After the conclusion of our previous Year by Year: Bitches, Bastards and Badasses, I kept pondering, “What do I remember most about these characters?” And wouldn’t you know it, nine out of 10 times, I remembered these iconic film characters through their first appearances on film, the introductions that make the movie.
Character introductions say a lot about a character- from the simple drop of a name to a swashbuckling entrance, the way that someone is brought before our eyes on film not only defines them, but often the entire themes and tone of the film.
And so Spectrum Culture presents our Year by Year: Entre Vous. These characters are heroes and villains, grown fighting men and demonic children. These are the smoothest of the smooth, the lowest of the low. But they all have one thing in common- they make a great entrance. - Nathan Kamal
1960: Britt (James Coburn), The Magnificent Seven
When you think about it, just how many clichés appropriately describe this character introduction? Silence speaks volumes. A lot can be said about a man who says very little.Silence can be deadly. James Coburn doesn’t speak a lick of dialogue as the switchblade wielding, quick-handed outlaw Britt, of the Americanized version of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, for nearly two minutes. Britt is much more concerned with taking a dirt nap than acknowledging a fellow ranch hand’s challenge to blade a pole faster than he can hit a tin can with his rifle.
Britt is a man of few words, but if you’re skilled in the ways of The Wild West you know a man of a few words is a man one should fear. You don’t approach him until you have permission to approach. You don’t kick his boots. You don’t call him a liar or a coward and you most certainly don’t shoot in his direction to rise fear in him. Such a man will disturb his curiously silent, hat-shaded dirt nap and allow his blade speak for him. And, before you can prove his cowardice, you’ll be dead.
Most actors seek roles with an abundance of dialogue, but one can assume Coburn’s attraction to this role was the fact that Britt was a man of very little words and a very emotionally withdrawn sort of action. Britt wasn’t on this world to prove anything to anyone except the fact that Britt has no duty to prove anything. Any man who can near wordlessly prove himself is a man to be feared. - KayJay
1961: “Fast” Eddie Felson (Paul Newman), The Hustler
From the word “go” we’re on to Eddie’s game. It’s the title of the movie, for crying out loud. The important angle is not the unassuming way he plays with the guys in the bar, pulling one over on the bartender for at least $105 taken directly from the till, it’s the smile that stretches across his face and the twinkle that appears in his eye as he hears the bartender say, “I’ll try you.” Eddie’s put on a good show for the others, missing a tricky shot and playing up his drunken determination to sink it. Then he gets in the car, newly-fattened wallet in hand, smile beaming, and we know he’s lived up to his title.
A well-drawn character has duality, and a good introduction can either show both sides of the coin right away, or it can give us just one side as the house of cards to fall later. If all two hours and 20 minutes of The Hustler were simply Eddie’s introduction repeated, the title would still be apt but there’s nothing left to learn. The crushing defeat by Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) wipes the smile from Eddie’s face, and we see his authentic drunken determination. Fats wins the match and scratches (pardon the pun) through Eddie’s ego shell. Eddie doesn’t want notoriety as the best pool shark around–it’d be bad for business. His game is to cruise and conquer, cruise and conquer. Beating Fats is a victory he wants for himself so he can keep smiling on the inside, keep that mischievous twinkle in his eye and keep money in his pocket.
Eddie has two introductions–in one he’s a winner; in another he’s desperate. When the house of cards comes down we see that his biggest hustle is against himself. - Zac Dillon
1962: James Bond (Sean Connery), Dr No
Some men achieve coolness through acts of extreme bravery and/or interesting hairstyles. But a happy few simply radiate coolness through their very existence. James Bond, agent 007 in Her Majesty’s Secret Service, is perhaps the king of these men, a man so irresistibly confident and poised that decades of hard drinking, smoking, foie gras and occasionally using a woman as human bullet-shield seem to have left him untouched. Through a world of changing moral codes and social mores, Bond has stayed more or less the same- eternally virile and unflappable. In his first appearance (in his most iconic incarnation, at least) in Dr. No, we see the secret agent at a locale that will appear again and again through his storied adventures, the gaming table. Unseen to the camera, a man wins hand after hand of blackjack, only his hand seem flipping over his cards. The beautiful woman across the table requests another thousand for the table, and introduces herself. The man casually lights a cigarette and laconically replies “Bond. James Bond.” As Monty’s Norman’s iconic score fades in and the smoke rustles, it’s a classic moment. Spies would never be the same again. - Nathan Kamal
1963: Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni ), 8 ½
Introducing a character through a dream sequence feels like a cheap method of easy exposition, but for Guido Anselmi, the dashing but harried protagonist of 8 ½ it seems like the only feasible way, crystallizing the struggles of a man whose life is defined by a relationship to fantasy. Opening in a sealed car trapped in traffic, Anselmi squeezes out a window, then takes off into the sky, from where’s he’s eventually reeled in, a rope attached to his ankle, by a wealthy old man on a beach. This sequence sums up the film’s ongoing conflict, its continuing focus on ups and downs. It also knots Fellini together with Anselmi, his fictional doppelganger, who swings between creative bankruptcy and a vibrant dream state just as the film moves between semi-realism and liberated flights of fancy. Anselmi’s entrance sets the tone for these ideas without feeling the least didactic. It also signals the looseness of the film, which proves to be Fellini’s first real experiment with the kind of formless scenarios that prize feel and imagery while almost totally breaking from the narrative. Anselmi’s entrance carefully distills all these points, while still providing an eye-catching entrance for a fascinating character. - Jesse Cataldo
1964: The Beatles (The Beatles), A Hard Day’s Night
That famous chord. Three Beatles running down the sidewalk. A horde of rabid fans giving chase. John giggling as George falls over, tripping Ringo. There’s a beautiful collision of frivolity and pop immediacy to the opening shot of A Hard Day’s Night, as if director Richard Lester knew he had to give screaming teenaged girls the Fab Four as soon as possible or they’d burn down the theatre. Plus, Lester’s verité style makes it seem more like a documentary than someone having the brilliant idea to cash in on the Beatles.
