The Film Before the Film: Title Sequences For the Win

It was 1955. Otto Preminger was releasing a controversial new movie--The Man With the Golden Arm--about a heroin-addicted Frank Sinatra, a virtual taboo. But that may not have been the film's only contribution to film history. There was also the movie reels that arrived at theatres across the country, with a note attached: "Projectionists- pull curtain before credits."

It had been industry practice to leave the curtains closed--these sequences had long been considered a dull litany of cast and credits that projectionists waited until they had ended to reveal the screen. But Preminger considered this title sequence to be an integral part of the film, and he thought so for one reason: Saul Bass.

He's now the go-to name to study when it comes to title sequence, which in his 40 year career he elevated to an art form. Bass' work would come to revolutionize the way audiences and movie-makers alike . But back then, he was just a poster designer.

When I sat down to start writing this post about title sequences, his work is the first and last that came to mind. Without his conceptual credits for movies like North by Northwest, Psycho or Anatomy of a Murder, we probably wouldn't have most of the titles on this list.

Bass created a new rule: that a good title sequence should not only reflect the movie that was to follow, but enhance it. He believed a good title sequence could do a lot of the film's work for it, acting like a first scene of sorts to set the mood. Bass' infamous titles for The Man With the Golden Arm was created to enhance the story, not merely preface it. He was a huge supporter of kinetic typography (a pet fascination of mine) and became known for his stark, ultra-hip imagery (it's no mistake that at least two entries on this list practically directly reference him in their conception).

Given that Saul Bass was a pioneer in title sequences (some of which are better than the movie that follows) it seems very fitting to start with his resume. So first up is the one that started it all: The Man With the Golden Arm. He chose to match the film's theme thematically, making the arm the central image of the screen.

Unfortunately, my absolute favourite Bass sequence isn't available anywhere--1962's Walk on the Wild Side, starring Laurence Harvey, Jane Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck. If you ever get a chance, tune it--then tune out, because the film that follows isn't what I'd call stellar.

So instead I chose Vertigo, one of the more brilliant sequences I think Bass created. The focus on the woman's parts, instead of her whole face, heartbreakingly reflects what's coming: a man driven by a specialized obsession to superficially re-create the woman he lost. Plus--that music!! So morbidly romantic. Bass would work with lots of directors (such as Preminger, Kubrick and Scorcese) but perhaps no alliance was as famous as his one with Alfred Hitchcock (see also: North by Northwest and Psycho). What do you learn by watching these credits? That there's some creepy-ass stuff on the horizon, and you should already feel like the voyeur Hitchcock thinks you are.

Se7en (1995)

At the other end of the title sequence spectrum, there's David Fincher's Se7en, the story of the investigation of an unusual string of murders in a dirty, decrepit city. It tells us much of what the film's main characters (Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman) will spend the plot line investigating, giving us an insight into John Doe that we didn't ask for and were too unprepared to absorb. But it puts in the film's mood and unnerves us, presenting a scene of decay, overexposure and The fact that it's perfectly set to an uncredited version of Nine Inch Nails' Closer in no way hurts its case. Many imitations would follow (see any horror film made in the 2000s) but none would come close.

Designer: Kyle Cooper.

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

Perhaps a controversial opinion, but damned if I don't think of this as one of Spielberg's most successful films. It isn't his most important, or his most personal. But it's probably his most entertaining, and a film, I can watch over and over. In Catch Me If You Can, I feel like he achieved a certain peace: he manages to marry the light incredulity of its protagonist's cons with the underbelly of a genuinely tragic portrayal of an American nuclear family in ruins, and make clear without ever being obvious what drives the film-long game of cat (Tom Hanks) and mouse (Leonardo DiCaprio). And it starts off right: these breezy, genuinely cool title sequence create their own mythology, while borrowing heavily from the Bass empire of cut-out images against starkly colored backgrounds.

