We open on a track of ominous music swelling as the studio logos and title card appear on screen. It becomes louder and louder, until finally the dark screen fades into a panoramic shot of three barren hills and the music reaches a loud crescendo. We cut to a man in a small mine, hacking at a rock wall with a pickaxe. This man, we will later learn, is Daniel Plainview, a mineral prospector and the film’s protagonist. After working for a while and finding nothing, he climbs up a ladder out of the mine. We then see him sitting alone by a campfire in the evening, huddled under a blanket to shield himself from the wind. A title card informs us that the year is 1898. We cut to Daniel once again working in the mine. This time he finds a rock which, after he spit shines it a bit, appears to indicate the presence of precious ore. He sets a stick of dynamite in the wall and lights the fuse. He climbs out of the mine and attempts to pull his pack of tools out by rope. However, it proves too heavy and he is unable to pull them all the way out before the explosion. Unfazed, Daniel climbs back into the mine, but on the way down a step on the ladder breaks off and he falls to the bottom, breaking his leg.
Daniel comes to, groaning. He grabs a rock as proof of the ore and uses the rope and ladder to haul himself slowly out of the mine. Outside, we see him pushing his body across the ground with one leg. The camera pans up and away from him to reveal the same shot of the three hills from the film’s opening, while the same music crescendos as before. We cut to a room where men are breaking apart rocks from the pit and examining their contents. Daniel lies on the floor with a makeshift splint around his leg. He signs a claim form for the ore he found, the paper revealing for the first time his name and that the events are taking place in New Mexico.
We fade to another rural location where Daniel is overseeing a rig on top of a mining shaft. Via title card we learn that it is now 1902. The camera descends into the shaft and we see Daniel and another man digging out mud from the shaft. Back outside, the man cradles his infant son while Daniel draws a design for an oil derrick. We cut to some time later, after the derrick has been built. The men operate it by dropping a large metal rod into the shaft to pierce the earth and allow the oil to leak up to the surface. A man goes down to extricate the rod and confirm the oil’s presence. The rod is hauled back up and Daniel wipes his hand on the oil and holds it up in celebration. The baby starts to cry as his father leaves to assist with the oil extraction. Later, we see the men have set up a shallow pit to store the extracted oil. The father rubs a bit of it on the baby’s forehead.
Still later, Daniel and the father are back in the shaft shoveling more oil into buckets. However, as men are hauling the buckets back up, part of the derrick breaks and a wooden beam falls into the shaft, killing the father. Outside, still covered in oil, Daniel sits with the baby. He feeds it some milk mixed with alcohol and rocks the baby as it cries. We cut to Daniel riding with the baby on a train, hearing voiceover of Daniel speaking in another scene we are about to cut to.
Analysis
The opening sequence is entirely free of dialogue, save for a few lines of voice-over at the end which lead us into the next segment. This is notable given just how much dialogue the main characters, especially Daniel, will utter over the course of the remainder of the film. Though there are other extended moments of silence, the film is full of speeches, diatribes, and characters screaming back and forth at one another. This sequence is mostly comprised of people working, silently and diligently.
Daniel states later in the film that he holds a deep resentment towards most other members of the human race, and that he would prefer to avoid them. As such, most of what he says to other people is either deceitful or openly hostile. In contrast, the opening sequence shows Daniel in his natural element: work. He relishes the process of mining, whether oil or ore. He is focused and intent when drawing the design for the oil derrick. He is euphoric as he hauls up the evidence of oil from the shaft. Even as he fruitlessly strikes stone with a pickaxe he seems grimly determined. When he sits at his camp after a long day of mining with nothing to show for it, the bad weather beating down on him, he looks relaxed and content. Daniel is a man who genuinely enjoys the process of work and is satisfied with only himself for company. In a sense, this wordless sequence is the closest we will come to an intimate understanding of Daniel in the entire film.
Daniel’s injury and return to civilization also illustrate his character through omission. The shot of the barren hills and vast empty land at the film’s opening and again after Daniel’s injury (along with the sinister and screeching music) imply a long and arduous journey through a cruel and uncaring wilderness. Yet we never see this journey. We can only assume he dragged himself for miles back to town or else limped back on a makeshift splint. It is arguably the defining moment in Daniel’s life and his arc as a character, yet we cannot see it. This creates a distance between us and Daniel, and confers on him an unknowability that we will never truly pierce.
This sequence also introduces the origin of H.W., Daniel’s adopted son. We see him crying just as the first oil is being extracted, perhaps being disturbed by the metaphysical greed on display, perhaps foreshadowing the impending death of his father by the machine doing the extracting. Either way, he is soon tamed by the oil. The marking of his forehead by oil is a baptism of sorts, indoctrinating him into the religion of oil and capitalism, a path he will never fully escape even when he separates from his adoptive father at the end of the film. Even in the act of feeding him milk, Daniel telegraphs the way he will treat H.W. throughout the film. By mixing the milk with alcohol, he shows that he is more concerned with placating and sedating H.W. than genuinely caring for his well being.
