Analyse the first opening scene of Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan is an academy award winning film produced in 1998 and directed by one of the best arguably known directors, Steven Spielberg. This film is particularly well known for its opening scene of approximately 25 minutes where it displays the invasion of the American army in the Omaha Beachhead in June 6th 1942. The plot relies upon the story of the ‘Sullivan Brothers’ where there were five brother and they were all killed in the incident of the sinking of the light cruiser in World War two. This subsequently brought up the Niland Brothers story, who were a group of four American brothers from Kenmore, New York serving in the military during World War II. Of the four, two survived the war, but for a time it was believed that only one, Frederick Niland, had survived. Frederick was sent back to the States to complete his service and consequently, Spielberg based his film on the brothers’ story where it was believed that a woman should not lose all of her sons in the war and if one survived, he would be sent back with his army duty competed.

Saving Private Ryan breaks some of the traditional conventions of the war film genre as it developed a striking and powerful opening battle sequence, showing realism of what the battle of Omaha Beach in 1942 was like. They had a realistic approach to the war films created in 1970’s by attempting to create the battle scenes greety and shocking while at the same time griping and emotional. Throughout film history, war scenes have been diluted and amended to prevent shocking images as it would produce a lack of audience due to the fact that people did not want to see what the war looked like exactly. Spielberg creates the scene so we can feel emotionally invested and drags our attention and at the same time using the same methods of the 1970’s films.

The reason why Spielberg does not start his film with the battle sequence and instead commences on a cemetery is to emotionally invest the audience and to establish pity for the character. In the opening scene, it initially starts with the elderly Jack Ryan walking towards Colllville Sur Mer which is a military graveyard. Jack Ryan chooses to visit the people who have risked their life to save him, so subsequently in devote of respect, Jack Ryan visited the cemetery to honour those soldiers. As he walks through the cemetery, his family is respectively holding back him giving him space and consequently symbolising respect for him.

The scene primarily starts with an American flag to express regard and honour those whom fought and died bravely for their country. Spielberg utilized a desaturisation method to suck out the colour of the flag giving a brownish colour. This effect establishes realism to the film as it gives us the impression that it was old and perhaps filmed at the time. There is a uniform nature assembled in the funerary grounds to represent a team as every grave is of a similar pigment and of the same size. The tombstones have a cross for every Christian person and a Star of David for every Jewish person to represent respect for the soldiers’ beliefs and religion. Another method cleverly used by Spielberg is a panning sequence shot, which is a sequence of camera movements going up to shoot a wider range of the scene. It starts of in one grave and as it goes up it shows the whole cemetery with millions of graves. This establishes a shock on the audience as it gives a sudden realisation what of the effects of the war has caused upon millions of people. The first scene appears to be silent at the start with absolutely no dialogue is to enhance the effect upon the audience to emotionally attach to the character and feel for him as he is visiting the friends he had lost on the battle. It latter starts a military snore called a bugle. Consequently, this evokes an emotive feeling on the audience as this is a sound commonly utilized on the war to war soldiers of any circumstances, therefore it reminds people of the soldiers who have died in the war battles. The music is constantly increasing its volume and this filmographic method is called a crescendo. It established tension to the audience and the anxiety to see what is going to happen next. At the end of this scene the camera moves slowly towards the elderly Jack Ryan’s face and directs itself through the eye of the character. This was established to perform a transition from the present to the past and furthermore will be showing the next section of the film. This effect is adapted so we can feel as it we were looking through the eyes of the character and observing what he had seen on the battle. From the opening scene it instantly changes to the next scene by the application of this method and it gives a sense of anxiety to the audience as they are expecting the next scene.

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The following scene is the instant chaos of the D-day landing in the Omaha beach, France. The scene initially commences with the sound of the surf of the waves. There is no music which established agitation to the audience as they would be anxious to see what happens after the ramp of the boat comes down. The first scene we see is the hedgehogs and as a result we percept that there is going to be a battle as the hedgehogs are anti-tank devices, hence symbolising violence. The first words we hear in this scene are the commands from Captain Miller, they are unclear and we cannot hear the dialogue properly. Before entering the battle sequence we hear “30 seconds, may God be with you”, this gives us a sense awareness to be ready for what is going to happen and it also established pity for the character as we have only just been introduced to them and we know that in the battle scene most of them will not come out alive. There is a religious theme and a religious insignia applied to the background as there is a soldier who blesses himself with the sign of a cross and another soldier kisses the cross, this illustrates that soldiers have faith in winning the war and that they are people just like anyone else as they also pray for their God. There is a guy on the Higgins craft and Captain Miller’s hand is constantly shaking because their nervous. This shows that even though Captain Miller is experient and has been to many battles he still gets nervous from all the tension of having to fight another battle, not know if he would come out alive and having the fear of his death. Spielberg cleverly adopted the utilization of hand-held cameras. The camera is located at the back of the Higgins craft and it gives us the impression that we are the last man standing on the back of the Higgins craft as the camera is continuously trembling as if we were in the boat moving. As soon as the Higgins craft hits the coast and lands, the spinning wheel start turning and the ramp suddenly comes down consequently, anxiety is developed as we don’t know what to expect form the following sequence of the scene. As soon as the ramp comes down, an absurd amount of bullets are fired instantly at the soldiers. What it is trying to tell us is that violence happens rapidly and will not wait until you have an even chance against it. Every soldier in the Higgins craft end up dying because of the unproportional chance they stand against the Germans consequently producing a shock sequence to the audience as none of the soldiers are able to come out alive and the audience see the effect of the war. As the other Higgins crafts arrives at the beach, soldiers realise that they will not stand a chance if they stay in the boat so they decide they would have to jump into the water and try to go up the beach. As the camera went into the water, the sound is suddenly withdrawn from the film and we could just hear the sound of bullets breaking through the water. This is to give us a feeling that we are in the war and we had to jump in the water. The film not only enables us to visualize the facts as if we were there but also to hear what is going on at the war. We are also able to see that the soldiers carrying heavy loaded artillery were not able to swim to the coast as they could not remove their load before drowning. As a result, this would subsequently mean that the audience would feel for the soldiers as they would die because of their artillery in one of the most arguably painful ways. At the end of the instant chaos scene there is an over the shoulder shot of the turrets (concrete bunker) where this is symbolising a German perspective of the view of the war. We are also able to see more clearly what is going on at the coast of the beach and how far up do the soldiers have to make to have a chance of defeating the Germans. Captains Miller had announced to “Clear those murder holes” and he called the turrets murder holes because as the Americans didn’t stand a chance, it was considerably murder as they could do nothing to stop it.

