(This is the trailer for The Notebook because the opening sequence is no longer on youtube.)
The film I am looking at is called The Notebook (2004, Nick Cassavetes) and its genre is Romance/Drama. The film cuts between a couple in the 1940’s and another couple in modern day. It’s set in South Carolina America out in quite a rural setting (lots of lakes/forests).
The film starts with a long shot of the sunset with someone rowing a boat on a lake, and then the credits begin. This gives the audience a calm feeling and lets them know this will definitely not be a horror/thriller film. At this point there is calm music playing (piano only) which immediately tells us this film will be of a romance genre. We then see cut to a MCU of an elderly woman watching the same lake (but this time empty) and being told she should go to bed (is perhaps in a nursing home). We then cut to a long shot of an old man walking through the nursing home and he starts speaking a voiceover. He talks about love in his voiceover also hinting at the genre. We then cut back to the old lady in her room, who is again looking out of her window in a pensive way. The elderly man then enters the womans room after the nurse has been trying to persuade the woman to go outside. The man is then told ‘I’m sorry it’s not a good day’ by the nurse. This lets the audience know that something may be wrong with the woman and that the man often visits the old lady. Both characters are wearing plain clothing, the woman mainly in red, and the man in a dark shirt and trousers. The opening makes it seem as if these two characters are at the source of the story as the main focus is on them. The lady is then persuaded to listen to Duke (the man has just been given a name) read, and then she reluctantly goes with him into a conservatory where they both sit down.
By this point we still don’t know very much about the characters as although we now know they are both in a nursing home and the woman needs quite a bit of looking after, the audience still doesn’t know the relationship between the two characters. This seems like a deliberate point of the film so that people have to keep on watching to find out the history between these elderly people.
Duke then begins to read a story to the lady, and at this point the audience does not know the relevance of it. We do get told that the one of the books characters is called Noah and that two characters met (in the book) in June 6th 1940. The man recites this date (and his face is a CU so we can see his emotion) off by heart suggesting it is an important date to him. We then get told that ‘Allie’ (another book character) was 17 at the time. We then cut to a fairground setting in the 1940’s, so the shots are no longer of the modern day characters. It is then inferred to the audience that the book he is reading is linked to these new scenes and characters. We then get a reverse track of two young men wearing workers clothes walking through the fairground. This lets the audience know that perhaps these men aren’t particularly rich (which later is a key problem in the film) We then cut to a group of girls who are on the dodgers and one of the men (Noah) singles one of them out. This then puts these two characters as the main two of the story. The girl pointed out; Allie is also wearing red (like the old lady) suggesting some link between the two characters – yet at this point the audience still has a lot to find out. We get a close up of Allie laughing telling us it is quite a light-hearted film. The camera then zooms in to Noah’s face after he is told that Allies dad is extremely rich. This is the catalyst for the disruption in the film, fitting with Todorov’s narrative theory. The zoom then gives us a better look at Noah’s face and we can see he is happy (whilst looking at Allie). This suggests to us that the film will be about these two characters and that some sort of relationship between the two will happen. We then see the group of girls get off the dodgers and the distance is a mid shot, until Allie reaches Noah and he stops her. We then cut between MCU shots of his face and Allies whilst he asks her to dance and she refuses. We can clearly see that Noah is pursuing Allie creating a strong storyline for what’s to come. Allie then rejects him and walks away but Noah looks hopeful. We then get a long shot of the Ferris wheel and we can tell its night time so the whole scene with Allie and Noah in is the same scene in the same time period. There is no jumping between days/months. We then get a mid shot of Noah watching Allie on the Ferris Wheel and we get the sense something important is going to happen by the way he is staring at her. Noah jumps up onto allies Ferris wheel seat (which she is sharing with another man) and then we get a close up of Noah as he then hangs onto one of the bars on the wheel. He then lets go with one hand and makes it look as if he is about to fall to his death. Allie is screaming and we get mid-shots cutting between the two characters. He keeps asking her if she will go out with him (and makes it look as if he will let go if she says no) so Allie ends up agreeing. This is clearly an important part of the opening as it is the beginning of their relationship, but what happens between this scene (could be anything) is still left unknown to the audience to keep them intrigued. Allie also pulls down Noah’s trousers and this adds a sense of comedy to the film. Noah says ‘I’m gonna get you for that’ and Allie says ‘maybe you will, maybe you won’t’. This tells us that there is going to be further communication between the two characters.
There isn’t much time covered over these scenes other than the fact that the two scenes are in different decades, but the scene in the 1940’s is only over about 30 minutes in their time so it tells us that perhaps later on in the film the narrative will be more jumpy and we won’t get as much time spent on each scene. The audience needs to know who are the main characters and perhaps why they are together or in the same scene. They just need to get some background of the narrative and in the Notebook they get this from Duke reading the story to the elderly woman.
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