It’s become one of the most iconic images of the group, the band at the height of their mainstream popularity — before the psychedelia and delusions of grandeur and double albums — well dressed and shaggy haired. It’s also an accurate portrayal of Beatlemania: gaggles of teens frenzied about four unassuming (if a bit quirky) blokes from Liverpool. They just want to get to the train. If it were the Stones, it’d be an orgy. Instead, an indelible image the exuberance of youth and a changing culture, in which four Liverpool boys could revel in their sudden fame and adoration. - Danny Djeljosevic
1965: Maria (Julie Andrews), The Sound of Music
How do you solve a problem like Maria? Is she really a problem? And, if so, is she the sort of problem you’d really need to solve? High atop a hill in Austria, there she is, frolicking and twirling amongst the breathtakingly beautiful landscape as if she hasn’t a care or responsibility in the world.
The opening scene to the film version of the Rogers and Hammerstein Broadway musical, The Sound of Music, is one of the most well-known scenes in cinematic history. While most attribute the beauty that is Julie Andrews’ four-octave voice to the memorable elements of the opening scene of the surprisingly chipper musical epic tackling the eminent Nazi annexation of Austria, several factors contribute to the comfort of the moment we first encounter Maria. The sprawling views of the Austrian landscape transport us to Maria’s world before we have the pleasure of being cinematically introduced to her. We’re given a sprawling view of the world she sees every day during her excursions away from the abbey she feels keeps her from being her more precious self. The Rogers/Jostel score doesn’t hurt either. Those hills are most definitely alive with the sound of exquisitely orchestrated music and by the time Maria runs toward screen to convince us of the beauty she sees and hears, the job has already been done through the striking cinematography and score.
We’re later given privy to the loneliness that compels Maria to run toward the peaceful feeling the hills bring her, but we’re immediately given the sense of fulfillment the land offers her and it strikes us as strongly as it strikes her. We instantly love Maria for the joy she finds in the innocently beautiful moments of life most of us forget to savor; and we completely understand when the stoic Captain Von Trapp discovers he loves her for the same reasons. - KayJay
1966: Blondie (Clint Eastwood), The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The cultural importance of Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy cannot be overstated, credited as it is with ending the romanticized notion of the West that had dominated Hollywood for decades. Under Leone’s direction, the West became a little more true to its origins, suddenly full of amoral criminals and only slightly more moral “good guys.” Utilizing a wide, expansive cinematic style and grim, cost-effective scenery Leone revolutionized the look of the West but looks are only so much. More than any other facet of Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns, the character of The Man With No Name changed the landscape of the West forever. Unlike the bulk of John Wayne’s roles, Clint Eastwood’s portrayal of The Man With No Name is full of grey areas, skirting the line between good and bad. His entrance in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly plays with this concept, having The Man (here known as “Blondie”) seemingly save the ugly Tuco from a group of bounty hunters. It doesn’t take long for the truth to come out, though, as Blondie and Tuco are shown to be in cahoots, scamming towns out of Tuco’s reward money.
