Iconic graphic designer and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Saul Bass (1920-1996) defined an innovative era in cinema. His title sequences for films such as Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959), and Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (1955) introduced the idea that opening credits could tell a story, setting the mood for the movie to follow. Bass's stylistic influence can be seen in popular Hollywood franchises from the Pink Panther to James Bond, as well as in more contemporary works such as Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can (2002) and television's Mad Men. The first book to examine the life and work of this fascinating figure, Saul Bass: Anatomy of Film Design explores the designer's revolutionary career and his lasting impact on the entertainment and advertising industries. Jan-Christopher Horak traces Bass from his humble beginnings as a self-taught artist to his professional peak, when auteur directors like Stanley Kubrick, Robert Aldrich, and Martin Scorsese sought him as a collaborator. He also discusses how Bass incorporated aesthetic concepts borrowed from modern art in his work, presenting them in a new way that made them easily recognizable to the public. This long-overdue book sheds light on the creative process of the undisputed master of film title design - a man whose multidimensional talents and unique ability to blend high art and commercial imperatives profoundly influenced generations of filmmakers, designers, and advertisers.
"This is a detailed study of one the most important and influential graphic designers in the history cinema, done by one of the most distinguished and knowledgeable film archivists and historians in the discipline, and is a first rate piece of work. Horak is one of the field's top scholars, and this massively detailed, superbly written book brings every facet of Bass's career to life, from main ti
Wheeler Winston Dixon, author of Streaming: Movies, Media and Instant Access
"Self-aggrandizing and committed to notions of creativity as ineffable intuition, visualist Saul Bass has long been an elusive object for study within cinema. But combining his well-known acumen in the archives with his equally masterful understanding of the complexities of modernist experiment as it meets American populism, film historian Jan-Christopher Horak offers a sharp, trenchant analysis o
Dana Polan, Cinema Studies, New York University
"A wonderful book. Carefully researched and lively, Horak's study delivers the comprehensive account of the artistry and authorship of Saul Bass we have long needed. Attentive to the formative role of vanguard European aesthetics on Bass' graphic idiom, and the history of film studio publicity campaigns, Horak successfully demonstrates how Bass, master of the corporate image, cannily fashioned his
