Happy Trailers - Special Edition - Soylent Green Opening Titles

Soylent Green is a pretty good movie. The creative team created a believable, chilling look at an overpopulated future. It has a good cast, a decent script, Edward G Robinson in his final role, showing why he was such a great actor and an ending that is both purely Hollywood (hero apparently saves the day) and bleak as hell (hero can't really save the day).

It does have one element, however, that is a masterpiece of film making. The opening title sequence is one of the best examples of visual narration around. Using only a series of still images and an instrumental piece, the titles tell the story of the rise and fall of technological civilization. The visual tricks - slowly moving from one image to another at the beginning and the end, rapid cuts and split screens during the rise and fall of technological man - gives a dyanmic energy to a series of still images. We see America grow from a quiet, slow, agrarian nation into a bustling, mobile industrial society before going through a series of disasters as pollution and over-population wipe out the natural world and create the world of 2022 (when the movie takes place) where civilization is slowly collapsing. The starts out slow and has a nostalgic twinge to it, then speeds up using horns to create a dynamic, energetic feel, in keeping with America at her height, before becoming increasingly dissonant...and then winding down, a jazzy funeral dirge for the human race.

Not a word is spoken. There is no opening crawl, where the world is spelled out for you. But it clear exactly what has happened and why the world is the horrible shape it is in. A great example of visual storytelling that anyone interested in the art of films needs to see.