The film begins with a sequence of seven establishing shots with a vioce over. The setting is in Texas as both the accent suggested of the man talking in the voice over and the oil drills suggest. The shots get progressively darker, indicating that a day is drawing to a close. Each shot takes around five to six seconds is about 45 seconds.None of the shots show any humans at all, and the only movement is the slow methodical oil drill nd the seventh shot, The effect of this is to suggest that this is a lonely, isolated and desolate area.
The mise-en-scene of the openning shot of the film is worth comenting on. The shot shows a lonely, desolate road; the vaery low angle camera shot gives the impression of the road of the disappearing indefinately into the distance. Nothing but dry scrubland appears either of the road. The only object in shot is a carefully placed piece of worn rubber tyre, pressumably from a blow out, perhaps implying an accident. The existance of this piece of tyres has the effect of adding to the emptiness of the road by emphasising that there is nothing else there. In addition, it indicates that there is rarely much traffic on the road, since otherwise the piece of tyre would have gone.
After 45 seconds of this montage of establishing shots, the Coens cut to two, faint, dots of light, alone in a vast back nothingness: a car. This clearly very isolated car, both the lighting and the longshotgivees the impression. Adding to this sense of isolation are the last words of the voiceover, which we hear as a sound bridge as the cut to this shot is made: "what i know about Texas, and down here, you're on your own".
The car comes rapidly towards the camera before shooting past; it is all shockingly sudden after the quiet and slow peace of the previous 45 seconds. As the car passess the camera the point of view changes and suddenly the audience is looking down from the bonnet of the car as the road races by underneath. The voice over has gone and has been replaced initially by diegetic sound of the car racing past; this added to by the non-diegetic music; a soundtrack which is slightly unsettling, sinister electronic music with medium-paced, heavy drums.
Tha name of the title appears in blue against a black background. Hereafter title (cast & crew names) are superimposed in the same colour and font, over the subsequent shots, generally in unobtrusive positions in areas of blackness in frames.
The Coen cut to inside the car. The point of view is from the back seat, and we see the outlines of two heads, the windscreen-wipers furiosly clearing the driving rain, and occasionally a blinding light of a car in the opposite direction. The darkness, the dreadfull weather, the fact that we don't see the characters faces and they remain mysterious and the uncertainty as to who they are and what there relationship is, all add to the sense of unease. It becomes clear that the driver is a man and the passenger a woman when the women says: "He gave me a little pearl-handled .38 for our first anniversary." This immediate referance to a gun, in juxtaposition with the new knowledge the women is married, and not to the man she is with, immediately raises our suspicions. A sense of menace is established by the mention of the gun.
As the conversation goes on, we learn that the women is running away from her husband: she's worried that her husband is "ill... mentally". The man driving her is an employee of the husband, and confesses to licking the women. The chiaroscuro lighting adds to the sense of realism begun by our entrance into the conversation
in media res.
The non-diegetic dies away and were left with the diegetic sound of the windscreen wipers and the car, a louder noise, becomes apparent. Suddenly the women demands that Ray stop the car. We cut to a close up of his foot slamming on the brake and then to the front of the car, screeching to a stop.
The Coens then to a low angle shot from the side of the car we were just in. We see another car pull up behind it, obviously the source of the women's distress. The low-angle shot puts the other car, although small and tatty (with plate hanging off) in a powerfull position. With the distance and the neutral chiaroscuro, we are unable to make out the driver at all.
The Coens noow cut back inside the car, to the same position we were in. Ray ( John Getz) turns slowly aorund to look at the car; this is the first face we see. It is a close up and his face wears an intence, anxious look, indicating danger. The women does not turn, suggesting she knows too well what is behind them. This also continues to keep a key element of her identity mysterious.
We cut back to the second car and there is an uncomfortable pause; the only sound is diegetic, that of the car engines ticking over. The tension is palpable, and the possibillity of imminent confrontation obvious. The city seems to glimmer attractively but distantly, in the background; safety seems a long way away.
Finally we see it begin to move off, presumably because the driver realises that the people he has been tailing have noticed his presence and he cannot therefore continue secretly following them. As it passess the first car we get a medium shot of the car, conforming its tattiness and also showing us the head of the driver: he appears to be wearing a cowboy hat. The car dissappers into the drakness.
