Film Form Analysis — City of God (opening sequence)

Straight away, in the opening sequence in ‘City Of God’ a montage of visuals with a high contrast natural lighting, that keeps to blue tones, is thrust upon the audience with the cuts matching on the action and seemingly dancing to the diegetic sounds of the sharpening of a blade on a stone, instrumental latin music, chickens being killed and other food being prepared for a cook out. The mise-en-scene and collection of sounds give the audience instant recognition of possibly a street market in a South American locale.

This seemingly all comes from the point of view of a chicken, which the editing constantly cuts back to, looking around its environment and seeing its imminent demise, which could be considered to be a type of foreshadowing of later events in the sequence.

The music and cuts speed up until the point of the chicken escaping at which all the sounds cease and only the chicken is heard. The man then shouts to his legions to catch the chicken at which point a new non-diegetic track is heard, the camera goes from handheld to crane shots and the speeds of the jump cuts fasten to show the chickens frantic perception of its escape but now the shot switches from the hustle and bustle of the chicken and its pursuers to a wide angle two shot of a quiet conversion between Rocket and his friend walking through the street with only the diegetic sounds of the atmosphere and their conversation being heard.

Both of these scenes meet up with the Chicken and Rocket in the middle of the street and the gang and police officers on either side with guns draw. the camera 360’s around Rocket to show his point of view and the voice over explains he is dead no matter his decision. This then fades into a flashback, which still utilises natural light but keeps to yellow palette, in opposition of the previous scene. Shot reverse shot is now used to tell a story of Rockets childhood and introducing a new character Shaggy.