The main function of film titles is to display the movie's title and to credit the director, producer, various actors and other artists and technicians that have worked on a film. But more importantly the titles must prepare the viewer for the viewing of the film. The history of film titles goes back as far as vaudeville theaters, where main titles were originally produced by the magic-lantern or the first projector, which was invented in the 1650s, probably by a prominent Dutch scientist, Christiaan Huygens. By the end of the nineteenth century, magic-lanterns were quite prevalent public entertainment. The lantern projected hand-colored slides on a full-sized screen. Joseph Boggs Beale (1841-1926), was America's first great lantern artist, who as a young man in the 1850's attended several "Christmas" magic-lantern shows in Philadelphia church halls. Later on, he created a vast repertoire of 250 illustrated stories, songs, history lessons, and rituals as part of his publisher's effort to make great literature available on screen to the public at large. The slides, which were often animated had a narrative that were unusually written on cards that were predecessors to today's film titles.
With the advent of "nickelodeon" theaters around 1905 which were showing thrillers like "The Great Train Robbery," the magic-lantern quickly disappeared and the age of silent movies began. The earliest titles, for silent films, were presented on title cards. These were cards with printed material on them that were photographed and incorporated into the film. Words and lettering played an enormous role in films of the silent era. Film titles made their appearance in the earliest silent films, along with letter cards (or inter-titles), which provided context. In addition to hiring lettering artists, the prominent film studios began to employ typesetters in the production of title cards. These cards were the responsibility of the lettering artist, who collaborated with the scriptwriter and director to create narrative continuity so that audiences could follow what they were seeing. J. Stuart Blackton who directed �Humorous Phases of Funny Faces� (1906) created one of the first animated opening title.
Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, Lotte Reiniger, 1926
In 1926, Lotte Reiniger created Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed --The Adventures of Prince Achmed, an animated German feature film, with Art-deco style of typography that tried to imitate Arabic scripts. This was the earliest animated opening title.
Titles for D. W. Griffith film, Intolerance, 1916
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror; Directed by F.W. Murnau , German 1922
Der blaue Engel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, 1930
The role of graphic design in the earlier movies, until 1960s, was restricted to lettering artists' composition of a typeface and some minimum decorative patterns. At times, some title designers were daring with the design of their typeface, such as Albin Grau's titles for the classic German movie Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie des Grauens, in 1922, which was quite innovative and modern with respect to its handwritten art-nouveau typeface. The font was created by German typesetter Heinz Hoffman in 1904. There have also been from time to time some strokes of genius in creation of titles. For example, the stunning composition of typeface in the title for Der blaue Engel, directed by Josef von Sternberg, in 1930; was such an instance. However, such innovations were few and far between.
Alfred Hitchcock, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
Perhaps it was in 1927 that modern graphic design appeared for the first time in the titles of a movie. The Lodger, : A Story of the London Fog was the third film of Hitchcock -- but was his first to be seen by the public due to studio politics. C. M. Woolf, the chief of Gainsborough studio, was not impressed with the Hitchcock work, and found the movie too arty! As a result, Ivor Montagu, a Cambridge educated film editor, was commissioned by the producer Michael Balcon to correct film's short comings. Montagu reduced the intertitles from 400 to 80, and had Hitchcock reshoot segments of the climactic chase scene. But, more importantly, from a graphic design perspective, he contracted E. McKnight Kauffer, an American graphic designer living in London, to create the new title art, with text in Newland typeface, which was inspired by the German Expressionism.
Nevertheless, the graphic designs of the 1930-50 period were very conservative and unimaginative. Perhaps the studio bosses, in their attempt to appease the lowest common denominator of the movie going public taste, were fearful of introducing any bold designs. Such a banal tendency was prevailed still during the invention of Technicolor, and even directors such as the Hungarian-American Michael Curtiz, who apparently was interested in illustrated titles for most of his films, did not strayed far from it. The most bold and innovative of graphic designs of this era were the After the Thin Man of 1936 in the black and white; and Fantasia of 1940, and Duel in the Sun of 1945 in color.
Jimmy the Gent, Michael Curtiz, 1934
" After the thin man", Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, 1936
Duel in the Sun, King Vidor, 1945
Drums Along the Mohawk, John Ford, 1939
Pinocchio, Ben Sharpsteen, 1940
Fantasia, James Algar, 1940
During the 1960s, a preference emerged among the avant garde filmmakers, such as Godard, Fellini, Antonioni, and others to emulate von Sternberg's white-on-black title lettering of Der blaue Engel. This style became a kind of prestige symbol among all those movie makers around the world who wanted to be a member of this virtual avant garde club. Examples consist of Woody Allen who used this style in almost all of his films including Annie Hall, Tsai Ming Liang, the "Second New Wave" film director of Taiwanese Cinema who used this style with Chinese script in his What Time is it Over There? in 2001 and the celebrated Persian movie maker Bahman Ghobadi in his A Time for Drunken Horses in 2000, as well as many others.
