Saul Bassis the iconic film maker and graphic designer who is best known for his iconic opening sequences, poster designs, and corporate logos. Google celebrates his 93rd birthday today, so if you’re searching Google you will see the ode to Saul’s design for the “Anatomy of a Murder” poster, a classic from 1959.
{You can learn a bit more about the master face to face here}
It is men like he, whom with some creativity and unique individual thought changed the course of modernity forever. We thought we would remember Saul too, by posting some of our personal favourite opening title sequences over the years. You can let us know which one was your favourite in the COMMENTS below.
Don’t forget to let us know if we didn’t include your favourite, what favourite it is!
The Festival de Cannes is upon us again, and if you were with us last year, we had a lot of fun covering the ups and downs of this iconic film and fashion event. After all, Cannes is a place where stars are born, and if you’re looking to get ahead of the game (any game, really) its best to stay up to date with all the festivities.
One moment an unknown is sky rocketed to unbelievable heights of stardom, fame, and critical acclaim for just one night at the star-studded gala that has been in existence since 1946.
This year promises to be as extravagant and elegant an affair as ever, with Baz Luhrmann’s epic telling of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” to open the competition. The film promises to bring back the Jazz Age with a roaring velocity only the 21st Century could handle.
Other notable candidates competing for the grand prize, the Palm D’Or, are Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewellyn Davis” starring Justin Timberlake and Gatsby co-star Carey Mulligan, Takashi Miike’s “Straw Shield“, François Ozon’s “Young and Beautiful“, Alexander Payne’s “Nebraska“, Roman Polanski’s “Venus in Fur“, and our much-anticipated favourite “Only God Forgives” directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, which offers up a bad-ass vision of crime and the underworld set in the sweltering heat of Thailand and stars Ryan Gosling in the lead role (click here to watch trailer).
Also taking off at the festival is Sofia Coppola’s latest film on the scandal and psychology of “The Bling Ring” – the infamous crew of L.A. socialite-wannabes who took media outlets by storm after being caught in a string of celebrity burglaries. The film kicks off the Un Certain Regard category which also includes James Franco’s “As I Lay Dying“. Based off a novel by William Faulkner, the film is written, directed, and stars the offbeat actor, so hopefully people can start giving the guy a little more credit around these parts!
And if you’re not a fan of the contemporary film scene, not to worry, as the Cannes Film Festival line-up has built in dozens of classic films to showcase and celebrate at this year’s festival, showing that film past is just as powerful as film present, if not even more. After all, where would we be today without some of the great boundary-breaking films that got us here?
Elizabeth Taylor in “Cleopatra”
Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor”
Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in “La Plein Soleil”
These films are icons of style as well as cinema, and include in the line up Alain Resnais’s stunningly poetic “Hiroshima, Mon Amour” (starring “Amour”;s Emanuelle Riva), Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s elaborate and sumptuous “Cleopatra”, Jacques Demy’s charmingly whimsical “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg”, Jean Cocteau’s “La Belle et la Bette” , Bernardo Bertolucci’s vivid 80’s epic “The Last Emperor”, and the creme de la creme of vintage menswear movies “Le Plein Soleil”, starring E.O.F. Style Idol Alain Delon as Patricia Highsmith’s cunning antihero Tom Ripley in Renee Clement’s classic 1960 film.
Another of the classics they are bringing to the screen at this year’s festival is Alfred Hitchock’s 1958 masterpiece “Vertigo”. To celebrate the new restoration of the film, the festival has invited the film’s star, Kim Novak, as the guest of honour to the Festival.
The film was not well-recieved well at all in the US upon its release, and misunderstood it remained for many years before the French propped it up for discussion as proof of Alfred Hitchcock’s auteurism (a term for a true artist of the cinema), so its no surprise to see the film celebrated to this day for its subtle artistry in creating an unsettling dreamlike mood that permeates throughout the entire story of “Vertigo”.
Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you;
you took no notice.
