Nov 25, 2008
Soylent Green
Art of the Title would like to give thanks. At the centerpiece of your meal remember, the Thanksgiving holiday is about people. And so, “Soylent Green.”
Sequence editor Chuck Braverman, known for his flash frame kinestasis montage/films, opens director Richard Fleischer’s film adaptation of “Soylent Green” with images of the blossoming bourgeoisie. The plague of population pressures is then conveyed with such surehanded conviction that you believe, we all believe, just how easily the cookie crumbles.
USA | 1973 | Color | 2.35:1 | English
Direct Link: 480p (QuickTime, 848×368, 27 MB, 02:17)
Extras
Commentary excerpt with director Richard Fleischer
(From the Soylent Green DVD)
Credits
Title Designer: Chuck Braverman
Nice. Life wasn’t simple.. it was as complex as it is now, but the rate we consume has dramatically changed. Work buy, consume and die. Lovely. Thanks again for a excellent piece of excellance.
Glad you guys got to this one. (and if you don’t mind a little bit of ‘plugging’ our regular MOVIE CLUB PODCAST did Soylent Green on our last episode: The Movie Club Podcast #10: Soylent Green and The Insider)
I have to say i know is all about the title sequence for soylent green which is wonderful but it was the end credits that blew me away on the film very powerful
Thx for this its very welcome. Waiting for the end sequence
Great website you have here.
Soylent Green’s beginning is a rare example of how a title sequence can be a self-contained narrative piece, not only giving the context to the main story, but also creating a very distinct diegetic mood. So, it is actually a prologue, not the beginning of the main film (in narrative terms). I use this sequence in my theory classes to explain the concept of Russian montage, and how it can be used to graphically tell a (hi)story (see how the pace, shot size, editing and colour changes). Most films that have prologues (especially dystopian films) use text (see Twelve Monkeys) or voice (see Dune). Here, the lack of text and the significant editing make the viewer not only understand intellectually, but also feel emotionally the space and time of the film. The omission of text and voice is also a clever device to distract attention from the meta-narrator (filmmaker) and attach the audience to the characters of the film, thus creating a personal POV, rather than having an authorial POV.
Moon is another film that succeeds in doing this (by using a corporate video format) attaching the audience to the POV of the corporation (which the main character literally belongs to), until the POV shifts to the individual.
In a way Seven is doing a similar thing (pre-narrative, motivation, mood), but it is more gimmicky.