Saul Bass

Editor's Notes

1. Saul Bass,(1920-1996) American motion-picture designer-director, especially noted for imaginative, animated titles, prologues, and epilogues. Bass studied at the Arts Students League in New York City, attended Brooklyn College, and worked as a freelance designer before moving to Los Angeles in 1946.
2. Bass successfully directed and produced short animated films, television openings and commercials, live documentaries, and features. It was, however, his creative art direction of such motion pictures as Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), Spartacus (1960) etc.
3. Bass’ titles for the film feature spiny, cut-out projectiles, vaguely redolent of veins and syringes, that manages to be disconcerting despite the accompaniment of Elmer Bernstein’s rather brassy jazz score. The lines proliferate and jab at awkward, unsettling angles with respect to the titles. And the title of the film is seemingly penned in by four of these lines, suggesting the many forces hemming in Sinatra’s Frankie from all sides. Finally, privileging Preminger’s credit, the titular “golden arm” (which actually refers to Frankie’s prowess as a card dealer and not the location of his track-marks) appears as a bent and tortured appendage, reaching out for either redemption or a fix.
4. Vibrant orange fills the entire screen. Specifically placed vertical bars strew the composition—an abstract form, yet strangely representative. The static image is in service to a ripely varied overture; as the “mood” of the score changes the colour follows suit. The kaleidoscope culminates in a blue frame, and pulls backward to reveal the film title below. The image segues to an aerial shot of Manhattan, and the source of the vertical pattern is confirmed. This simplistic sequence is an exemplary use of colour, and is complementary to the accompanying overture. Perhaps more so than any other example in Bass’ catalogue, this is a wholly dependent exercise. Likewise, Leonard Bernstein’s score is complimented invaluably by the visual treatment. In unison, the visual and aural elements import the title of the film with resounding significance—the abstract bars, even, resemble a perforated music roll.
5. The opening Paramount logo is in black and white while the rest of the film, including the closing Paramount logo, is in Technicolor. There is no end title on this film.
6. Psycho was the third and final collaboration between Saul Bass and Alfred Hitchcock. As the music swells, the horizontal and vertical lines that appear are driven across the screen in a stabbing motion, foreshadowing the action to come. Occasionally, a name that appears on screen (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock) becomes scrambled, perhaps suggesting that various identities will become jumbled throughout the film.
7. “I want everything we do to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether the client understands that that’s worth anything, or that the client thinks it’s worth anything, or whether it is worth anything. It’s worth it to me. It’s the way I want to live my life. I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares. “
8. Saul Bass’ work influenced generations of graphic designers to follow and transform the ordinary movie title sequence into an art form in itself. Such as...Steven Spielberg’s 2002 Catch Me If You Can, created by Florence Deygas & Olivier Kuntzel.
9. In 1958, Saul Bass worked once more with Otto Preminger for Anatomy of a Murder. I think his deconstructive technique works especially well the dead body, and is a clever play of the “anatomy” part of the film’s title. The design influence for the Anatomy of a Murder poster is evident in the poster for Clockers (Spike Lee, 1995). This was not put together by Bass. Most recently, a homage to Saul Bass in this poster for Precious (Lee Daniels, 2009).