel something coming on involving it.

The boy is still riding his bicycle but he now accidentally falls over when he drives across a pane of glass. Just before he hits it, we can see the girl lunging.  The manly character looks up and has a "I sense a disturbance in the Force" -look. He however talks to the woman about window slides, and where they are placed, which seem to have a supernatural connection to the smashed window panel outside. The female character holds her hand up to her face, doing a facial gesture and all of a sudden we see the girl outdoors holding her hands in a similar gesture. As they continue discussing, an irrelevant ashtray is swiftly shown.There are quite a few of these edited shots that appear for a second or two, that again are making the prologue more mysterious and interesting. 

Outdoors, the boy is checking his bicycle, and he can hear the girl's doll shouting out commands, which results in him looking up in curiosity. When we go back to the girl, she throws her ball into the pond at the same time as her believed parents toss an object between each other. When the ball hits the surface and splashes, her father accidentally tips over a glass of water, onto the photo slide. The boy now tries to fix his bike as the father is doing damage control of the photo slide. There appears to be red paint on the picture in which the girl is sitting on a bench, and I do believe that the red paint symbolises blood. The man looks up, seeming slightly concerned, and we can now see the boy running towards the home, because he has cut his hand while trying to fix the bicycle. The father rushes outside like he thinks something is wrong. The girl is now in the pond, supposedly looking for her ball, but we can see her disappearing under the surface of the water. This is quite an fast-paced scene, which is contrasted to the previous events in this prologue. As the boy reaches his running father, he stops and seemingly seeks attention. The father runs past him, to the pond where the girl is nowhere to be seen. We can only see her ball, which probably awakens a fear in the father of that the girl has been trying to fetch it. He now plunges into the pond while his son is looking concerned, as if he is not fully understanding the situation. Once again the mother indoors is portrayed swiftly, as the father dives into the water. We can see the mother tossing the picture with the red paint upside down which implicates the death of her daughter.

As the father reaches the surface again, he is holding the daughter in his arms. Dramatic music is playing, and he shows his misery by shouting out loud several times. There is an interesting growth of colour on the photograph which is shown briefly. When the father is carrying the girl towards their home after attempts of reviving her, the boy's facial expressions are shown a few times. The father falls over as he is devastated by the loss of his daughter. The mother is slowly walking outside and as she sees her husband holding the limp body of their daughter, she screams.

The characters are dressed in simple clothing, the daughter reminding me of the red riding hood since she is dressed in all red. We do not know very much about the characters in this prologue as it is quite vague. 

I think that the genre in this prologue is very dramatic, since there is the tragic event of the young girl drowning in the pond. This is probably also a film for more mature audiences, since the pond events can be quite disturbing for younger viewers.

It is interesting how the father seems to have a sixth sense when it comes to his children, and another thing I'd like to point out is how the events indoors affect the children playing outside.

Picture from google image search.