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David Buchanan
University of Alberta
this opening than first meets the eye. On the way into the barber shop there is an indecipherable reflection, perhaps of the apparatus used to film the scene, barely visible in a spinning barber pole as the angle shifts and the viewer enters the shop front door. Ed's calm, soothing voice over begins the story, but the narration is superimposed upon a complex background of sounds and images; there are voices of people engaged in conversation, the sounds of the shop, and opera music; signs, articles, and advertisements cover the walls, people read newspapers, a photograph of Frank's father standing in front of the barber shop is pinned to the mirror. As such, the film immediately directs the viewer to reflect upon the multifaceted and constructed nature of the film medium and representation of the present as a pastiche of the old and the new. The Coen brothers, in fact, state in an interview, truthfully or not, that the film is a direct spin off of a poster seen during the shooting of The Hudsucker Proxy (1994; dir. Joel Coen) (Man). Similarly, there are many internal references to films that contribute to the major themes of the film and situate it in the history of American literature and cinema. The salesman Tolliver stays at the Hobart Arms, which is also the apartment building where Philip Marlowe lives in The Big Sleep (1946; dir. Howard Hawks). The work of novelist, journalist, editor, and opera enthusiast James M. Cain, especially The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934; 1946, dir. Tay Garnett) and Double Indemnity (1943; 1944, dir. Billy Wilder), is interwoven into the film; for example, the names Nirdlinger and Diedrickson are both found in Double Indemnity. The setting is Santa Rosa, California, a town with a long history of film making, notably including Shadow of a Doubt (1943; dir. Alfred Hitchcock).
The complex representation of identity in the transition to modern society begins to unfold in several ways. An old man enters the shop, where a young boy is getting his hair cut. Ed begins his voice over narrative by saying that he never considered himself a barber, he just "stumbled into it." A close-up of fat Frank's mouth emphasizing how he...