-Madeleine, “Vertigo”
[POP CULTURE MOMENT: Do you remember hearing the “Vertigo” soundtrack at the beginning of Lady Gaga’s “Born this Way” music video? Listen back to the narrative opening of the full music video and you can hear “Vertigo” ‘s haunting theme . This theme is one of Bernard Hermann’s most iconic compositions, second maybe only to the blitzkrieg of strings in “Psycho”. Click here to see.]
It’s stylish, cool, classy, and the twist at the end is bloody brilliant. There might never be another movie like it. We suggest you rent this classic and make a night in watching this with a glass of vino and pretend you’re at Cannes, then dress up like Jimmy Stewart the morning after.
Check out the official website for the full details and for more information about the 2013 Fesbertival De Cannes. If you can’t be there this year, be sure to check back for more updates as they come!
So the trailer is out for Fox Searchlight‘s latest cinematic craving “Hitchcock“; a biopic starring Anthony Hopkins as the famed director during his trials and tribulations during the makings of his iconic film, “Psycho“.
The film features a roster of talent that include Jessica Biel as actress Vera Miles, Scarlett Johansson as the lead with the bad deed, Janet Leigh, Toni Collette as dedicated production assistant Peggy Robertson, and Helen Mirren as his loving and loyal partner-in-crime Alma Reville.
Set for release on November 23, expect the master of suspense to inspire and influence us all once again! From the looks of the trailer, this Hitchcock shows great panache when it comes to business, a savvy for story telling, and a committed loving and working relationship with his wife, Alma.
“Suspense is like a woman. The more room she leaves to the imagination, the greater the emotion and the expectation. The audience is much more frightened by what it imagines than by what it actually sees. There’s nothing terrifying about an explosion, only the expectation of it.”
-Alfred Hitchcock to Bernard Parkin
It was around the time of “Psycho“‘s release that the British born director began garnering notice for his unique artistic contribution to popular culture and the cinema. The french in particular took a special admiration for the director, who they formidably christened a grand auteur of the medium – a worthy honor (they don’t take that term lightly, en France).
Indeed, his films inhabit a very special singular world, one which can only be simplified to a single term: Hitchcock.
The settings of his stories become a collage of reality, dreaming, and desire. The inhabitants are as stylized and edited as the story lines – always modern and even hip; the heroes are all dashing, the man Hitchcock idolized for himself, and the heroines typically blonde with assets.
They all play pawns in a wicked game of cat and mouse meticulously planned and drafted by Hitchcock and his wife, Alma, script supervisor and Hitchcock’s private second set of eyes (it was her who noticed Janet Leigh swallowing after her death scene which would later have to be altered from the negative).
When actors asked their motivation for a scene, he simply stated “Your salary”. If they couldn’t push to the emotional degree he needed for the scene, he said “Fake it”. And when asked if he felt actors were cattle, he quickly corrected that he only felt they should be “treated” as such.
While Hitchcock never won a coveted Best Director statuette at the Academy Awards, he did receive the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy for his contributions to the industry.
It was an impressive career lasting from the early 1920s up to his last film in 1976, “Family Plot“.
There’s no denying the influence the man has had on popular culture. Many suggest there wouldn’t have been a James Bond if it weren’t for “North by Northwest” kicking off the action genre the way he it did. Others cite Hitchcock for his innovation in the medium, always adapting and quickly changing with the times.
Designers such as Alexander McQueen have cited Hitchcock’s influence, and with “Hitchcock” kick starting you can expect to see more and more of the master’s presence come into play. Best thing is, both men and women can easily cite these films for alluring, modern, and sophisticated looks that will have everyone saying “WHOA”.
And for as dark or complex his story lines took him, he was always able to hold on to his enviable sense of humor. From his various walk-on parts in every film, to the character he invented of himself – Hitchcock was a wildly entertaining individual drenched in that very dry, very British sense of humor.
Hopefully “Hitchcock” hits the nail on the head with his one, but with such a talented cast and crew, and the impeccably talented Sir Anthony Hopkins at the wheel, there’s no doubt in my mind this film will continue to pave the legacy that we can simply sum up as his very own.
We picked out some of our favorite photos of the Hitch hamming it up for the camera to get those creative juices flowing, and to show the softer, sillier side of this irreverent genius.