A Bout de Souffle, Jean Luc Godard, 1960
La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini, 1960
L' Avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960
Annie Hall, Woody Allen, 1977
"What Time is it Over There?", Tsai Ming Liang, Taiwan, 2001
A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES, Bahman Ghobadi, 2000
This trend was quite unfortunate, as it is clear that an avant garde movie can be enriched further by an imaginative and bold graphic design. The following titles clearly have added to the artistic aura of their respected films, and to the film viewers, in fact, they were powerful signals of the aesthetic sensitivity of the directors. For example note, how stunningly elegant was the added graphic design element to the simple white-on-black lettering in the main title frame of Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, or how tasteful, compositionally powerful, and aesthetically exquisite were Maurice Binder's title design of Dr. No, Paper Moon of Peter Bogdanovich,MASH of Robert Altman, or Charade of Stanley Donen. Of course, creating a high quality cutting-edge design is not very easy, and the task gets harder with the appearance of each innovative design. As the low hanging fruits of design are becoming picked up, the creation of a new bold design becomes more challenging, since in addition to a creative talent, it would require a greater depth of understanding of various socio-cultural issues in visual communication, and a more refined artistic skills. This is evident from very few innovative title designs that have been created over the 1990- 2000 period. But the existence of this burden cannot be regarded as a good excuse for not trying to search for creative talents that can rise to the occasion. In fact, it is interesting to note that Jean Luc Godard himself, who perhaps started the white lettering on a black background style of the 1960s, abandoned it in his 1967 Week End.
Dr. No, Terence Young, 1962
Plein Soleil, Ren� Cl�ment, 1960
Spartacus, Stanley Kubrick, 1960
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Richard Brooks, 1957
Charade, Stanley Donen, 1963
For a Feastfull of Dollars, Sergio Leone, 1963
Doctor Zhivago, David Lean, 1965
Week End , Jean Luc Godard, 1967
In Cold Blood, Richard Brooks, 1967
Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1967
MASH, Robert Altman, 1970
Paper Moon, Peter Bogdanovich, 1973
Inglourious Basteros, Quentin Tarantino, 2009
From Dusk till Dawn, Robert Rodriguez, 1996
Caro Diario, Nanni Moretti, 1993
Irma Vep, Olivier Assayas, 1996
Monsoon Wedding , Mira Nair, 2001
The opening title sequence for To Kill A Mockingbird This masterpiece of title sequences starts with a soft and fading few bars of Elmer Bernstein music, while the camera with an overhead point-of-view shoots Scout, the young girl narrator of the story who is opening and looking into an old cigar box of collected memorabilia -- her treasures and trinkets, which includes: crayons, a mechanical pencil, two carved soap doll figurines, a skeleton key, a broken pocket knife, and some other objects, but most importantly, an old broken but ticking pocket watch, a remembrance of Atticus. Scout picks up a crayon and sets in motion the quiet, unintentional roll of a marble. She colors over lined paper with a round crayon, revealing the title of the film, and the camera circles and tracks slowly from left to right along various collections of carefully-arranged objects in magnified close-up, while Elmer Bernstein's music plays. Frankfurt achieves a near perfection that requires a deep contemplation for deciphering its many layers of meanings, and mystical quality.
Design Director Stephen Frankfurt describes how he has created the opening credit sequence to "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Too see the opening title sequence for To Kill A Mockingbird click in this icon
As we have seen in the previous chapter Saul Bass' animated titles for Around the World in Eighty Days, The Man with Golden Arm and his other films revolutionized the art of film title.
In Hitchcock's North by Northwest, with a backdrop of a music score by Bernard Herrmann, Saul Bass has created a remarkable opening title sequence which is generally being cited as the first to feature extended use of kinetic typography. Cast and crew names enter and exit from the top and bottom of the frame, imitating the movement of elevators going up and down and stopping on various floors, against a background of the bright green screen, with dark angled lines on a north-westerly diagonal slant. Midway into the credits, the lines dissolve into the windows on the front of the United Nations building, reflecting New York City street traffic below. The credit sequence closes with crowds of people hurrying in and out of the subway and city buildings. Director Alfred Hitchcock makes his signature on screen appearance as his credit appears, hastening to reach a bus, only to have it drive away after slamming its doors in his face.
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