Wasn't that something? It takes your attention and draws you in. You didn't need to smoke a joint before you sat down but I think a lot of effects in that era were done for or by a stoned mind.
Put it on the tripod!
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A little behind the scenes trivia......a pot bust took place on the set early in the shoot. Some Federales discovered two or three extras toking up in a tent. If memory serves they were quickly sent packing back to the States. I can still recall the image of a Federale boot pressed against the neck of a young man on the ground apparently attempting to swallow the evidence. A delivery of a somewhat large amount of marijuana was made to the quarters (casitas on the beach actually) inhabited by the extras near Guaymas. There wasn't a whole lot for them to do once Nichol's decided to shoot the movie as a montage of surrealistic dreams and flashbacks. Consequently, a lot of young guys were wandering around the location constantly stoned.
shareI like the begining of the film. I mean, how else would you do it, really? It's not like it was an Action movie where there had to be something epic from the first frame. I thought the sound effects with the aircraft engines were a nice, subdued sort of segue into the next sequence. It can also be taken in different ways.
To show this serene beauty with the dawn against the horizon, rudely interrupted by the starting-up of those machines of War which will later wreak havoc somewhere else.
It also suggests a matter-of-fact reality for those in the USAAF; Starting the engines like when you start the car to go to work.
Or you can see it as a sort of metaphor where the starting of the engines is also the start of the story.
Some people are just too impatient.