KILL BILL: VOL 1

2003

CONVENTIONS• The sound of heavy breathing is a common

feature.• A gunshot is within the opening sequence.• The Bride, she is bloody, looks beat up and

blonde – the stereotypical victim.• Cliff-hangers and questions are raised from the

very beginning, after the gunshot building suspense: did she die, or didn’t she? Was it him who beat her?

• Shock value: ‘Bill, it’s your baby’. So she was in a relationship with this man, this man who looks as if he’s about to kill her, and in addition he did not know that the baby was his. Why and how did she come to be in a relationship with him? Is she still in one with him now? Why is he about to kill her? Why did he not know the baby was his? We did not know she had a child. Where is the baby now? Many questions ensure that the audience keeps watching, captivating them.

SOUND• The sound of heavy breathing was the very first

sound, playing over the titles. No music yet.• The click of shoes on the wooden floor was made

even louder by the lack of any music, each step isolated, slow and in no hurry the gait sounded menacing.

• ‘Do you find me sadistic?’ A man’s voice, owner of the boots and in contrast to the heavy breathing and speechlessness of the bride, he sounds fairly calm.

• The sound of his cocking his gun is quiet but immediately noticeable underneath the sound of her breathing, and not matching the reasonable tone of his words.

• There is a very sudden gunshot, with sonic exaggeration that is likely to make the viewer jump despite its being expected, particularly as it was in the bride’s midsentence interrupting her.

• Cut to the titles so the audience is unsure of what exactly just happened and the opening of Nancy’s Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ plays, ironic yet appropriate in its placing. It sounds sombre, gunslinger showdown kind of music and entirely suitable for the couple that has just been witnessed.

USE OF TITLES• The first title that appears is a

quote, an ‘old Klingon proverb’ which says ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold’. This is a common proverb quoted in everyday conversation and literature, and sets the tone for the rest of the film informing the audience that revenge shall be a key theme.

• The titles are not complex, a classic white on black – no distractions, no unnecessary colours or designs.

CAMERA TECHNIQUES

• There is an aerial view of the Bride where we look down almost directly on top of her face, putting us above her in a position of power and almost in a point of view shot of the male character.

• There is a low level tracking shot of the man’s pair of black and highly polished shoes walking slowly along the floor, taking his time – it’s not as if she is about to go anywhere.

• Cut back to the Bride’s face, and only the toe of the shoe is seen framed in the corner of the shot. The Bride is the primary focus here.

• This close to her face, his hand seems overly large and takes up most of the shot when it enters looking almost as big as her face. His whole hand is as big as her face, showing he holds a lot of power.

MISE EN SCENE I• We can never see the man’s face, only his shoes and

his hand although we can hear him.• Of her we can only see mostly from her neck

upwards, due to the close up shot focused on her face the majority of the time. But we can tell that she is lying on the floor, a position of vulnerability and she looks as if she can hardly get up.

• Make up: She looks as if she’s still bleeding from her nose, suggesting the rest of the blood on her face is fresh. There is blood everywhere, leaking from her nose and mouth and a bruise by her eye. She has either been tortured or beaten, and badly – she is a showcase victim. Her hair is wet and stringy, her skin damp with either tears and sweat if not both. Women take care of their appearance usually but she isn’t looking good right now.

• Costume: If you are able to take your gaze away from her face, then you see that there is glitter on the floor and a gauzy white material appearing to trail from her head – a wedding veil. A little of fabric off her shoulder is frilly, and could be part of a dress. She seems to have just got married – but this certainly does not look like the happiest day of her life. What happened in the time from the wedding until now?

• Her facial expressions are tortured, she looks in pain and distressed. Her beat up appearance, her furrowed bra, her puffy eyes and a grimace. There are lines of fear and pain on her face when she is looking up at Bill, lines that do not go away.

MISE EN SCENE II• She’s making injured noises, whimpers like some defeated dying

animal and looks terrified when Bill is wiping her face with his handkerchief. She’s trembling, from shock, pain and nervousness.

• She’s wearing virginal white and he wears black – the traditional wear for a bride and groom, perhaps? This must be taking place very soon after a wedding, though we can not be sure he is the groom. The colours indicate further that she is the victim, and he is the villain.

• There is very hard quality lighting, low key. Dark shadows with very sharp edges fit the gritty, painful look of the cinematography here bringing pain to the forefront rather than clouding it with softness.

• He speaks and acts towards her in an affectionate manner (calling her kiddo, wiping the blood off her face and stroking her face with a finger) but most of his actual words are threatening (‘Do you think that I am sadistic?’) and his action of cocking his gun negates his apparent kindness towards her as the audience suspects that he may have been the one to beat her so badly. From this angle, although he is wiping the blood off of her face because of how large his hand appears and the angle it also looks like he is punching her with his huge knuckles in slow motion.

• Mid-sentence of hers he shoots and her eyes shut, a bloodstream spurting out – but we cannot be sure that it was hers as there is a quick motivated cut to further titles, and the audience is left in frustration trying to figure out what just happened.