Saul Bass

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Saul Bass (born May 8, 1920 in New York City , New York State , † April 25, 1996 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American typographer , graphic designer , photographer and filmmaker .

Life

Saul Bass was born in 1920 in the Bronx , New York . His parents were Russian-Jewish working-class immigrants who encouraged his early interest in the arts. Due to the economic depression he had to leave school at the age of sixteen, worked in an advertising agency and attended evening courses for further education. Bass studied from 1936 to 1939 at the Art Students League and from 1944 to 1946 at Brooklyn College in New York, where he attended a course with the Hungarian painter György Kepes (1906-2001). Bass initially worked as a freelance designer in New York. In 1946 he went to Los Angeles . In 1954 Otto Preminger commissioned him to design the title sequence for his film Carmen Jones . This was followed in 1955 jobs from Robert Aldrich , the title to Hollywood Story (The Big Knife) and, of Billy Wilder , the leader of the cursed 7th year (The Seven Year Itch) to make. The same year saw the acclaimed opening credits for Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm , which cemented Bass' reputation as Hollywood's outstanding title designer. Bass designed all of Preminger's film titles up to 1979 ( The Human Factor , Preminger's last work). Also in 1955, Bass founded the Saul Bass & Associates design studio in Los Angeles, which was renamed Bass Yager & Associates in 1981 .

plant

Lettering of the US film poster designed by Saul Bass (1958)

Saul Bass is one of the most innovative designers and filmmakers of his time. His poster designs and logo designs for films such as Bonjour tristesse , The Man with the Golden Arm or Exodus by director Otto Preminger are groundbreaking. In addition, he created over 40 film leaderboards ( motion design ), e.g. B. for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo - From the realm of the dead .

In 1974 he made his only feature film of his own: Phase IV is about an ant colony in the Arizona desert that mutates through astronomical phenomena and attacks nearby human settlements. Two scientists try to contact the intelligent animals from a research laboratory, but ultimately have no chance against the majority of opponents. While the discoverer of the phenomenon, Ernest Hubbs ( Nigel Davenport ), dies, his colleague James Lesko ( Michael Murphy ) is subjugated by the ants together with a previously rescued young woman ( Lynne Frederick ) to perhaps create a new breed under the rule of the ants to found. In addition to the pleasantly less lurid staging, the fantastic insect shots by Ken Middleham ( The Hellstrom Chronicle , Fire Beetle ) are particularly remembered.

In 1964, Saul Bass was a participant in documenta III in Kassel . In 1969 he was awarded the Oscar in the category Best Documentary Short for the animated short documentary Why Man Creates ; He received another Oscar nomination in 1980 for The Solar Film , this time in the Best Short Film category . In 1978 he was inducted into the New York Art Directors Hall of Fame and in 1988 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Directors Club Los Angeles for his life's work.

The film titles and trailers by Bass in the 1960s are considered to be as stylish as the opening credits by title designer Maurice Binder in earlier James Bond films.

Bass had a special relationship with Alfred Hitchcock . He not only designed many film titles and posters for him, but also worked on his films. In retrospect, there was controversy about Bass' collaboration on the legendary shower scene in Psycho ; however, his participation has now been documented by storyboards and sketches.

At the end of Bass' career, there was a short but fruitful collaboration with Martin Scorsese , who in 1991 for Cape Fear ( Cape Fear ), a remake of the thriller A Cape Fear took from 1962, not only the former film composition, but also Looking for something visually appropriate - and found it with bass. Shortly before his death, Bass designed the widely acclaimed opening credits to Scorsese's Casino from 1995 together with his wife Elaine .

  • Logos designed by Saul Bass

  • Bell, 1969

  • Minolta , 1981

  • AT&T , 1984

Filmography (selection)

As the designer of the film credits

As a director

Font designs

  • 1982: Rainbow Bass

reception

There are plenty of movie credits these days that borrowed from Saul Bass's graphic style, especially those set in the 1960s. Examples are Catch Me If You Can (2002), X-Men: First Class (2011) and the TV series Mad Men .

On the occasion of his 93rd birthday on May 8, 2013, Google honored Saul Bass with a Google Doodle , in which his film opening credits were compiled in a modified form in a short film (length: 1:21 minutes) visible worldwide. It also inspired the German press to commemorate the "legendary father of the film opening credits".

literature

  • Joe Morgenstern: Saul Bass: A Life in Film Design . Stoddart, Santa Monica 1997, ISBN 1-881649-96-2 (English).
  • Tomislav Terek: Saul Bass on Titles: Film Titles Revealed . Defunkt Century 2001, ISBN 1-903792-00-2 (English).
  • Pat Kirkham, Martin Scorsese: Saul Bass . Yale University Press 2008, ISBN 978-0-300-10372-4 (English).
  • Jennifer Bass, Pat Kirkham: Saul Bass. A Life in Film and Design. Lawrence King Publisher, London 2011, ISBN 978-1-85669-752-1 (English).
  • Jan-Christopher Horak: Saul Bass. Anatomy of Film Design. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 2014, ISBN 0-8131-4720-4 (English).

Web links

Commons : Saul Bass  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Philip French: Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design by Jennifer Bass and Pat Kirkham - review , guardian.co.uk, accessed May 8, 2013
  2. ↑ Saul Bass Biography. British Film Institute (BFI), archived from the original on July 6, 2011 ; accessed on October 27, 2012 (English).
  3. ^ Saul Bass' work for director Alfred Hitchcock. Retrieved March 9, 2010 (English).
  4. ↑ Interview with Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Degas, designers of the Catch Me If You Can title sequence . Artofthetitle.com.
  5. ↑ Interview with Simon Clowes, designer of the X-Men First Class title sequence . Watchthetitles.com
  6. ^ TV credit where credits are due , independent.co.uk, accessed December 23, 2015
  7. ↑ Description on google.com/doodles. Retrieved May 27, 2013 .
  8. ↑ Kritsanarat Khunkham: Saul Bass, the legendary father of the opening credits . Die Welt, May 8, 2013, accessed May 27, 2013 . ; Saul Bass and the dead woman in the shower (Google Doodle). In: Süddeutsche.de. Retrieved May 8, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Bass, Saul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American filmmaker, graphic designer, illustrator, and typographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1996
Place of death Los Angeles , California