My Analysis of Sin City

The thriller i've chosen to analyse is Sin City



Sin City is filmed in a very different way from any other film i've seen, mainly being that its filmed primarily in black and white, apart from the first character we meet who is wearing a red dress and red lipstick. The use of slight colour in this woman makes her seem more attractive (as the colour red is related to sex and is a very feminine colour) it also makes the audience register her as a main character and someone we feel we should focus on. It also immediately creates an enigma as we wonder who she is and why she is wearing a coloured dress whilst everything else is in black and white. Furthermore, when we are first introduced to her it is a shot from behind, so we cant see her face, this sets the character up to be mysterious and we are intrigued to find out more about her. During the shots of behind the mysterious woman we can hear slow jazz music in the background, this adds class to the film and a soothed atmosphere. However, contrasting to this we can also hear sirens in the distant, hinting that the theme of violence and crime could play a big part in the film, as could class and sex shown through the colours red and slow jazz music. The sirens also allows us to understand the setting is most likely to be in a busy city, as this is the most likely place to hear lots of sirens.
 After the music we can hear the voice of a narrator, its a soft voice which carries over the soothing feel already set up, however it does also seem slightly unnerving as it feels as if the narrator is watching the woman without her knowing.  A short while after this we see the woman's face for the first time and we see a man walking up behind her, we are unaware as to whether or not the man shown and the narrator are the same person - creating yet more enigmas. Although the narrator then says "i let her hear my footsteps" so the audience could take a pretty educated guess at saying that they are in face the same person. The minute he approaches the woman there is immediate sexual tension as he stands quite close behind her, and when she turns around the immediately engage in eye contact. There is an extreme close up as he offers her a cigarette which forces the audience to focus on the small details in the scene. She begins to smoke whilst still staring at him - heightening the sexual tension further. He also then begins to talk to her and tells her that she is everything he has ever wanted - destroying any previous perceptions of him being a dodgy character when watching the woman.
In an extreme close up of the woman's face when the man lights the cigarette for her, her eyes appear to quickly flash green, a visual flourish, it draws our attention in further to her and sets her aside from any other character as the man and the surrounding setting have no colour in them and yet she has shown moments of both red and green. The green could also signal a response to the the man being close to her and we can now establish an emotional connection between these two characters.
The camera focuses on both the characters when the woman turns her back on the man, and we as an audience feel as if we have an upper hand as we can see both facial expressions whilst each character can not see each other. When she turns around again and embraces the man with a kiss the effect of the camera suddenly turns the silhouettes of both characters into white and turn their shape into 2D. The effect of this is to remind and/or introduce to the audience the fact that the idea of the film originated from a comic book and that will continuously run as a theme through the film.
After switching back to just plain black and white and the characters carry on hugging the narrator/male comes back in explaining what he says to the woman, without the audience actually seeing the male physically saying it to the woman. The narrator says that he "tells her i love her" and just as the audience begin to warm further to the male character there is a sudden yet unnervingly quite gun shot as he shoots her. This catches the audience by surprise as we had no idea this was to happen. As she dies the narrator says that he "i'll never find out what she was running from" which immediately hooks the audience as it suggests a back story to the character and we are eager to figure out what she was running from and why she has just been shot. The camera then pans out and zooms further and further away from the character and we see that this film is set in New York City. The surprising twist at the end of the opening throws enigmas at the audience (why has she been shot? who is she/he? what happened before this? etc) which we are now desperate to have answered.