The Departed Opening Scene Analysis

The Departed is a 2006 film directed by Martin Scorsese starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson alongside others. The film follows the actions of an Irish mob operating in Boston.

The first shot of the film is video footage of a fight between several people in the streets in the midst of what looks like a riot to the audience. The reason it can be assumed this is actual video footage of an event rather than a staged fight for the purpose of the film is the shaky camerawork filming the scene as well as the poor quality of the image making it look like news footage. This single 7-second shot to kick off proceedings lets the audience into some very important information very early on. This film is clearly going to be violent. A brawl in the streets between a handful of people as an opener is effective at setting the tone of the film at an early stage, the audience now knows exactly what to expect from the film ahead of them, and this acts as a sort of warning. The fight could also show the chaos that people are capable of causing and this now makes the audience expect a similar sort of chaos from the Irish mob. The background music with the scene is Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones. This shows the scene is set in the past around the late 60's or early 70's and is providing the history for the characters.

The first character we are introduced to is a middle-aged man that seems confident with himself by the way he moves and strolls around. He supplies a brief narration at the beginning of the film that layers his character more efficiently so the audience can see the many aspects of his personality. This narration also gives a brief description of the Irish mob which the narrator describes as "real headbreakers...they took over their piece of the city." This builds tension within the audience as they now know they are going to be introduced to some very menacing people.

In this narration, he uses the racist slur "niggers." We can connote that this is a man who is very much a relic of the past, yet to move on from the discriminatory past of America into the equality and political correctness of today. It also makes the audience dislike the character from the off, identifying him as the antagonist of the film. To reinforce this the first shot of the character is in darkness with only his outline visible, a clever piece of lighting work. This darkness carries the connotations of evil and fear which the audience from then on associates with that particular character.

After the opening scenes introductory phase we have an establishing shot of the outside of a delicatessan-like business. This same shot continues and pans into the delicatessan, where we see the owner go into the till to hand the antagonist some money as soon as he sees him enter. The dialogue with this scene also identifies the antagonist of being someone who is feared. "Don't make me come down for this again," is the line the antagonist uses to which the owner replies "It won't happen again Mr C." The owners false respect for the man despite having to hand over his money without a word shows Mr C is a menacing character who is not to be messed with.

Mr C then turns to a young boy sitting at the counter next to him and identifies him as "Johnny Sullivans kid." The audience are also told the boy lives with his grandmother. This suggests the boy has a troubled home life as we know he has a father but lives with his grandmother. The audience now sympathises with this character and knows he is a character of importance to be taking up so much of the shots he is in, so the assumption can be made that this boy is a protagonist.

Throughout the entirety of this scene the boy is shown in full light whilst Mr C is not once shown fully, always in the shadows. This accomplishes two things. Firstly it differentiates the antagonistic and protagonistic personalities of Mr C and the small boy and highlights Mr C's evil and menacing nature and the boys innocence. It also makes it hard to make out Jack Nicholson's (Mr C) face, the benefits of which is as this scene is meant to be set in the past you cannot work out his age. Therfore later in the film he does not look the same age as he does in the past-set scene. This is quite clever production work which identifies a solution to the problem that also makes sense thematically.