Lolita (1962)

Only Kubrick, that magnificent bastard, could take something as harmless as a pedicure and make our minds go to the darkest places. But then again, he's also helped by the fact that we, as spectators, make it suggestive; I'd bet that most people who sit down to watch Lolita has a good guess of what's coming. That's probably something that Kubrick, in his infinite wisdom, banked on; as much as he seems to ignore the audience, he was always a director that was particularly attuned to the reaction his choices would evoke.

But even in this seemingly docile scene, there are strains of the themes to come: just as the camera seems to have a strange fixation on this action, you can't help but think of Humbert Humbert, the film's closest candidate for 'protagonist,' and his obsession with his Lo. It makes you uncomfortable for no justifiable reason, which is the least he could do considering how watered down the plot line that follows.

Bullitt (1968)

What does the title sequence of Bullitt promise you? That it's going to be awesome, it's going to be cool, and it's going to be Steve McQueen being awesome and cool. And that, my friends, is the very definition of all you need to know. I particularly the push-through typography, the absence of traditional studio emblems, and that hot jazz sound.

(Skip through to the :52 to avoid the poster's preamble--this was the only one I could find).

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Another huge debt to Saul Bass, though this ends up looking like a Bass title sequence that was run through a city drainpipe and stepped on by countless pedestrians. However, when I saw these credits for the first time? I actually got excited. What can I say? I lost it at the movies.*

*Not that it. Perverts.

The Fall (2008)

If you consider the rest of this entry the main course, then this is the dessert. I love everything about this 2 and a half minutes, and watch it often: it's inexplicable yet makes perfect sense; it's confusing but also reaffirming. The story this sequence tells has the air of a living Dorthea Lange photo, with the aching procession of images hauling us into that final frame, when we appear to get an answer to all this action--but do we really at all?

The arrangement of the images--cold, colorless, frenetic, without a clear time or place--with the typography--clean, stark and modern--evokes a setting that seems old-fashioned but somehow completely relevant. Does the story continue on beyond this? Well, yes, but you almost don't need it. A beautiful and worthy prelude to an unusually lovely film.

I haven't said anything of note about the film itself, but that speaks of the power of these minutes. It's its own film, one that is richly informed by seeing the feature that follows, but isn't necessary. Its layers are built from within.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I also desparately wanted to include the title sequence for The Royal Tenenbaums, given that the first three seconds immediately takes me back to my girlhood, when I first learned that admitting you're strange is a time-saver. So I found it, and now I'm outsourcing you.

For further reading:

The Art of the Title Sequence

Forget the Film; Watch the Titles

This Day in History: Charlie Chaplin is born.

This Day in History

April 16th, 1889: Charlie Chaplin is Born.

Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. was born on this day in 1889 in East Street, London, to an alcoholic father and unstable mother. Both parents worked as entertainers in the musical hall tradition, his father being a singer and his mother working as an actress. But the only enduring parent in his life would be his mother, as his parents separated when little Charlie was three.

Chaplin's mother, Lilly, had always been unstable, but saw a rapid series of downturns in her life that cracked her already fragile mental landscape. Her voice gave out around 1894, and, facing a crowd of violent booing crowds, a panicked Lilly fled the stage, leaving five year old Charlie to soothe the crowd with popular songs.

In and out of asylums, mother Lilly was finally admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum, leaving her two boys (Charles had a half-brother, Sydney) to the workhouses of South London. The Chaplin boys, staying together so they wouldn't fall apart, found themselves drawn to the music halls at a young age. Chaplin eventually emigrated to America, first travelling with Fred Karno's slapstick troupe and then falling into the burgeoning film industry in still-untamed badlands of California.

The debut of Charlie Chaplin as modern audiences know him was in 1914, in Chaplin's second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice. This was the debut of his Little Tramp costume, but this signature look seems like more of a divine accident than any great artistic statement. At least at first: the costume was pieced together in the initial days of shooting from the leftovers in wardrobe. But Chaplin definitely emerged with the Tramp intact as a character; he said of the outfit he "wanted everything to be a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large."

