A Mesmerizing Supercut of the First and Final Frames of 55 Movies, Played Side by Side

On his Vimeo page, Jacob T. Swin­ney frames his pret­ty remark­able super­cut with these words:

What can we learn by exam­in­ing only the first and final shot of a film? This video plays the open­ing and clos­ing shots of 55 films side-by-side. Some of the open­ing shots are strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar to the final shots, while oth­ers are vast­ly different–both serv­ing a pur­pose in com­mu­ni­cat­ing var­i­ous themes. Some show progress, some show decline, and some are sim­ply impact­ful images used to begin and end a film.

Below the jump, you can find a com­plete list of the films used in the super­cut, some released long ago (Dr. Strangelove), some more recent­ly (Bird­man). It was while watch­ing Gone Girl in the cin­e­ma that Swin­ney first came up with the idea for the clip. He start­ed “by choos­ing movies that pos­sessed either very sim­i­lar or very con­trast­ing opening/closing shots.” Then, he adds, “I decid­ed to expand a bit to include films that show a sto­ry of sorts with just the first and final shots. Basi­cal­ly, if an open­ing and clos­ing shot stuck with me, I includ­ed it.” You can find more videos by Swin­ney over on Vimeo.

The Tree of Life 00:00
The Mas­ter 00:09
Broke­back Moun­tain 00:15
No Coun­try for Old Men 00:23
Her 00:27
Blue Valen­tine 00:30
Bird­man 00:34
Black Swan 00:41
Gone Girl 00:47
Kill Bill Vol. 2 00:53
Punch-Drunk Love 00:59
Sil­ver Lin­ings Play­book 01:06
Taxi Dri­ver 01:11
Shut­ter Island 01:20
Chil­dren of Men 01:27
We Need to Talk About Kevin 01:33
Fun­ny Games (2007) 01:41
Fight Club 01:47
12 Years a Slave 01:54
There Will be Blood 01:59
The God­fa­ther Part II 02:05
Shame 02:10
Nev­er Let Me Go 02:17
The Road 02:21
Hunger 02:27
Rag­ing Bull 02:31
Cabaret 02:36
Before Sun­rise 02:42
Nebras­ka 02:47
Frank 02:54
Cast Away 03:01
Some­where 03:06
Melan­cho­lia 03:11
Morvern Callar 03:18
Take this Waltz 03:21
Buried 03:25
Lord of War 03:32
Cape Fear 03:38
12 Mon­keys 03:45
The World Accord­ing to Garp 03:50
Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan 03:57
Poet­ry 04:02
Solaris (1972) 04:05
Dr. Strangelove 04:11
The Astro­naut Farmer 04:16
The Piano 04:21
Incep­tion 04:26
Boy­hood 04:31
Whiplash 04:37
Cloud Atlas 04:43
Under the Skin 04:47
2001: A Space Odyssey 04:51
Grav­i­ty 04:57
The Searchers 05:03
The Usu­al Sus­pects 05:23

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