"As a lawyer, I've had to learn that people aren't just good or just bad. People are many things."
—Paul Biegler

The opening title sequence of this 1959 crime drama is a classic piece of graphic design – giving the movie a strong, timeless indentity that still inspires filmmakers to this day, says Julien Vallée.

Back at the beginning of silent film, movie titles were only of interest to producers because of the legal and copyright information they contained about the film being shown. They eventually came to be used to present cast and crew member information as well. And it was the role of a lettering artist to design these slates.

Thanks to pioneers like Pablo Ferro, Maurice Binder or Saul Bass, these static informative slates were eventually transformed, giving birth to the discipline of film title sequence in the early 50s. The marriage of graphic design and moving images created this new way of introducing movies, which not only informed the audience of its crew, but also played a primordial role in giving each movie its own unique identity.

In the 1959 movie Anatomy of a Murder, Saul Bass literalised the film title by presenting each member of the crew next to disassembled body parts. He first starts by showing the entire body presenting the director Otto Preminger. Then each piece of the body is disassembled and presented like it is part of a puzzle. Using simple elements like cutouts of paper on a uniform grey background, this intro sequence has traversed decades by keeping its cutting-edge quality. No high technology was needed – only a playground in which a graphic designer could think of a simple idea to introduce the film.

Today, the Anatomy of a Murder sequence still inspires as one of the greatest opening titles of our time, its influence evident in movies like Catch Me If You Can, Monsters, Inc. and even Thank You For Smoking, which introduces you to the subject of the movie right before it starts. These title sequences all have one of the key qualities Bass introduced in his Anatomy of a Murder sequence: they give a strong, distinct identity to the movie.

WRITER: Julien Vallée
This article originally appeared in Computer Arts, April 2012
©2012 Future Publishing Limited. Used with permission.
http://www.computerarts.co.uk

"This doll had almost been loved to death. You know, love inflicts the most terrible injuries on my small patients." —the Doll Maker

Saul Bass's work always looks effortless and timeless. That's what makes his work so appealing – it can be enjoyed on a basic level. Like a child seeing simple shapes and colors for the first time – a white line on black paper. Maybe there's something soothing about that simplicity next to the visual chaos of the world.

One of the best examples of a simple yet smart Saul Bass idea is the main title sequence for Bunny Lake is Missing. The film is about an emotionally disturbed person involved in the disappearance of a child. To hint at the character's state of mind, a hand tears shapes out of a black screen, each hole revealing another credit. The torn edges are jagged and help to set the mood of the film. It ends with the shape of a girl being torn out of the paper, as if she's missing from the sheet of paper (which is then used again in the poster). It seems like such a simple idea but getting there is difficult. It takes years of experience to have the ability to boil ideas down to this kind of purity and Bass didn't muck it up with anything he didn't need: no color, no jumpy edits, no tricks. Just the raw, naked concept standing on its own. You can see this same approach time and time again in his work: great ideas condensed down to their purest form, then simply executed.

It proves that basic shapes, colors, and compositions in the hands of an experienced artist can become something magical. You could compare him to Matisse, who spent his entire career as an artist refining his style over 50 working years and ended up cutting simple shapes out of painted paper in his later years. He made some of his best work at the very end of his life. But all those years of experience were necessary for him to cut those shapes just right. Saul Bass was at that same level in the design world. Look at the title sequence to Psycho. Matisse would have loved it – Bass did it all with just rectangles.

GUEST WRITER: Steve Fuller (www.stevefuller.tv)
© Art of the Title, 2012

"There's only one thing you love, Danny: that's danger. Cliffhanging. You could never love a woman like you love danger." —Beatrice Ocean

Let us not forget that Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven is a remake of Lewis Milestone's 1960 original, and let us also not forget that the original had a very different tone. While they do share similar story arcs, the original was a much less serious affair – essentially, it followed the Rat Pack doing their thing in Vegas, with a little plot thrown in for extra credit. As such, Saul Bass' sequence – while seemingly over-playful when dismembered from the film, and more so against Nelson Riddle's goofy big-band score – is an appropriate introduction to this Rat Pack caper: loud, jaunty, and, of course, classic Vegas. Bass was inspired by the electricity of Sin City itself, employing a simple dot motif for the type and border elements, evoking the colorful chasing-lights and other signage found on the Strip.

