Nobody starts a film like Spike Lee. His openings match his movies as a whole: bold with a sense of cinematic tradition. Brash reinvention by a cinephile who is also a first-rate storyteller. If Howard Hawks knew “A good movie has three great scenes and no bad ones,” then Spike Lee is smart enough to know that one of those great scenes should be the first. The filmmaker announced his presence with authority from the very beginning: over the opening credits of his first feature, She’s Gotta Have It (1986), black-and-white still photography courtesy of Spike’s brother, David, captures a specific slice of Black life in mid-eighties Brooklyn, all set to a score composed by Bill Lee, Spike’s jazz musician father. In comparison to the rest of his career, it’s an understated, measured opening sequence. He’d only grow more inventive and confident from that point on.
Consider the direct-to-camera address that opens Inside Man (2006). Immediately, Clive Owen stares down the lens: “My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself.” He proceeds to explain the entirety of the film to us, except for the “how.” He references Shakespeare as he closes with the phrase, “Therein lies the rub.” Sitting in the movie theater on the opening weekend of Inside Man, absorbing this Hamlet reference and the ensuing blast of A.R. Rahman’s “Chaiyya Chaiyya” playing over footage of New York City, I was entranced. I was also a little confused. The thief had just told me what was going to happen, and I still didn’t know what to expect.
Much like Dalton Russell, Spike Lee is a master at work, and one of the most vital things he does in his openings is to make them essential to the story he’s telling. Whether it’s a credits sequence or a cold open, what’s on screen is both part of the narrative and a glimpse beyond the story’s edges. When Lee starts a film, he provides a larger context beyond character and plot;the images aren’t just part of the story being told, they’re part of a larger American story. The resulting films, then, can be political history, cultural analysis, or both.
A few years back, in conversation with Variety, Lee referenced the James Bond films as a huge influence: “I have always loved the opening credits of James Bond movies, 007. When I was a kid, I wasn’t thinking I’d be a filmmaker. I recognized something was special about the opening credits of the James Bond films.” The influence is clear at the top of Do The Right Thing (1989), alongside the very direct inspiration of Ann-Margret in Bye Bye Birdie. A jazz riff and title card is immediately followed by the incomparable Rosie Perez, dancing and punching at the lens while Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” blares. As early as From Russia With Love (1963), beautiful women dancing over the film’s theme song was the thing that James Bond movies promised, along with drink orders, fun gadgets, and casual misogyny. Do The Right Thing presents the song, the woman, and something else: a changing city block set, lit by police sirens, and a complicated sound design that includes a circling helicopter whirr throughout. There’s freedom of expression in these frames, trapped within a larger police state, with Perez’s demeanor—equal parts angry and confident—underlining that structure. Only one year later, Lee leaned in even more directly to the Bond reference with Mo’ Better Blues (1990), as musical instruments themselves become objects of desire. Silhouetted against different color schemes, the trumpet is caressed as though it’s a beautiful Bond gal.
Lee’s most powerful opening credit sequence occurs in 25th Hour (2002). This inclusion is technically a cheat—the film actually opens with a scene in which Monty Brogan (Edward Norton) and his Russian mafioso buddy (former NFL star Tony Siragusa) come across a beaten dog left for dead. Following this grisly skirt with violence, the credit sequence begins, with static, deliberate shots of Downtown Manhattan pierced by pillars of light bursting from the ground. As the scene progresses, we see that these pillars are searchlights arranged in two columns, illuminated six months after the September 11, 2001 attacks in a public art installation titled “Tribute in Light.” the two beams standing in remembrance of the Twin Towers and the people killed on that day. Lee’s longtime composer-collaborator Terence Blanchard designs a mournful-yet-defiant piece for the scene—similar to the mood created in Do The Right Thing’s iconic opening—backed by vocals from Cheb Mami that match an orchestra’s crescendo in the final minute of the credits. The complicated emotions of Blanchard’s piece oppose the skin-deep machismo of Monty’s lifelong friend Frank (Barry Pepper) when he declares later in the film, “Bin Laden could drop another one right next door, I ain’t moving” as he looks down on Ground Zero from his apartment. It’s bravura masking real hurt. By the end of 25th Hour, Frank’s facade—along with every other character’s—will be torn down. Here is a motion picture acknowledging the vulnerability of America in this moment, while also observing its arrogance.
