Porto: Extending the Film into the Credits

Porto, a tender and melancholic recollection of lost love, slowly moves to black after its 1h15 runtime. But wait, as the credits start to roll we are graced with more images—reminiscent shots of the city of Porto, shot on small format film for that extra cut of nostalgia and lust towards the image. These begin to act as the perfect fade out, continuing the feeling that surrounds the city in the film—which, for the characters, will forever be linked to their short but intense affair never to be relived. However, again, the images surprise us—the characters appear in the city, wandering, almost as if these were cuts that didn’t make it into the film.

This got me thinking, where do these images actually lie in relation the film and the story which preceded them? Are they 1) an extension of the story/diegesis, continuing the characters’ struggle to forget, 2) ‘mood shots’ which continue the emotion of the film but are separate from the diegesis, or 3) simply outtakes which didn’t make it into the final cut, but were too good to leave behind. I don’t particularly have any answers here, as I am swaying between all three of them, but instead we could consider the purpose of these images existing.

The post-credit sequence has been popularised by Marvel, and the like, in recent years (except the 1-2 hour post credit sequences of classic Hollywood), but this serves a different and quite defined purpose. They come in two key forms but both serve as a ‘tease’ or promise for a sequel; firstly the non-diegetic tease as seen in Deadpool which occurs somewhat outside of the filmic space, and secondly the diegetic tease in, for example, Black Panther. But our post credit sequence in Porto isn’t anything near these, it isn’t promising for a sequel or any future project. Instead it, in many ways, acts as an emotional fade-out—revisiting the key emotion from the film and making us recall the film, the city and the relationship but from the character’s perspective. However this is complicated when the characters appear in the shots as their elder selves (which also appear in the film proper). This shifts the feeling of nostalgia outside of the diegesis, we are no longer remembering the city and relationship in the nostalgia the characters hold, but instead we are creating a new nostalgia between audience and film—remembering seeing images like these in a full-screen format mere moments ago. I think it is exactly this shift which reminds us of outtakes, we are gaining access to footage which we didn’t see during the actual film—footage which would otherwise never see the light of day.

The real complication, then, may be one of contradiction. Credits are inherently extra-diegetic (not part of the film world), they are text on a screen revealing the artifice and creation behind the film. But these images are inherently diegetic, as they are of the world, feeling and containing the characters of the film preceding the credits. Thus we are placing a diegetic world and a non-diegetic one in contact, and this inevitably creates friction between the two—and as credits/text on a screen is only extremely rarely made diegetic (therefore nearly immovable) the images shift towards the extra-diegetic to accommodate for the inherent contradiction occurring on the screen.

Maybe I have reached some sort of conclusion by writing this article and thinking it through. But if my above conclusion stands true then what is the relationship between a film image and the subtitles that sit below it, does this similarly shift the images towards the extra-diegetic end of the spectrum? What do you think, I’m not quite sure how to answer this one…

*I do have to say, however, this sequence really grated with me for another reason. As the images were elegant, dream-like, and often quite complicated to decipher it took my entire attention for the duration of the credits—completely negating the reason the credits are there in the first place, to provide a time to pay respects to the people who put their blood, sweat and tears into creating the work I just beheld.

Porto (2016)

3/3/1

7/13

~Leo