Saul Bass’ title sequences

“For the average audience, the credits tell them there’s only three minutes left to eat popcorn. I take this ‘dead’ period and try to do more than simply get rid of names that filmgoers aren’t interested in.
I aim to set up the audience for what’s coming;
make them expectant.”

— SAUL BASS

“I began as a graphic designer and as part of my work I created many film symbols for ad campaigns. During that period I happened to be working on the symbols for ‘Carmen Jones’ and ‘The man with the golden arm’ for Otto Preminger. At one point in our work Otto and I just looked at each other and said: “why not make it move?” It was really as simple as that.”

— SAUL BASS – “Bass on titles,” 1977

“‘The man with the golden arm’ woke everybody up and said: “This is what the potential is for main titles. You thought this was just a throw-away kind of thing where we just put the type up and noone really designs it.” And Saul Bass said: “Hey, wait a minute designers, directors, here’s an opportunity for us, to take advantage of this real estate at the beginning of a movie and use it to help tell the story or just use it to make something real interesting or beautiful,” and everybody woke up.”

— KYLE COOPER, designer of the Se7en title sequence,
in the documentary “Saul Bass, title champ,” 2008

“Bass fashioned title sequences into an art, creating in some cases, like Vertigo, a mini-film within a film. His graphic compositions in movement function as a prologue to the movie – setting the tone, providing the mood and foreshadowing the action.”

— MARTIN SCORSESE

“There’s a story about someone seeing the titles for Wyler’s ‘The Big Country’ (1958) and remarking to Saul that it “didn’t look like a Saul Bass title sequence.” He was taken aback, because for him, there was no such thing as “a Saul Bass title sequence.”

— MARTIN SCORSESE – “Saul Bass’ cinematic art”
February 2010 issue of Architectural Digest

“So important have the titles become that they can be a menace to the movie itself. The titles for the 1962 production of ‘Walk on the wild side,’ for example, were so arresting and so widely acclaimed that the film is remembered for little else.”

— DAVID ZEITLIN
LIFE magazine, 7 february 1964

“I want everything we do – that I do personally, that our office does – to be beautiful. I don’t give a damn whether a client understands that that’s worth anything, or that a 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.”

— SAUL BASS, Bass on Titles, 1977

“Saul Bass wasn’t just an artist who contributed to the first several minutes of some of the greatest movies in history; in my opinion his body of work qualifies him as one of the best film makers of this, or any other time.”

— STEVEN SPIELBERG
“Saul Bass 1920–1996: A celebration of an extraordinary life,” 1996

“There was only one Saul Bass. He was a gentleman, a brilliant raconteur, a marvelous collaborator and, as I’ve said before, a truly great artist. And – let’s be honest – a giant.”

— MARTIN SCORSESE – “Saul Bass’ cinematic art”
February 2010 issue of Architectural Digest