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Saul Bass Introduction
* Titles in Bold Will Air on 11/2
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"His titles are not simply imaginative identification tags; when his work comes on the screen, the movie itself truly begins," said director Martin Scorsese of Saul Bass, the graphic designer and animator who revolutionized movie title sequences and turned them into an art form. Bass' credits often received more acclaim than the movie itself, as when critics recognized his opening and closing sequences for Walk on the Wild Side (1962) - a predatory cat stalking its alley to the rhythms of Elmer Bernstein's jazz score - as a great film-within-a-film.
Bass (1920-1996) was born in New York City and educated at the Art Students League and Brooklyn College. He moved to Los Angeles in 1948 and began creating title sequences in the mid-1950s, using a blend of live action, animation and the bold graphics that became his signature. The design that established him in the public mind was the jagged black-and-white silhouette of a junkie's arm and fingers for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), directed by frequent Bass collaborator Otto Preminger.
Bass also worked memorably with Alfred Hitchcock, creating the darting blue and green lines that foreshadow the maze-like plot of North by Northwest (1959) and the spiraling vortex that begins Vertigo (1958). Bass served as both title designer and "visual consultant" for Psycho (1960), creating the slashing horizontal and vertical lines that accompany the credits and designing several key scenes, including the infamous shower sequence, which involved 70 camera setups and took a week to shoot. For the Oscar®-winning West Side Story (1961), Bass designed both the exhilarating introduction, with its spinning aerial views of New York City; and the somber closing credits, written in graffiti on crumbling urban walls. Bass, also known for his title work with Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick, directed several films of his own including Phase IV (1974) and won three Oscar® nominations plus the award itself for his short subjects.
by Roger Fristoe
 
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TCM Imports - November Schedule
Travel to other parts of the world without leaving your home in our festival of international classics that includes Black Orpheus (1959), set in Rio, and the French comedy, Mon Oncle (1958), starring Jacques Tati.
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