Film Titles

As a frequent reader of the 'features' section on the Total Film website, I was delighted to see that they had composed a list of '25 Amazing Opening Credit Sequences'. I thought it was the perfect place to start researching this new brief. Obviously some from the list I don't agree with, however they do all hold a certain amount of merit so below is that list in full. By clicking the title of the film you will be taken to a website where you can view the credits in full.

25. Watchmen
Rundown: Zack Snyder’s stylised adaptation of Alan Moore’s ‘unfilmable’ graphic novel oozes confidence and visual panache – all beginning with this epic five minute intro, which cleverly fills us in on the movie’s setting. To the tune of Bob Dylan’s awesome ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’.

24. Halloween
Rundown:An ingeniously simple set-up, as the camera slowly zooms in on a cheerfully grinning carved pumpkin while all the names flicker up on screen. Oh, and then there’s Carpenter’s scarily economic, haunting musical score.

23. The Man with the Golden Arm
Rundown: Master credits manipulator Saul Bass turns the opening crawl into a pivotal part of the movie experience. Before this, they were a boring nuisance that projections often skipped over. Here, they become an art form.

22. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Rundown: Plain and elegant, reliant on pioneering imagery which, when paired with Richard Strauss’ ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ becomes something elegiac in and of itself. It looks great, even if some scientific bigwigs have pointed out that the sun, moon, and earth would not proportionally line up as Kubrick dreamed they would.

21. Spiderman 2
Rundown: That familiar score from the first film returns, pumped up – and this time combining old school Saul Bass-inspired lines and actor sketches with re-sketched scenes from the original film. Beautiful nod to the origins of our friendly neighbourhood web-slinger.

20. To Kill A Mockingbird
Rundown: A nod to the film’s young lead Scout, these opening credits zoom in on childlike delights, as an ornate box gives up numerous wonders – including a harmonica, a pearl necklace and a pocket watch. They so affected a young Cameron Crowe that he paid tribute to them with Almost Famous.

19. Psycho
Rundown: Who needs CGI? Psycho’s opening credits cleverly play around with the film’s title with a little bit of pixilation manipulation – and, yes, more Saul Bass lines. Meanwhile, nutso violins do their worst.

18. Reservoir Dogs
Rundown: Another beautifully simple offering, this time Quentin Tarantino plucking Dutch band George Baker Selection out of his CD collection, and pairing ‘Little Green Bag’ with slow-mo shots of our leads walking, dressed in black suit and tie. Minimalism rules.

17. Panic Room
Rundown: Chunky credits text is cleverly slotted into New York cityscapes, as David Fincher establishes a wider setting for his thriller – which mostly takes place within a single building.

16. North By Northwest
Rundown: Saul Bass lines again, these ones converging to create the image of a skyscraper. It was clearly inspiration for Fincher’s Panic Room, with the names cropping up in line with the building.

15. Pi
Rundown: Darren Aronofsky proves you don’t need a huge budget to craft something classy and impactful. Splicing charts and numbers with TV fuzz, not to mention a rocky, futuristic backing track, it’s maximum effect on a minimum budget.

14. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Rundown: Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer’s underrated crime caper gets the old school treatment. Bullet vapour trails turn into plants. Bodies fall through the air. Lines turn into stuff. All while trumpets toot. Brilliant.

13. Bunny Lake is Missing
Rundown: Who knew that tearing paper could look so effective? We shouldn’t be surprised – it sounds great, it looks immediately arty and stuff, especially when revealing the name Laurence Olivier. It’s also a fun twist on those Bass lines.

12. Alien
Rundown: We slowly track the infinite void of space, as slanting blocks of white gradually reveal themselves. The sheer quiet, creeping nature of the credits is haunting in itself.

11. Delicatessen
Rundown: Hyper stylised, just like the film itself, these credits track a room filled with junk, revealing the names of those involved in the most creative ways imaginable.

10. Dr. Strangelove
Rundown: Stanley Kubrick originally wanted to use model planes during the opening of his bombastic classic, but Pablo Ferro convinced him otherwise. Instead they used stock footage, while Ferro had the crazy idea of playing around with font sizes – to brilliant effect.

9. Fahrenheit 451
Rundown: Who needs fancy visuals and scrolling written text? François Truffaut does away with all that needless guff and opts for a cutting radio voice reading out the cast and crew instead. Which works perfectly, considering this is a film about a society no longer allowed to read.

8. Thank You For Smoking
Rundown: More clever branding, as vintage cigarette packets host the names of our cast and crew, while Tex Williams sings ‘Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette’.

7. Fight Club
Rundown: Fincher again, still cleverly utilising CGI for his opening crawl. Except this isn’t so much a crawl as a fevered dash through the brain of our narrator.

6. Vertigo
Rundown: Hitchcock, Bass and Bernard Herrmann get it bang on again, stirring up muddy subtextual issues, such as the psychosexual gaze, and turning them into simple but riveting visuals. Those eddying, hypnotic spirals are truly terrifying.

5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Rundown: Ennio Morricone’s much-loved theme tune strums out a dramatic Western soundscape as spiffy visuals throw paint and colour at the screen for a breathlessly inventive opening scroll.

4. Goldfinger
Rundown: Goldfinger’s opening credits took one look at the credits at the beginning of From Russia With Love and rustled up an inspired new take on the formula. With Shirley Bassey’s defiant vocals, it’s a dreamy, moody intro.

3. Seven
Rundown: Fincher, what would we do without you? Here, his grimiest (and grimmest) film to date gets a grim, grimy opening credits sequence that is as chilling as anything else you’ll find in his ‘what’s in the box?’ thriller.

2. Catch Me If You Can
Rundown: A colourful hat-tip to Saul Bass, the credits for Spielberg’s globe-trotting crowd-pleaser are bright and stylish.

1. Superbad
Rundown: If there’s one thing we’ve learned from compiling this list, it’s that if you want to make a good set of opening credits, you’ve got to have one killer tune. Which, luckily, Superbad does, this one a groovy foot-tapper courtesy of The Bar-Kays.