In the film version Julie Christie is luminous in her first scene: the only woman with liberated hair on the streets.
As mismatched policewomen looking to bring down a Boston drug kingpin, the stars spark off each other from their first scene and only get more delightfully manic from there.
(In the third movie, "Die Hard: With a Vengeance," McClane shows up in his first scene wearing only his trademark undershirt and no explanations are offered or needed, any more than anyone at this point asks Superman to explain his cape).
However, unlike any Law and Order episode, the first scene opens only after the case has been tried and submitted to the jury for deliberations.
The first scene is the only time the audience sees Mary sober, and I try to give her liveliness, a sense of humor, a loving and physical relationship with her husband and a maternal warmth toward her sons.
(If you are exceptionally unlucky, and look the part, you may be cast as Raskolnikov himself -- a creepy thought.) In the first "scene," which is only minimally differentiated in content and tone from the second, Ms. Mysina pops in and out of a small room in which the audience sits clustered around a central playing space.
Joshua Logan, in his memoirs, stated that after months of effort in the first half of 1948, Hammerstein had written only the first scene, an outline, and some lyrics.
No one strikes a falsely sentimental note, and Mr. Caras, seen only in the first scene and in another depicting one of Larry's anguished dreams, is equally fine.
Jack is a good Catholic boy, indeed such a good Catholic boy that in the play's first scene he is returning to confession only eight hours after performing his last Hail Marys.
In "Rheingold," Fricka cries to her husband, "What is still sacred and good to your hearts when you men lust for power?" In "Walküre," where she appears only in the first scene of Act II, she intensifies the attack, portraying Wotan's waywardness not simply as a personal betrayal but also as a dereliction of godly values.
