Roll the Credits

An example of Stephen Frankfurt’s iconic title treatment for the 1962 film TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

In their increasing eagerness to capture a wider viewing audience for their annual awards ceremony, you would think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences would create a few more categories that could generate some genuine interest with the average moviegoer. How about Best Title Credits? It’s an art form in its own right. Graphic designer Saul Bass certainly proved that years ago with his innovative opens for the films of Otto Preminger (Carmen Jones, The Man With the Golden Arm, Saint Joan, Bonjour Tristesse, Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent, Exodus, The Cardinal and several more) and Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho). Other title designers you might recognize are Stephen Frankfurt (To Kill a Mockingbird, Rosemary’s Baby), Pablo Ferro (Dr. Strangelove, Being There) and Maurice Binder (Dr. No, Charade). Even before them, opening title credits were a key component of the film, often setting the tone and even encapsulating the movie’s theme or storyline into a compact visual nugget.

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Behind the Scenes on Bonjour Tristesse

When Otto Preminger announced in 1957 that his next project would be Bonjour Tristesse, based on the best-selling novel by Francoise Sagan, and that it would star Jean Seberg, colleagues and fellow members of the film industry were astonished. After all, his previous film, Saint Joan (1957), which featured Seberg in her film debut, was probably the biggest critical and commercial disaster of Preminger’s career with most of the negative reviews focusing on the inexperienced newcomer whom Preminger had “discovered.” Was Bonjour Tristesse (1958) his attempt to prove to everyone that he was not wrong about Seberg and that her performance in his new movie would validate all the time and effort he had poured into making her an actress? The real reasons, of course, were more complicated than that. 

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Missing in Action: Birds in Peru Starring Jean Seberg

Jean Seberg in Birds in Peru (1968)

Jean Seberg in Birds in Peru (1968)

There is a popular misconception these days that almost any movie you want to see is available for streaming or viewing somewhere in cyberspace but that simply isn’t true. Thousands of films go missing, become inaccessible or go into distribution purgatory as the years pass and they become forgotten in time. Birds in Peru (aka Birds Come to Die in Peru) would probably be forgotten too if it hadn’t received such scathing reviews upon its original release in 1968.     Continue reading