10 Set North by Northwest – Opening Titles
Saul Bass was an American designer whose 40+ year career spanned everything from print and identity development to movie title credits. He designed titles for over 30 films and also proficient in typography, his “cut-paper” style is one of the most recognized styles of design from the 1950s and 60s. He revolutionized the way that people viewed movie titles by using the time to not just display the information but give a short visual metaphor or story that intrigued the viewer. Often times it was a synopsis or reference to the movie itself.
His list of title credits include famous films such as West Side Story, Psycho, Goodfellas, Big, North by Northwest and Spartacus.
“In North by Northest, intersections are further explored in the transient locations Hitchcock chose to shoot: downtown cross streets, trains, airports” even the crop-dusting scene, which takes place quite literally at a crossroads. It’s appropriate, then, that Saul Bass establishes this theme in both the tone and design of the main title sequence. Almost immediately, the open canvas of forest green is jailed by a series of intersecting lines, setting the ground rules for the sequence by corralling the sans serif title blocks into vertical columns, rising and falling as though tethered to one another.
The sequence is split into three distinct parts ”the first being entirely graphic, with the titles superimposed over the gridded background. In the second, the graphics dissolve into the reflective facade of the C.I.T. Building in Manhattan”, perfectly mimicking its orthographic window framework. The third part brings us down to ground level, observing the anonymous masses navigating the Big Apple.
Webgraphy: http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/north-by-northwest/
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