Saul ( and Elaine) Bass

 "In a sense, all modern opening title sequences that introduce the mood or theme of a film are a legacy of the Basses' work'"- www.artofthetitle.com

 Biography : 

Elaine and Saul Bass have worked alongside each other as graphic designers, title designers, and filmmakers, they got married in 1961. Together they developed many different projects for directors such as Martin Scorsese and Danny DeVito such as 'War of the Roses'. Elaine is one of the main designers who helped turn short films and title sequences into an art form. 

Saul Bass during his 40-year career Bass worked for some of Hollywood's biggest filmmakers, which included Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley  Kubrick, Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, and Martin Scorsese. Saul Bass's name started to become well known after his work on the opening sequence of Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955. 

Opening title sequence: 

Anatomy of a murder

Scene 1:

Saul Bass uses a very abstract style to convey what is about to happen in the film. In the opening scene, we are shown multiple different shapes which are put together to form the shape of a human body which is dismembered, this is clever as it plays with the title of the film, Anatomy of a murder, anatomy being a body. The title is white placed on black shapes forming the human body creating a bold eye-catching contrast as the colors are complete opposites. Non-diegetic music plays throughout the opening sequence, I would say there is a pleonastic contrast between the music and what is on-screen as the music is quite upbeat and dramatic, while we are being shown essentially what is meant to convey a dismembered body. The music itself is very old fashioned, it has a classical jazz sense to it.  

Scene 2: 

The camera then zooms into different shapes that are meant to be forming the human body. Credits are shown above these black shapes as this creates a high contrast that catches the viewer's eye. The font of the credits are all capitalized to express the drama of the film. The non-diegetic music continues throughout.  

Scene 3:

The shapes that are forming the human body start to split, possibly done to indicate that the murder weapon is a knife. This could also portray how many different ways the murder may have taken place and that the investigators need to place everything back together due to the fact the body parts are separated. This small action in the opening scene foreshadows what the film is about as we automatically assume there is a murder. The non-diegetic music continues. 

Scene 4: 

In the final scene, we zoom into one of the shapes being the hand, indicating that they are going to catch the culprit, this is portrayed strongly due to the fact we commonly hear 'catch the person red-handed' when referring to catching someone or something doing something, therefore zooming into a hand we automatically assume they are going to catch the killer. This strongly foreshadows what is to come from the film. The fact that the hand is also back together in this scene indicates that they are looking for someone, as it tells the audience it's a different person subtly.

 

Theme/mood: 

The genre of the film is a murder mystery, the tone is very dark as the story refers to a murdered of a local innkeeper after the wife of the murder claimed she was raped by him. The business partner of the murder is hiding a dark secret throughout the trial making it hard to set the clients free. Part of the story is strongly foreshadowed in the opening sequence as it reflects the murder and that there are multiple different elements to the story of the murder. I believe that this opening title sequence was very successful as it expressed what the story genre was going to be from the get-go without telling the whole story.