In the opening minutes of the 1976 thriller classic Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman sprints around a massive circle. It’s a scenic running path that surrounds a full-bodied lake with a generous canopy of trees covering the path. He’s training, and thanks to a tragic history, he has something to prove. Hoffman is clearly struggling to keep his pace and, despite the picturesque setting, one of the best cinematographers who ever lived, Conrad Hall, made it look dirty. This opening scene is emblematic of the 1970s, where the prevailing paranoid tension of the post-Watergate era made even the beautiful parks look crooked. In the latest Marvel release, the first of two this year (the second being August’s much-anticipated and splendidly strange Guardians of the Galaxy), this scene is partially recreated, not just as a homage for fans of the 70s classic, but as an initiation.





Captain America: The Winter Soldier begins on a picture-perfect sunny day, ideally suited for barbecues and ballgames. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), or, as Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury calls him, Cap, runs around a glistening lake in Washington D.C. through the landmarks in our nation’s capital. In one of the movie’s only moments where his sheer size doesn’t overpower the cinema frame, a high angle wide shot from the point of view of inside the Lincoln Memorial reduces Captain America to ant-size, almost as though Lincoln himself gazes down upon him. Not even Marvel’s most patriotic superhero stands a chance against the mammoth iconography of the United States. The film begins with Rogers at his most sentimental and idealistic, and these early moments give us one last breath of association between Rogers and the classic aw-shucks we-can-do-it Americanism that characterized his first flick. Unlike Marathon Man, the opening setting is portrayed as all it can be. But, like that film, it isn’t long before the murky fog of war descends -- literally, in this case, as the film quickly switches from day to night and into a thick cluster of dark cloud which Rogers has to literally jump through. This is the film using contrast through visual storytelling to alert audiences to the tone and theme of the film, where noble patriotism starts out as set in stone but minutes later is gone in a puff of smoke.





One of the highest compliments to be paid to Captain America: The Winter Soldier is that discussing any of the plot beyond the opening fifteen minutes can be considered a spoiler. Samuel L. Jackson seems to agree, saying “I think this one’s the best one ‘cause this one actually has a plot.” Suffice it to say this is a conspiracy thriller of the 1970s variety, where Watergate left the country in a state of paranoid panic. Films from this time echo the sentiment, where the protagonist is abandoned by the structures that supported him or her, leading to a chase towards uncovering the truth. The Winter Soldier adopts this pattern and goes as far to borrow broad strokes of its plot from the 1975 thriller Three Days of the Condor in which Robert Redford stars. Redford, a cinema icon who famously evaded films like Winter Soldier, plays against type as the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. His presence enhances the allusion to the 70s era, and he gives another compelling performance in what appears to be a late career resurgence.