The title sequence is split into two distinct sections, with the first showcasing the names of the eleven key players, set against scoreboard-style numerals blended into one another through accumulative animation. The second half is more freestyle, with animated dots forming graphics and the remaining credits.

As a film, Ocean's Eleven was a modest blockbuster, fetching $5.5 million at the box office, inching it into 1960’s top studio releases. And while Bass' titles weren't his most memorable in the public eye (and no doubt overshadowed by his work on Psycho, which was released that same year), they do remain a favorite amongst designers and motion graphic artists for their modernist sensibilities, attention to typography, and technical execution.

(Keep an eye out for the slot machine graphic that looks suspiciously like Bass' iconic Bell logo, which he designed for AT&T almost a decade later)

WRITER: Ben Radatz
© Art of the Title, 2011

"You know, Abe Lincoln, when asked how long a man’s leg should be, said: 'Long enough to reach the ground.' Well, these titles needed longer legs than most." —Saul Bass on It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World from Bass on Titles.

Bass' titles for It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World come in at just over four minutes – his longest sequence, second only to West Side Story in 1961. He directed it in 1963, the same year that he designed the iconic poster for Hitchcock's The Birds.

Mad World is a frenetic, exhausting film, and Bass reflects this in his sequence, featuring a crudely-drawn globe subjected to an endless barrage of visual puns and sight gags, courtesy of its inhabitants. Propelled by Ernest Gold's carnival-themed score and boiled down to a thick palette of black, white, and saturated hues, Bass employs a simplistic, childlike illustration style, contrasted sharply by the heavy lines and formal typesetting of the title cards themselves.

Unlike many of Bass' previous sequences, Mad World does not have an allegorical link to the film itself. Instead, it sets the tone of the film through color, tone, and character – essentially, it's a primer for director Stanley Kramer's lighthearted tryst through the universal language of greed and deception. Bass' oversimplified sight gags downplay the film's dramatic overtones, mirroring Kramer's treatment of the film itself.

The animation techniques used by Bass in Mad World were heavily influenced by a new movement in the cartoon industry that favored a modern, stylized aesthetic over the then-dominant school of Disney hyper-realism. He also took advantage of a new animation technique called 'holding,' which involved splitting characters and environments up into several layers and selectively recycling them during photography. Originally used as a money and time saver at big commercial studios, it was exploited by the new school for its inherent quirkiness, with the fast turnaround as an added bonus. Bass took this one step further, playing his visual 'holds' off Gold's soundtrack, creating a tango between the audio and the visuals that gives the sequence its own distinct pulse.

Among the several talented animators who contributed to the sequence was Bill Melendez, an established Disney & Warner Bros. animator who was also Charles Schultz's exclusive go-to on the Peanuts franchise until his passing in 2008.

The Mad World titles saw Bass return to his earlier ventures into comedy (The Seven Year Itch, Around the World in Eighty Days) – a genre he enjoyed but had become disassociated with after his name became synonymous with Hitchcock thrillers. It is also his first collaborative project, as his design framework mainly showcased the talents of other established animation artists of the day. But it was ultimately his use of their techniques within his design framework that gave Mad World a credible tongue-in-cheek sophistication that may have otherwise been lost in the whirlwind of the film itself.

WRITER: Ben Radatz
© Art of the Title, 2012

"There is no winning! Only degrees of losing!" —Gavin D'Amato

The War of the Roses is Danny Devito's second excursion into feature film direction, having received accolades for his slapstick comedy Throw Momma from the Train two years earlier. It concerns the courtship, marriage, and, mostly, the comedically bitter divorce of Oliver and Barbara Rose, played by Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, as recounted by their chain-smoking attorney Gavin D'Amato, played by DeVito himself.

The ingredients in the Roses opening title sequence are basic: a static, nouveau sans-serif typeface is superimposed over a neutral gray background, soon revealed to be a swath of white fabric – presumably a bedsheet or a wedding gown detail, given the film's premise. Over the course of the sequence, the fabric gains depth and relief, presented at first by subtle gradients and delicate shafts of light, then becoming a contoured landscape of rolling hills. The folds become more pronounced and dramatic over time and by the end, we find ourselves face-down in a crumpled mess of fabric.

The sequence is capped by D'Amato removing the fabric from his coat pocket and blowing his nose into it.

