Saul Bass

As I previously said, the opening credits originally only had an administrative purpose with a formal presentation of the participants. But progressively, directors began to transgress these rules in order to immerse the audience better into the film.

Saul Bass is one of the pioneers in this field, thanks to him the opening titles became a real introduction for the film, a conditioning of the viewers and not just a list of names. He was an American graphic designer and filmmaker, but he is best known for his design of animated title sequences. He first started to work with Otto Preminger on “Carmen Jones” but the success arrived with the second collaboration in 1955, with the credits of “The Man With The Golden Arm” which focuses on the communication of the film on a graphic symbol, a total rupture with the standard Hollywood methods that consisted in using visual elements from the film itself.

The impact of the visuals created by Bass (the stylized arm represents the main character's musical talent of the but also his heroin addiction) is so powerful that only the logo is present during the premiere, the title was unnecessary. A special note was delivered with the film to the movie theatres: “Open the curtain before the credits” as at that time the opening titles was so boring that theatres would unveil the screen once the titles were done. But for Preminger, the work of Saul Bass had to be seen by the viewers as the credits were fully a part of the film.

"My initial thoughts about what a title can do was to set mood and the prime underlying core of the film's story, to express the story in some metaphorical way. I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it." S.Bass

He had an amazing career until his death in 1996, known as the master of the field, his main influences are the Russian constructivism, the Bauhaus school and the modernism aesthetic. He worked with the greatest filmmakers: Alfred Hitchcock (In Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest), Stanley Kubrick (Shining, Spartacus), Otto Preminger (The man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of A Murder) or Martin Scorsese (Casino, Goodfellas).

In Vertigo (1958), the titles represent a spinning spiral symbolizing the time and the vertigo which is one of the driving forces of the film.

In Psycho (1960), streaked white vertical and horizontal lines on a black background, with the discordant, strident and very shrill music evokes prison bars.

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His influence is still powerful today, notably with the “James Bond” saga, the credits of Clokers (Spike Lee, 1995), Catch Me If You Can (Steven Spielberg, 2002), Big Fish ( Tim Burton, 2003), Thank You For Smoking (Jason Reitman, 2005) or the TV series Madmen...