Tarantino's opening songs do not always serve the same function. Some introduce a group; others introduce 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 all play over the first image. Tarantino often uses a prior scene to establish a situation and then lets the music reorganize our impression. The opening credits thus 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, George Baker Selection's Little Green Bag accompanies the group's walk-on introduction after the restaurant conversation. The song and the slow motion let us observe the men as a formation, with their suits and their physical differences. The music gives a common rhythm to people who will soon reveal incompatible interests and temperaments.
The apparent ease of that entrance does not guarantee that the story will be comfortable. The sequence builds an appealing image of coordination before the film examines its limits. The song organizes a collective facade. What we learn later retrospectively changes that walk, but it does not erase the pleasure of its initial presentation.
Pulp Fiction chooses another kind of rupture. Misirlou, in Dick Dale's 1962 recording, enters after Honey Bunny's threat and the freeze-frame. The guitar extends the force of the gesture while the credits suspend the robbery. The relationship withsurf rock is born there from an energy and a texture, not from a scene set on a beach.
The later transition to Jungle Boogie also signals that the sonic identity can change. The beginning does not lock the whole story into a single musical family. It presents a way of selecting and cutting that can move from one recording to another with confidence. That mobility prepares the viewer for a film that will also shift protagonists and temporal position.
A person, a wound, or a prior story
Jackie Brown opens 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 during a prolonged trip. The song brings gravity and experience to an everyday activity, without needing to turn the entrance into a display of violence.
The mechanical movement has its own rhythm: the body moves forward while it can remain almost still. The music gives that movement expressive duration. Instead of presenting a gang through a synchronized 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 performance. 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 contains an emotional memory before the film unfolds its revenge journey.
Here the song does not propel a walk or display a group's cohesion. It is heard alongside the consequences of an assault and opens a distance between past and present. Its sonic fragility allows the beginning to carry 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 recognizable 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 beginning of the journey of the enslaved men. The sung name and the images link a new protagonist to an earlier film tradition, even if his circumstances and story are not the same.
The borrowing of the1966 Django opening theme lets the genre appear through the ear. There is no need to wait for a duel to recognize the western's dramatic scope. However, the image of chained bodies introduces a situation that requires reading that tradition from another angle. The song provides a genealogy; the film decides what conflict it will place within it.
Compared side by side, these openings show different functions. Little Green Bag builds the appearance of a group; Misirlou delivers 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 fully tell what will happen next 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 choices and places them alongside new images. His openings make it possible to recognize that operation before the plot goes too far: the tone is established through a concrete relationship among voice, body, movement, and cut.
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