As with many of Bass' previous title entries (Saul crafted this sequence with his wife Elaine), the opening titles to Roses can be read as a microcosm of the film itself, albeit entirely allegorical. Oliver Rose's dull existence is given new meaning and definition when he meets Barbara, but their honeymoon is short-lived, and soon the pretense of marriage becomes a catalyst for destruction instead of salvation. This narrative is played out in its entirety during the opening sequence, right under the noses of an unsuspecting audience.

The titles to The War of the Roses are not the most memorable in the Bass portfolio. Their signature op-art approach in the ’50s and ’60s had fallen out of vogue, and they had long since migrated over to commercial design. Along with Penny Marshall's film Big in 1988, Roses represented a return to titling for the Basses, having won the favor of a new generation of directors who had grown up on their work. And with that revival came a paradigm shift in their approach to the craft: sharp lines gave way to smooth surfaces and graphic representation was replaced by photographic imagery. And while it would take some time for the Basses to regain their footing with this new vernacular, their trademark less-is-more, concept-over-content approach to title design remained intact.

WRITER: Ben Radatz

“One final thing I have to do… and then I’ll be free of the past. “ —John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson

There is a threshold in art and design where a work can become so iconic as to transcend its own scope and become a symbol for its medium. Consider Warhol’s soup cans or Mondrian’s color fields, or – to bring it closer to home – Saul Bass’ iconic AT&T or United Airlines logos. And just as it would be difficult to find an American unfamiliar with these works, so too would it be difficult to find a moviegoer unfamiliar with the title sequence to Vertigo. Credit Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score or Bass’ odd synthesis of sensual Kim Novak closeups and spirographic imagery, but it’s likely an alchemy of the three that makes the Vertigo titles an enduring classic.

The spirographic images (called Lissajous waves, technically) were contributed by artist John Whitney, a pioneer of computer arts and a long-time animator at UPA, a commercial animation studio well-known for their modern aesthetic and experimental techniques. (In fact, Bass would again use a UPA alum, Bill Melendez – best known as the Peanuts sole animator – three years later in his sequence for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.)

While seemingly unrelated to the story and perhaps even too modern for their own good, Whitney’s contributions to Vertigo were validated by Bass’ graphic direction and Hermann’s score, folding his designs into their tried-and-true audio-visual template. The resulting sequence is a landmark work both for Bass and the title industry, framing the film’s premise through evocative-yet-unlikely imagery and Hitchcock’s unique branding eye.

WRITER: Ben Radatz

"I think I must have one of those faces you can't help believing." —Norman Bates

It's safe to say that after half a century of critical writing about Psycho, there are few stones left unturned. The same can also be said of Bass' now infamous opening title sequence. Designed on a $21k budget, it is likely his most significant and familiar accomplishment in the eyes of cinephiles and laymen alike.

Admittedly, Bass does not give his audience much to work with. Like the minimalists who came before him and his modernist contemporaries, Bass' favorite route from idea to execution was usually the shortest — and there are few routes shorter than the one taken in Psycho. He uses a series of simple white bars to usher in the sans-serif titles and escort them back out again. Although these lines come from different areas of the screen, they never once break formation or intersect. Likewise, the animation of these lines and the type itself are just as reserved — every object has a path from which it does not deviate. On, off, left, right, up, down, black, white — those are Bass's self-imposed restrictions on Psycho, and he employs them with dramatic effect.

There are two major currents running through Psycho: contrast and tension. Antagonist Norman Bates' dual personality provides the contrast, and the caper (or the Macguffin, as Hitchcock would have called it) brings the tension. In many ways, the film succeeds because it doesn't stray far from these core elements. There is very little comedic relief, for example. Romance and interpersonal relationships are little more than props. As far as plot husbandry goes, Psycho is about as streamlined and fuel-efficient as they come.

Therein also lies the brilliance of Bass' title sequence. In the space of a few short minutes, with his minimal toolkit and Bernard Herrmann's jagged score, Bass creates a parallel visual tension to the film that tells the audience everything they need to know about the plot, without saying much of anything at all. He artfully sets the tone by asking the viewer to read between the lines -- quite literally -- but he also asks that we read into them.

I can think of no better way to enter a Hitchcock film.

WRITER: Ben Radatz