During the instant chaos scene, Spielberg has enhanced another scene which was the Captain Miller’s confusion where he suffers of a shell shock which is a post climatic stress disorder. Captain Miller enters the scene stumbling into the beach and crawls behind a hedgehog to find a safe place to stay for a while. After a bomb went off right in front of Captain Miller, the sound was sucked out completely and he enters a state where he can’t react hear anything because of all the stress and for the circumstance that he was nervous at the time therefore he cannot command his army. Spielberg utilizes again the close up shot where the camera slowly moves towards Captain Miller’s face. For the reasons that this scene is centred in Captain Miller we are able to acknowledge that Miller is the main character in the film. As Miller is confused he slowly reaches out for his helmet. As he put the helmet on, the blood from the helmet is poured over Miller’s head and we have the impression that Miller was shot in the head and it makes us wonder why would the main character die in the opening scenes of the film. We then find out that the blood form the helmet was water mixed with blood as the helmet stood next to the sea giving us a sense of relief for the character as we discovered he did no die. This scene is realistic as we can see the blood of the same colour as it would normally appear to be and there are also dirty uniforms as the soldiers would not have cleaned it up for weeks. As Captain Miller lifts up his head he sees a soldier giving a mute order. He is saying “what the hell do we do now sir?” but we are not able to listen to him therefore this makes us read his lips to understand what he is trying to say. The film suddenly speeds up again after the shock to symbolise that violence occurs quickly and the noise was sucked back into the film, furthermore Miller was able to hear what his soldier was saying and was able to give orders. This gave us expectations that Miller would soon recover from the shock and we wanted to find out what would happen after his mind was back in the battle. Miller says “get your men up the beach” because he realised that if the soldiers stayed in the beach and waited until other people started moving forward they would probably die as it is easier to shoot a person if he is at only one position rather than just moving around.

The last scene of the opening sequence of the film is the end of the battle. At this scene there is a turning point as the American fired their first shot and got up the beach to fight against the Germans. The scene has more sound evidence that the violence is still raging, but the American soldiers start to organise themselves by the utilization of dialogue throughout the scene. The dialogue server to humanise the characters and not make them just mechanical soldiers, as they need to speak to each other and set up a plan to beat the Germans. As this is more of a close combat fighting, soldiers would need to get closer to the Germans, therefore they utilized their equipment and what they had to reach the point they were trying to get to. Firstly they utilized Bangalores (pipe bombs) to create holes in the ground so they could keep moving from hole to hole until they have reached their destination. Once Captain Miller and a few other soldiers have moved behind a wall, he utilizes his mirror and Sergeant Horvath’s chewing gum to look over the wall. Hand-held cameras is utilizes throughout most of the film and at this scene the camera slightly pokes to the right as if the audience was a soldier viewing through the camera and wanted to see what was behind the wall. As soon as the sniper fires his first shot, the sound of the film is sucked out to a point where we can only hear the sound of the bullet hitting the body of the German soldier and his body falling into the ground. This symbolises glory as they have just started their way into victory and they killed a person who have killed millions of American soldiers. This film was able to exposes itself as realistic as it showed the audience the immediate surgery so that the people could see the effects of the bullets and the audience was also able to see that the paramedics stayed in the battlefields and had to perform the surgeries with the resources that had at that place, because they could not wait until someone else could come to give a proper medical care. ‘Saving Private Ryan’ shows two aspects of God, the merciful one and the warrior God. The priest is giving the last rites to another soldier that is dying, therefore it means that he is trying to bless the soldier and ask God to take good care of him once he reaches his destiny after death. The sniper sees God as a warrior as he says “give me strength to fight the evil” he wants God to fight the evil and give him strength to help him finish the war. After many American soldiers died because of the Germans, they fought for bloodlust and revenge. When there was an immense explosion in the turret one soldier said “don’t shoot, let them burn” this was to show that soldier wanted their enemies to suffer as much as they could, as if they shoot their enemies they would die instantly and if they left them to burn they would take a long time until they burned.To have complete victory over the Germans, it was necessary that the Americans would kill all the German soldiers who were left in the trenches behind the turrets, but even though the a few German soldiers had surrendered, the American soldiers were chaotic and were involved in a bloodlust, furthermore killing the Germans as if it was a murderer as they have surrendered. At the end there was a reccuring shot of Captain Miller’s shaking hand, this shows that even after the battle, Miller was still nervous and still shivering. At the end of the battle there was a close up shot of the blood in the water and an upper camera shot to show the effects of the war and its destruction after the battle. The effect it had on the audience was that it left the audience exhausted as they have been watching the battle scene for nearly 26 minutes and it also had a draining effect as it gave a sudden realisation to the audience of what the battle was like.

To conclude my essay,