From the word go, you can see the influence of Chaplin's youthful poverty in his films in the walking contradiction of the Tramp persona: a vagrant with dignity, a street urchin with a keener sense of refinement than the rich men who laughed at him. It was a sly dig then, but today we can see the Tramp as a clear neon sign: Chaplin was suggesting the richest members of our society weren't necessarily always the ones who pockets were stuffed.

Many Chaplin biographies delve into the rich tangle of Charlie Chaplin better than I could in this limited space (among them adorably designed Chaplin: The Tramp's Odyssey, by Simon Louvish and AJ Marriot's Chaplin Stage By Stage). But I will say this. To watch Chaplin is to observe a living social equation in his prime. He brought depth and pathos to slapstick comedy. 

This IS Charlie Chaplin: 

Robert Flaherty used to tell the story of one of these times: 'It was a
rainy winter night. Charlie, who was about eleven, had no place to sleep and was
sheltering under an overhanging roof. A solid-looking man came by, took a look
at the boy, and asked him what he was doing there.

Charlie told his story.

The man stroked his chin for a moment and said, "Well, I've a bit to eat at
my place. I've only one room, but you're welcome to stay the night if you don't
mind sleeping on the floor." They went to the man's furnished room, where
Charlie slept on a pallet at the foot of his host's bed.

Next morning when he woke, the man had gone, but Charlie found a note
saying, "If you've no place to sleep tonight, come here." Charlie had to avail
himself of his friend's help for many nights, but always in the morning the man
had gone to his work.

Charlie became curious about what that work might be. One morning he
managed to wake early. The man was taking out of the closet and measuring in his
hands a long, strong rope with a noose at the end of it.

He was the common hangman.'

Out of such experiences came the greatest comedian in the world.

-From Griffith and Mayers' The Movies. Reprinted from Self-Styled Siren.  

But in the interest of full disclosure: I've always preferred Buster Keaton.

This is right for so many reasons.

I've been reading Brando biographies again, which is nothing sort of usual around these parts. This week it's Patricia Bosworth's Marlon Brando.  I've found a lot of speculation on screen legends in general (and Brando in particular) gets caught up in wading through the pile-up of hard-to-verify anecdotes that gather up over the crawling decades, trying to separate man/woman from myth. 

I don't think that should ever be a factor with Brando. If anything, my excessive reading on this hot mess dandy has taught me that I don't really believe there IS a separation to be found. Yes, I'm pretty sure Brando actually was that unbelievable. 

Any Brando biography worth its salt will deliver on this front, serving up an outstanding anecdote or two which all defy explanation, rationalization, and beg to be proven wrong. But you can't. Brando was a Bad News Bear of the first degree.

I like this one: violence, bitchiness and the triumph of Brando (despite himself). Brando had been cast as Stanley for Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway. The role was originally written for a much older man, but Tennessee fell head first for Brando's vicious portrayal and practically gift-wrapped the role for him (he was known to admonish director Elia Kazan to just "Let Marlon be."). Rehearsals began in the New Amsterdam Roof Theater and newcomer Brando was a bit of a loose cannon.... 

…Brando’s instincts took him all sorts of places in rehearsals, as in the famous birthday party scene in which he stormed from the table, then slammed his hand down on the plate, smashing it to smithereens. As he delivered his line, My place is cleared, you want me to clear your places?” he swept the rest of the plates from the table with a great crash. The first time he played the scene full out, he had to keep picking shards of china from his bloodied fingers, but he spoke his lines anyway. He was totally into his character.

On opening night in New Haven the show was a technical shambles. The complex lighting didn't work. Music cues were off. But when Brando entered as Blanche DuBois' brutal executioner, in his jeans and t-shirt clutching his bloody package of meat, the audience gasped.

[…]

 [After the show] playwright Thornton Wilder, author of The Skin of Our Teeth…primly gave his critique of Streetcar: it was negative. He maintained that the play was based on a totally false premise. No southern belle as genteel as Stella would marry a brute like Stanley, let alone succumb to his sexual violence.

Tennessee Williams listened politely for as long as he could, but when Wilder was out of earshot, he murmured, "That man has never had a good lay!"

Ha.  Outstanding.