Casino Royale Essay

How the opening sequence Casino Royale fit’s the conventions of Film Noir

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSpr6spIGpM

http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html

Typically, James Bond’s opening sequence to ‘Casino Royale’ fits into the conventions of film noir easily. Made in the 1940’s, film noir was characterised by high-contrast of black and white photography; this gave the appearance of gloom and bleakness, which created the mood of this genre. The characters presented in a film noir are usually combined between a protagonist and an antagonist, along side a damsel in distress. Casino Royale’s opening sequence is a typical clip of a film noir.
The story-line in this opening sequence is quite twisted. Usually in film noir’s, the story-lines are complex and quite detective type stories to get the audience using their brains. This is proven in this sequence by James bond being quite bleak and set back, creating mystery, whilst the other agent is trying to act brave, yet slowly questions him. Supposidly, James Bond isn’t aloud to kill the agent as he (Bond) only has one ‘0’ and to kill the agent she needs two ‘0’s before the 7. However Bond sees it as if he kills this agent, he will have two ‘0’s. The shooting of the agent is quite slow, as it build up with flashbacks on Bond’s first killing. This also links to the final cliff-hanging line of the opening sequences and the agent begins to say ‘the second killing is..’ once shot, Bond finishes the line and says ‘easier’. leading into the title sequence. Along side the setting, lighting and camera angles, all this grabs the audience and makes them want to carry on watching.
Straight away the clip is set in a bleak urban industrial estate at night, which is a common convention of a film noir. Slowly introducing the characters, it keeps away from showing the whole body of a character but shows all the surroundings, this keeps the suspension within the audience, still keeping a ‘gloomy’ sense too. The camera shots have a lot of close up’s and tracking shots, which creates a more intimate relationship with the audience, to make them feel as thought they are part of the film, therefore makes them feel quite tense.
The first two minutes of the opening sequence are kept very dark, creating silhouettes of the characters which is very often used in film noir to keep the audience guessing. This usually leads to a sudden movement or introduction to another object or character, in this clip, James bond enters, almost ghost type in a very low contrasted set. A single source lighting is used throughout the whole meeting of James bond and the other agent to create a dark, claustrophobic appearance. The interior of the building in the set is very maze-like and the tracking camera work emphasises this.
Flash backs are also used in this clip which have a very high contrasted set, the whiteness in the set is very pure white, this is to show that it is the past; a common factor of film noir. The whole clip is told with an under laying foreboding background music, which gradually grows louder.
Film noir have common elements of visually expressionistic lighting, deep-focus camera work and venetian-blinded windows. This opening sequence shows and example of each of these elements. The lighting, as mentioned before is very low-light, and the venetian-blinded windows are shown as letting in only a small source of light.
I think Casino Royale begins with film noir, as Film Noir is the original detective-like film. This suggests that James Bond is also original, however it’s now been modernised. By using film noir as the opening sequence, the audience are intrigued, as everything appears to be untold and mysterious.