The 50 Greatest Opening Title Sequences of All Time

Giving some credit to the finest opening credits ever made.

5. “Goldfinger” (1964)
Directed by Guy Hamilton

The artist most commonly associated with James Bond titles is Maurice Binder, who designed the famous gun barrel visual and the credits to the original Bond, “Dr. No,” along with the opening titles to thirteen of the first fifteen Bond films. But the rules of Bond titles — the girls and guns and the psychedelic swirl of superimpositions — really codified during the two tiles Binder didn’t create: 1963′s “From Russia With Love,” and especially 1964′s “Goldfinger,” arguably the quintessential Bond title sequence. It’s certainly the most atmospheric. Whereas most of Binder’s titles feature women running, dancing, jiggling, swimming, or bounding on trampolines (because, y’know, Bond’s kinky like that), none of the girls in “Goldfinger” move. With placid flaces, they pose like ancient statues while images from the film flicker on their gold-painted bodies. Those images are sensual, weird, and occasionally very witty; in one shot, a golf put rolls down a woman’s arm and lands in a cup projected between her breasts. And, of course, the greatness of John Barry and Shirley Bassey’s brassy theme song speaks for itself. As the Bond films grew more outlandish, so too did their title sequences; Binder return in 1965′s “Thunderball” pushed things to even greater heights of operatic, boobalicious weirdness. But Brownjohn’s work harkens back to a time before Bond films were cartoons, when they were still mysterious and alluring and sexy. If you ask me, it was the unheralded Brownjohn who had the real Midas touch. –MS

4. “Touch of Evil” (1958)
Directed by Orson Welles

“Touch of Evil”’s three-and-a-half-minute opening crane shot remains one of cinema’s most famous, and like much of Orson Welles’ work, it was originally altered by a studio at odds with the auteur. For forty years, this masterful intro — in which the camera glides around the Mexico-US border, spies the placement of a car bomb, and follows the walking route of Charlton Heston’s drug enforcement official and his new wife, Janet Leigh — was accompanied by credits and a Henry Mancini score that Welles never approved. In 1998, following the instructions of a 58-page memo written by Welles, editor Walter Murch recomposed the sequence to its original, natural soundscape and credit-free form. The debate rages on as to which is preferable — with credits and music, the scene promises big-time thrills, whereas in the new street noise-heavy restored version, it thrums with immersive tension. Regardless, the sheer splendor of Welles’ staging and framing remains nothing short of breathtaking. –NS

Below is the opening shot of “Touch of Evil” without credits. For the original theatrical opening, which included credits and music, go to Facebook.

3. “Se7en” (1995)
Directed by David Fincher

A credits sequence that has itself been credited with reviving the great tradition of elaborate credits sequences, the indelible, unsettling opening titles of “Se7en,” David Fincher’s meticulously tailored serial killer procedural, have prompted many grubby, psycho-chic imitators over the years. Fincher hired a designer named Kyle Cooper to take on the sequence, but he was very much involved in its conception and execution. Cooper watched the film numerous times then set out to create a mood piece that would engage with the theme and plot of the film in both abstract and concrete ways. Capturing the insular, obsessive quality of the killer at the center of “Se7en” was the driving aesthetic force: distant, mechanical beats clang and squeak on the soundtrack — the song is Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer” re-mixed by Coil and Danny Hyde — as though rising up from some dank, isolated cellar. Preceded by an image of a sleepless Morgan Freeman’s detective setting a metronome ticking, the credits suggest the X-ray opposite of a morally ordered mind. Fingers are shaved of their prints and then the nasty, bandaged versions scribble out a psychotic’s manifesto in nightmare flashes alternated with the actual titles, which were hand-scratched onto the film stock and then edited together in layers to pulse with jittery light. Even the names seem like fragments recovered from some unspeakably dark corner of the subconscious. The sequence took two days to shoot and five weeks to edit (those stubby fingers don’t belong to Kevin Spacey, either, a choice that upset Fincher at first). Artisan work, not animation, achieved the texture and impact of this sequence; the grime of that toil feels embedded in the film itself. –MO

2. “A Hard Day’s Night” (1964)
Directed by Richard Lester

In an interview shortly before his death, John Lennon claimed that it was Dick Lester who suggested “A Hard Day’s Night” — a Ringo malapropism that had amused the group — as the title for The Beatles’s first film. Of course a title needs a title song, and so John set to work. The band knew that the opening chord of the song — a Rickenbacker blast from George Harrison — would also open the movie, and its pleasing clang seems designed as the guard-changing herald it was soon recognized to be. The opening titles of “A Hard Day’s Night” are equally iconic: exuberant, playful, and coursing with energy, they’re an early example of the music-dictates-action approach music videos would adopt for decades to come. The entirety of “A Hard Day’s Night” plays as John, Paul, Ringo, and George are chased through London’s Paddington station by a flock of screaming girls. The titles begin with that resounding chord; next we see the band running toward the camera, with poor George face-planting along the way. Lester cuts a story into the sequence: Paul breaks away and dons a disguise while the other boys psyche out their fans in a phone booth. The titles invent a marvelously stylish shorthand to capture the mania surrounding the band in 1964. That shorthand has been adopted over and over again by young sensations with a sweaty, crazed female following. The recent “Jonas Brothers: 3D Concert Experience,” for instance, borrows heavily from Lester’s jewel-cut riff on Beatlemania. –MO

1. “Vertigo” (1958)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Saul Bass’ brilliant opening titles for “Vertigo,” our pick for the finest ever made, distill the film’s 128 minutes into 156 visceral seconds. Bass designed everything to reflect the film to follow. James Stewart’s credit appears over an extreme closeup of a woman’s face, just above its enormous pair of lips; idt won’t be the last time Stewart asserts his influence on a woman’s appearance in the film. The camera pans up to the anonymous woman’s eyes, which dart left and right and then stare straight ahead as Kim Novak’s name materializes, suggesting her character’s discomfort under Stewart’s controlling gaze. Voyeurism plays a key role in the film, and so we zoom in on a single eye and the screen turns red — symbolizing the blood (or perhaps the passion) to follow. The title appears from the depths of woman’s pupil followed by the a series of spiraling geometric shapes. Bass’ Spirograph-style images, set to the repetitive rise and fall of Bernard Hermann’s lush string loops, gives us the disorienting sensation that we are falling even as we’re sitting in our theater seat — a small taste of Stewart’s character’s titular affliction. By the time we return to the woman’s face for Alfred Hitchcock’s credit — which also comes, appropriately, from the depths of an eye — the film’s mood is perfectly established: mystery and menace, exhilaration and madness. The combination of imagery and sound suggests horror, but also the allure of horror, our secret desire to learn what lurks in the dark recesses of each others’ minds. Bass’ great sequence does to the viewer what the sight of Novak does to Stewart: freaks him out and turns him on. –MS

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