The entrance makes it clear that Blondie’s a force to be reckoned with, quick on the draw and focused. But it’s no coincidence that all three titular characters enter the picture similarly: gunning down three men with no hesitation. This similarity isn’t the only thing that binds the three either- these are men all out for more or less the same thing, with the only differences coming in their appearances and the tactics they utilize to get to their goals. For Blondie, good, bad and ugly are just words. - Morgan Davis
1967: Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), The Graduate
The film opens simply and quietly: “Ladies and gentleman, we are about to begin our descent into Los Angeles.” Mike Nichol’s classic post-collegiate film, The Graduate, begins with protagonist Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) staring blankly into space, his face devoid of emotion or thought. As the shot pulls out, it reveals him to be seated in a plane, completely surrounded by other passengers, but seemingly unaware and completely detached from them. Simon & Garfunkel’s melancholy “The Sound of Silence” washes over the title credits as Braddock makes his passive way down a moving walkway, letting the conveyor take him through the airport as more motivated passengers rapidly pass him by. A droning voice repeats a message over and over again, until finally we’re left with a shot of a suitcase forlornly being transported by the same walkway. Rarely do films so clearly (and skillfully) suggest their themes in such quick succession; through Braddock’s inaction and silence in just those few minutes, the entirety of the succeeding story of youthful ennui and stifled middle age can be inferred. That the films concludes with a nearly identical short of Braddock again being submissively transported is the ideal bookend for a perfect introduction. - Nathan Kamal
1968: Rosemary’s Baby, Rosemary’s Baby
Often the best entrances are those that are promised but not fulfilled until the very end. In the case of Rosemary’s Baby, the entire film hinges on the arrival of the title infant and the uncertainty of that child’s origins. In a film as dream-like and purposefully confusing as Rosemary’s Baby, waiting on that arrival is almost maddening, especially as the film’s seeming heroine Rosemary (Mia Farrow) becomes less and less reliable. And in a move that can be read as either genius or infuriating, director Roman Polanski never even truly reveals Rosemary’s Baby.
Instead, Polanski chooses to leave things vague and unanswered in a way that wouldn’t be out of place in a Hitchcock film. It isn’t too much of a stretch to view the film as one long dream sequence, Rosemary herself either a victim of insanity or something more sinister and her child Adrian either completely nonexistent or the product of survivor’s guilt as some critics have perceived the work to really be about abortion or miscarriage or both. When Rosemary finally does see her child it’s after she’s been told her son was stillborn. After hearing an infant’s cries in her home, she leaves her room to seek out the child, instead finding a room full of strangers and a strangely black clad cradle. Peering in, she’s shocked and disturbed, claiming that her child’s eyes are wrong only to be told that it’s because he has his father’s eyes, the eyes of Satan himself.
The important detail is that Rosemary is sent home by her doctors because they fear she is delusional- sure those doctors themselves could be unreliable and Rosemary has reason to believe they’re in league with the devil, but Polanski utilizes the concept of the unreliable narrator to masterful effect, forcing viewers to determine on their own who to trust. Where most entrances reveal important details about a character or the story itself, Adrian’s only provides further questions and thus ensuring its infamy and endurance. - Morgan Davis
1969: Wyatt (Peter Fonda), Easy Rider
Peter Fonda’s turn as Wyatt (aka “Captain America”) in the classic Easy Rider is as iconic as they come. But before he dons his stars & stripes and heads out to the glorious highway, before the immortal riff of “Born To Be Wild” blazes out over the roar of his engine, he makes a deal that simultaneously sets him free and seals his fate. Wyatt and Billy (Dennis Hopper) are introduced smuggling cocaine out of an impoverished Mexican village and onto an L.A. tarmac, where their advantageous purchase price yields a hefty profit at the hands of the ostentatious “Connection.” From here, Hopper (who also directed the film) cuts to Wyatt stashing the cash in his red, white and blue bike to the strains of “The Pusher” and then, after a deliberately conducted removal and abandonment of his wristwatch in the dust underfoot, Captain America and Billy hit the road – unencumbered by time or binding ties, off to find the untamed beauty of freedom.
Trouble is, as wonderful and revolutionary as it sounds, this idea is fraught with hypocrisy, pitfalls, enemies and delusions. For the aforementioned easy riders, it’s a dream fed by idealism and fueled by aimlessness and ill-gotten cash, and it shows. Wyatt may intrigue us with his admiration for the simple life he sees on the road – the kind farmer who welcomes him to his table, the earnest determination of the hippies struggling to make it on a remote commune – but he never manages to hack it himself. Too late, and only after a series of tragic and trippy misadventures, Wyatt realizes how empty financial freedom feels without faith in something greater – without freedom of the soul. Billy, who represents the superficial slacker pursuit of the easy life, concludes, “We did it, man; we’re rich, man…that’s what it’s all about, man, you know…you go for the big money and then you’re free…you dig?” And Wyatt, finally wise to his own failings, simply responds, “Billy…we blew it.” - Lauren Westerfield
[Logos: Dylan McConnell]
