Tarantino's opening songs do not always serve the same purpose. Some introduce a group; others set up a wound, a journey or a memory of the genre.
A musical entrance can come after the first scene
Talking about opening songs does not mean they always play over the first image. Tarantino often uses an earlier scene to create a situation and then lets the music reorganise our impression. The opening credits therefore become a second beginning: we already know something about the world, but we are still learning how the film wants to show it to us.
In Reservoir Dogs, Little Green Bag by George Baker Selection accompanies the group's walk-on introduction after the restaurant conversation. The song and the slow motion allow us to observe the men as a formation, with their suits and their physical differences. The music gives a common rhythm to people who will soon show incompatible interests and temperaments.
The apparent ease of that entrance does not guarantee that the story will be comfortable. The sequence builds an attractive image of coordination before the film examines its limits. The song organises a collective facade. What we learn afterwards changes that walk retrospectively, but it does not remove the pleasure of its initial presentation.
Pulp Fiction chooses another kind of break. Misirlou, in Dick Dale's 1962 recording, comes in after Honey Bunny's threat and the freeze-frame. The guitar extends the charge in the gesture while the credits suspend the robbery. The connection withsurf rock is born there from energy and texture, not from a scene set on a beach.
The later move to Jungle Boogie also signals that the sonic identity can change. The opening does not fix a single musical family for the whole story. It presents a way of selecting and cutting, able to move from one recording to another with confidence. That mobility prepares the viewer for a film that will also change protagonists and time frame.
A person, a wound or an earlier story
Jackie Brown opens with another kind of relationship between music and character. Across 110th Street, by Bobby Womack, accompanies Jackie on the airport conveyor belt. The image lets us look at her face and uniform over an extended journey. The song lends gravity and experience to an everyday task, without needing to turn the entrance into a display of violence.
The mechanical movement has its own rhythm: the body moves on while almost remaining still. The music gives that movement expressive duration. Instead of presenting a gang through a synchronised walk, the film gives space to a woman we do not yet know. The song invites us to hear a life behind the professional appearance.
Kill Bill: Volume 1 uses Bang Bang in Nancy Sinatra's 1966 version. It is not Cher's recording, although both belong to the history of Sonny Bono's composition. After the initial attack, the voice and guitar offer a wounded intimacy that contrasts with the immediate brutality. Nancy Sinatra'sopening theme holds an emotional memory before the film unfolds its revenge journey.
Here the song does not propel a walk or display the cohesion of a group. It is heard alongside the consequences of an assault and opens a distance between past and present. Its sonic fragility allows the beginning to have pain as well as threat. The film has not yet explained the full relationship between the protagonist and Bill, but it already invites us to hear it as a loss.
The western enters with a recognisable voice
Django Unchained brings back Django, with music by Luis Bacalov and the voice of Rocky Roberts, from Sergio Corbucci's 1966 film. The song accompanies the start of the journey of the enslaved men. The sung name and the images bring a new protagonist together with an earlier cinematic tradition, even if his circumstances and story are not the same.
The borrowing of the1966 Django opening theme allows the genre to emerge through the ear. There is no need to wait for a duel to recognise the western's dramatic breadth. However, the image of chained bodies introduces a situation that requires that tradition to be read from another angle. The song provides a genealogy; the film decides which conflict it will place within it.
Compared, these openings show different functions. Little Green Bag builds the appearance of a group; Misirlou produces a jolt; Across 110th Street gives weight to an individual figure; Bang Bang introduces vulnerability; Django activates a memory of the genre. None needs to tell the whole of what will happen later in order to guide the audience's listening.
The chosen version is inseparable from each function. Changing the singer or the arrangement would alter the apparent age of the sound, its intimacy and its energy. Tarantino works with recordings that already contain expressive decisions and places them alongside new images. His openings let us recognise that operation before the plot moves too far ahead: the tone is established through a specific relationship between voice, body, movement and cut.
Return to the Tarantino music and soundtrack guide.