SAUL BASS
During 1940’s and early 1950’s America film promotion was based around the celebrity of the actors and the Hollywood stars that graced the screens. This was until Saul Bass devised a new approach to the marketing of films in 1955 with his poster and title design for Otto Preminger’s controversial film ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’. The films main feature is about a jazz musician (Frank Sinatra) who is addicted to heroin. Rather than use Sinatra as the main promotional image for the film, Bass went against previous examples and with just the use of a simple black paper cut out of an arm designed a symbol that became a brand for the film. With the arm being a powerful symbol of addiction and the jagged design that Bass used also suggesting the disjointed existence of a drug addict, the use of this arm changed film promotion forever. Besides creating the marketing poster for ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’, Bass created the title sequence for the film as well. Through the use of animation Bass transformed title design and sequences for the rest of the film world. Before this film movie titles were dull and uninspiring, so much so that the projectionists only revealed the screen once they had finished, but when ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’ arrived in American theatres a note was stuck on the cans – “Projectionists – pull curtain before titles”. This made the titles an integral part of the film and reinvented the movie title as an art form.
Bass managed to transform a films look and create meaningful pictograms that represented each film, without having to use the actor’s image to sell the films to the public. After the success of ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’ Bass continued to revolutionise the film industry with his poster designs, title sequences and helped in the development of certain scenes.
Bass was ground-breaking because he rejected the normal and uninspiring conventions that goverened American poster designers from the 1940’s. By using geometric designs, angular shapes and primary colour schemes, he worked against the cluttered imagery that was dominant at the time. He developed a graphic language which brought together modern design, music and film. Furthurmore Bass directed changes in the way designers were credited for their work. By accrediting his own work to himself this made it possible for other designers to rightfully claim their work as their own, redressing the balance in favour of the artists.
In 1958 Bass collabrated with Alrfed Hitchcock for the first time on his film Vertigo, he created another title squence that caused a sensation. To evoke the dizzy sensation of the film Bass used the motif of a close up of a womans face and her eye spinning in a sinister spiral as blood red soaks the screen, the film poster also represents the psyschological plot to the film.
Another Hitchcock film that Bass worked on was the 1959 movie ‘North by Northwest’, in
which he created another genius title sequence. The credits travel up and down a grid of diagonal and vertical lines, resembling passengers stepping off elevators. In the opening scenes Cary Grant steps out of an elevator leaving the audience to realise the grid in the titles represents the façade of skyscraper.
Somehow Bass mangaged to create the right climate for each film he made when designing the opening title seqeuences, “offering audiences a visual feast from the very first frame”, this shaped the right atmosphere and set the tone for story of the film. A key example of this is in the 1960 Hitchcock thriller ‘Psycho’, haunting vertical bars sweep across the screen manically at the beginning of the film, this frantic sequence is a symbol of Norman Bates’ splintered psyche. In addition Bass worked on the famous
dramatic shower scene with Janet Leigh, demonstrating that his talent stretched beyond graphic design and animation.
Another Bass design that proves he could signify a film just by using a symbol or title sequence was the 1960 Otto Preminger film ‘Exodus’. By using the striking motif of the paper being engulfed by flames and a rifle appearing from a fighting swarm of arms, he symbolized the struggle of the new country of Israel. This worked like a trademark for the film, used on posters, newspaper advertising and even the stationary used during the films production. As a result of Bass being so innovative and versatile he extended the boundaries of graphic design in the mid 20th century. Through the means of going against convention and bringing a new element to the film industry by his use of pioneering title sequences and his new approach to the packaging of films, he created an enitre new film genre and elevated it into an art form. He created trademarks for so many films and helped them become the successful and inspirational films they are today, which is probably why he is one of the most requested film poster designers ever. His work has become instanly regonisable and he has left a legacy of powerful and compelling symbols that characterize the film promotion of the 20th century.
