Jim Jarmusch’s cinema is based a lot on travel and movement in general: Taxis in Night on Earth, trains in Mystery Train, genealogical quest in Broken Flowers, internal travels and wanders in Stranger Than Paradise, death journey in Deadman... The starting point of his films seems to draw irremediable migrations, or immobilization?
The opening scene of Down By Law (1986) starts with nice lateral tracking shot portraying New Orleans, and then the credits emerge , as a stop in the action and in almost the silence apart from a police alarm and a dog’s barking (obviously not a random analogy...). The chaos, with the travel and duality, is the other main theme of the scene, it’s like a big bang credits of the world creation. We can see here a kind of opposition to mainstream American cinema, starting with the rough reality, solitude and immobility. The absence of smooth and sweet movements, an amazing enigmatic song by Tom Waits, the chaotic streets and characters give the audience an expectation and feeling of sensory travel.
Dexter is an American TV series created by J. Manos based on the J. Lindsay’s novel. Dexter Morgan is a random Miami police forensics expert in blood by day and a serial killer by night. In his daily life, he is quite introverted and feels no emotion since a trauma in his childhood. His only moment of extreme pleasure is when he follows his prey and kills it.
It is then interesting to show sensory things for someone who feels nothing. And it’s exactly what the credits are about. Touching, it’s a bit like talking with your hands. It’s like penetrating the notion of intimacy in our perception of the world, with the skin as a receptor. To not be touched is the main issue for Dexter, that’s why the titles are about two main concepts: the sense of touch and ritual.
The opening credits are a succession of shots representing the beginning of the day. From Dexter's waking until he leaves his apartment, there is a series of very precisealmost mathematical gestures and movements that it evokes a ritual. Everything makes you believe that the character accomplishes those actions in the exact same order every day, he seems like an efficient machine, no hesitation, no slowdown. Every single image reminds one of a daily protocol and emphasizes the fact that Dexter’s life would be a mess without this perfect organization. It is composed by ten sequences, and almost only close-ups. Then it goes straight to the point, no seduction, and the audience understands that being around Dexter can be violent.
The visual and sound sensations, the contacts and the chain of sequences eventually provokes physical feelings on the skin, caresses, creeps and violence. The viewers can feel the grilled meat, the eggs, smell the orange, and and that’s the reason for all those close-ups, it allows us to be in contact with the reality and touch it by seeing it. The skin suggests superficiality but all that is shown in this sequence is deep; the skin is then like a porous border between intimacy and the exterior reality.
To conclude, this opening sequence is like Dexter’s character, it arouses both desire and repulsion.
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.
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...
Let’s go back to business with one of the most memorable opening credits ever:
This is a perfect example of, “if you really dislike the credits, don’t go further or you might spend a really bad time...” Actually from the first second, everything goes fast, very fast. It’s a ‘tripping’ epileptic model with scary techno music. Flashy colours, strobe lighting, titles that melt, struggles, blends; it’s a burst ‘titling’. Too much information puts your brain on stand-by. Saturated pupil, you’re like hypnotized, swallowed, digested, choked, expelled and suddenly: THE VOID
The tone is given and the director Gaspar Noé seems to know precisely what he wants: warning, this is not for epileptic people. Moreover the type is evocative of a very specific time around the mid-to-late 1990's. It’s the period of rave music as well which suggest the 1990's cultural nostalgia.
It’s the story of two young American siblings living in Tokyo. The brother is a little drug dealer and he is killed by the police. However, his spirit refuses to leave the living world and he reappears as a ghost to keep his promise and watch over his sister. His ghost wanders in the city and his visions become more and more chaotic and nightmarish. Present, past and future are mixed up in a crazy hallucinatory whirl.
The film is a “UFO”, never seen before. It’s a two and a half brilliant and demanding hours of a crazy trip, a personal interior adventure. The film is more about sensory experiences and unconsciousness tracking than pure storytelling. I don’t think I could easily recommend the film to the faint of heart though, but good or bad, the experience is always worth being lived. It won’t leave you unconcerned, you will love it or hate it...
Despite all the bad reviews about the message of the film, no one can deny the creativity of the director. And recently, Kanye West used it in his last video clip with Rihanna for the song “All of the lights”
Legal proceedings for plagiarism are ongoing and the Epilepsy Action association is trying to remove the clip from the internet as it could be dangerous for epileptic people!
From the James Bond Saga to the epileptic “Enter The void” (by Gaspard Noé), who didn’t keep, in a corner of his memory, a souvenir of particularly well-made titles? And yet this major cinematographic element is rarely studied.
Placed at the beginning or/and at the end of a movie, mixed visual fragment scattered with signs and hints, it carries concrete information (title, name of actors, technicians...).
Beyond all this, it generally creates expectations, sometimes leads to false tracks, and opens new scopes. Opening credits are like a signature, and even more in some cases, it is the “skeleton” of the film.
Every movie-goer can recall the title “The End” on the screen, the climax which marks a man or even makes him cry. This written word is one of these little moments able to stick in the memory of the audience. Nowadays, it has almost completely disappeared, except in some rare movies for nostalgia or parody. I don’t believe in the philosophical explanation which points to the idea that every art work never really ends. I think the reason is less authentic and much more about money issues. There is a growing number of series and remakes which appeal to the viewer precisely because of its no end concept that simply satisfies them. No need for the producers to write “The end” if they intend to use it again and again... What a sad mercantile and industrial technique which reveals by its silent elimination the symbolic loss of emotion and memory.
This phenomenon is even worse on TV where the credits are accelerated, smashed or deleted. The small screen crushes titles, and therefore breaches to the copyright and the respect for artists and writers.
No time for credits, just put on the commercials!
To conclude with a personal metaphor, murdering the credits is like stealing the essential resting aspect of the end of the week, but also its sharing and dreaming part...
I couldn’t resist to start this blog with one of my favourite title sequences’ intro of all time, Delicatessen. It’s a very inspiring one take with a brilliant photography which invites the audience to penetrate a playful, imaginative and morbid universe. In this film opening, the two directors chose to unveil an aesthetic, technical and thematic approach. The first shot shows an intimidating cold blood murder which is made less alarming by the eruption of a sound flash immediately replaced with a frightening creaking.
Thereby, this starting sequence seems to vacillate, as the pig, between cruelty and eccentricity, which hints towards a black comedy film.
If you have seen the film, you then know what I’m talking about... And just for the record, Jean-Pierre Jeunet did a short film couple of years before called ‘Foutaises’ where you can feel his attraction to ‘butchers’ in the intro. The music is quite different thought and therefore doesn’t imply a following post-apocalyptic surrealist film about an odd landlord who prepares occasionally nice appetizers for his cannibal tenants...
A brilliant opening credit is an authentic mise en abyme, a film within the film which illustrates the upcoming atmosphere and manages to bring the audience inside. One can tell many things after the credits and some believe that bad credits rhyme with a bad movie ... This blog intends to explore the ‘credit’ universe, with its specificities and codes. We will discover the wide variety of credits, some original, some funny, and others mythical, almost as famous as the film itself.
