City Of God Opening Scene Analysis From the Perspective of Editing by Ömer Akdağ
City of gods’ opening scene is essentially a summary of the film through symbolism and hidden meanings. There are so many things to say about this scene, but I will focus on the editing dimension’s perspective.
The movie’s opening scene begins with an image of a knife on the move for a brief moment –less than one second- in an extreme close-up shot. All of a sudden, the scene turns completely dark. Afterward, we see the knife again with diegetic sound, and we perceive that the blade is being sharpened with a rock, and immediately, the scene fades out. The director uses jump cut to create discontinuity as well as to build suspense. In the very beginning, the scene alternates between the black-out and the knife-sharpening scene; this is fast pace. This increases tension and creates a vast curiosity about the knife. A question occurs to the audience: ‘Why sharpen the knife?’.
Later, we see people celebrating along with Brazilian samba music. The scene crosscuts between the knife sharpening scene and the celebrating people who are playing instruments. The crosscutting usage increases rhythm. The knife sharpening scene changes between extreme close-up to close-up, so we can notice a chicken leg. This shot shows us the knives are used to cut the chickens. There is crosscutting, and a close-up shot displays someone peels carrots, and someone slaughters chickens. This explains that these people cook meals in bulk for the celebration. Another close-up shot focuses on people’s feet; they don’t have shoes, they’re in slippers; thus, we understand that this place is lacking. A medium shot displays the last two chickens to prepare, and one of them is being slaughtered, then a jump cut occurs. The purpose of the jump-cut is to save a bit of time and keep up the rhythm. Afterward, the camera shows the last chicken in a medium shot and zooms in into an extreme close-up of chicken feet. The chicken is tied up from its feet to restrain its escape. After the scene, we see the celebration from all different perspectives with a high cutting ratio. The chicken eyes around everything and the camera shows the chicken in Medium shot first. Suddenly we see it over in close upshot. This change of shot type indicates the stress of the chicken. Rising the tension first with the close-up shots, we see the chicken tries to escape, subsequently gets out of the rope, and jumps into the street. Music cuts off immediately, and the camera picks up the chicken blood on the plate. This close-up shot exceptionally stays on the screen, thus indicates the movie is about blood and violence. The rhythm diminishes along with this blood scene.
After the blood scene, we see the chicken on the screen freely; later, a man tells other gang members to get the chicken in a close-up shot. This close-up shows us the man looks like a maniac and a sociopath. Following this scene, we see the other gangsters in a long-shot with a gun in their hands. This represents the danger of the gang and the use of children as soldiers.
Then crosscutting is starts between the gang leader and his gang chasing the chicken and a guy telling his friend that he wants to be a photographer. The chasing scene consists of spatially and graphically continuous shots; match on action technique is used between the cuts in this scene. After crosscutting to the guy who wants to become a photographer, the scene catches back to the gang while chasing the chicken. Later we see that a man shoves off the gang leader. Here, the scene overlapping creates discontinuity and emphasizes that he is in the whole community’s power and does what he wants. After this scene, he pulls his gun and yells again, “Get that chicken!”. After this scene, there is a jump-cut, and this jump-cut has continuity with the cut-on-action technique.
Then we see gang members who chase the chicken from right to the left of the scene; later, we see the chicken moving in the same direction. This creates continuity with the rules of “speed of action” and “direction of action”. Following that chicken jumps in the middle of the road. In this scene’ point of view,’ shot is used to create empathy and create continuity. Forth that we see a police car is coming towards the chicken. We see the chicken’s first long shot, the next shot is a medium shot of the same shot, but there is a discontinuity here with the jump cut.
Then we see the guy -who wants to be a photographer- with his friend again, and they come across the whole gang. This scene has spatial continuity because we see the police car, which almost crashes the chicken with the car. The entire crew is soon caught in a long-shot; thus, we can see the whole gang clearly, a big crowd that carries under-aged boys. Later we see the ‘Rocket’ then the story goes back to the sixties when Rocket’s childhood with a perfect graphic match.
“Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”
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