Analyse how the opening of Sin city/ The Third Man uses film noir conventions and how it sets up audience expectations?

Sin City and The third man are two very different films, even though they are both either Film Noir or Neo-Noir which use very similar conventions, the opening of The Third Man is a brief overview of the city of Vienna whereas the opening scene of Sin City wets your appetite for the rest of the movie. one of the opening shots of the third man.

The opening to The Third Man is completely black and white whereas Sin City is high contrast black and white, but the twist is that it has subtle colour in it, for example the lady’s dress is red, and her eyes turn green when she inhales the cigarette. The other main difference is that the opening of The Third Man is that its isn’t very exciting visually it just uses news reel footage of Vienna, the news reel does not use any film noir conventions such as the use of shadows in the shot, another thing about the opening scene of the third man is that there is a happy, Greek interment which is a stark contrast to what the narrator is talking about, he is talking the splitting up of Vienna and the corruption of the city, this seems surreal with the music being played in the background. In the opening of Sin City like The Third Man there is a narration, this time it’s spoken by the male character in the scene, it isn’t an overview of something, and he is just talking about the woman. It’s almost poetic the way he says things like “The wind rises electric”. You don’t see the twist coming. It almost surreal because of the line “Ill tell her… I love her” then he shoots her. green eyes in sin city.

Overall the opening to Sin City is technically brilliant and enthralling to watch, sadly the rest of the film does not have the same brilliance to it and the movie as a whole isn’t bad, but that opening scene makes you think its going to be great, sadly because of the rest of the film it disappoints. The Third Man in contrast to Sin City doesn’t really build up any expectations, all it does is sets the scene for the movie. It doesn’t really wet your appetite it just informs you on the story so far. Over all both movies have some similarities but the opening scenes are very different.