So much of Spike Lee’s career has been in the service of re-contextualizing America. This is an artist steeped in both culture and history. As Lee recalled: “My mother was taking me to movies, Broadway plays and libraries. When I became a filmmaker, those influences came out.” Often he’s celebrating and criticizing at the same time. To open He Got Game (1998), Aaron Copland’s “John Henry – A Railroad Ballad” compliments shots of basketball players of every gender, color, and creed playing on courts across this great nation. It’s a romantic gesture, a decidedly American opening. A celebration of America even—at least for a moment or two. As André Previn notes in his preface to Neil Butterworth’s The Music of Aaron Copland: “Copland is such a towering figure in twentieth century music that he has become synonymous with American music.” Here, basketball is framed as American a pastime as baseball. Lee is making his sports movie while also announcing that it’s much bigger than just sports. This will be the sports movie, and it’s about America. About the purity and parity of sport, and about all of the outside forces—a country, a culture, a setting of stakes—that corrupt it. Not ten minutes after that romantic beginning, He Got Game is shrouded in back-room deals and two-faced tricksters, all looking for their piece of Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen), the projected number-one pick of the upcoming NBA Draft. Even his father (Denzel Washington) isn’t on the level. There is truly no storyteller better than Lee at making you fall in love with a person, place or thing while elucidating with clear-eyed observation why that person, place or thing will break your heart into a million little pieces. That’s the history of America. As Lee puts it himself, “That is history. I wouldn’t even say African American History, it is a history of America because we built this motherfucker, along with the genocide of Native people and the stealing of land, that’s the foundation of the United States of America.”
In Malcolm X (1992), Lee connects past with present as Malcolm’s speech soundtracks footage of the Rodney King beating and a full-framed, burning American Flag (itself a reference to the 1970 film Patton). The start of his documentary 4 Little Girls (1997) serves as a memorial prologue, wherein the camera pans to the gravestones of the four victims—Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Rosamond Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair—of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing while “Birmingham Sunday” by Joan Baez plays. On the cheekier side, the She Hate Me (2004) credits feature then-president, always-crooked George W. Bush on a three-dollar bill to foreshadow the satirically-large fraud conspiracy in which young Anthony Mackie will be framed. And while this use of introduction to propel the narrative and/or themes is not new, it’s not that old either.
As Patrick (H) Willems mentions in his lovely A Celebration of Opening Title Sequences (And Why They Need To Come Back): “[Before the 1950s, title sequences were] generally viewed as an inessential part of the film.” Then, Saul Bass changed everything. His work on Otto Preminger’s Carmen Jones (1954) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) made title sequences more than just a cast list on a static card. As these sequences grew in popularity, so did their intricacies. Bass’s opening for Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) a few years later reflects his evolution. It also feels in many ways like a direct influence on Spike Lee, considering the “I am Malcolm X” ending of his 1992 film. At the beginning of Spartacus—following the “Overture”—the sculpted heads of past rulers of the Roman Empire are dramatically lit and photographed as Alex North’s bombastic score bellows. As Bass described it: “What we were going for in the Spartacus titles was the multiple layers of elegant and disdainful faces, which express the duality of Roman rule—the oppressiveness and brutality, as well as the sophistication that made possible so many contributions to Western civilization. It seems very rich to see the growth of those profiles forming a full face, and full faces dissolving into profiles before the final face starts to crack apart and the camera zooms into the empty eye, signaling that all is not well.” Lee’s School Daze (1988) tracks centuries of oppression against Black people and the resistance that was borne out of scholarship, and its opening sequence presents photos of Black graduates and college athletes who excelled against all odds, as well as reformers like Frederick Douglass and athletes like Willie Mays. The context provided in these first few minutes lays the groundwork for the conflict on campus that will play out for the next two hours.
As more powerful unions negotiated for the rightful credit on-screen of more craftspeople and assistants on films through the 1970s and beyond, the list of credits grew longer and more time-consuming. Eventually, credits more commonly moved to the back of the picture. There was also a demand for more realism in film, in general. Before long, most movies just… started. There are, of course, more recent examples of great opening sequences—Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Lord of War (2005) are standouts, while Baby Driver (2017) has a great cold open as well as a great title sequence—but they are few and far between.
A more common trope these days is the cold open, not unlike Lee’s own in the aforementioned Inside Man. Unfortunately—and unlike Lee—many of these openings are in medias res: we are dropped into what appears to be a crucial scene. Of course, we don’t quite know why it’s crucial or how it’s crucial, but there it is. And then, just like that, we’re tossed back to the beginning of the story with a lackadaisical promise of what’s to come. It’s frankly lazy and often ill-fitting, but satisfies a public that doesn’t like to wait. It’s a fail-safe, an insurance policy: “Don’t worry, it’s going to get better.” Young Woman and the Sea (2024) and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) are two egregious examples of this trend.
Lee likes to take his time, but is never boring. He demands much of his audience. This is a maximalist working in a time of minimalism. Less might mean more in some corners of storytelling (interior-looking performances, meditative narrative beats, etc.), but not in a Spike Lee Joint. The beginnings of his pictures speak to his brazen traditionalism. Here is a radical artist willing to challenge his viewer with each new film, while constantly paying respect to the past. Be it problematic Golden Age Hollywood war epics in BlacKKKlansman (2018) or Shakespeare himself in Inside Man, the filmmaker is constantly evaluating beloved classics while creating brave new ones. No matter which Spike Lee film you’ve seen most recently, chances are you loved the first sixty seconds. And the rest is probably pretty great, too.