Saul Bass Tribute Continued - Type Tuesday: Title sequence and poster art of The Man with the Golden Arm

In the 1955 film, The Man with the Golden Arm from director Otto Preminger, the title sequence caused quite the buzz, and the film propelled Bass to the status of Master of Film Title Design. Bass had single-handedly reinvented the movie title as an art form! It's stated that before this film, the opening titles of the cast and crew of movies were so dull, that projectionists would only pull back the curtains to reveal the screen once they’d finished. [1]

The film is about a Jazz musician played by Frank Sinatra, who is struggling to overcome his heroin addiction. Knowing that the arm was a powerful symbol of heroin addiction, in a controversial decision (for a controversial film), instead of using the famous face of the films star, Bass chose to use the design of the arm for the films titles as well as the films poster. [2]

(video link at the end of post)

In this title sequence we see Bass use simple geometric shapes and lines accompanied by Elmer Bernstein's Jazz soundtrack, to help set the tone of the film. Some have compared the lines to a syringe piercing the skin of the main character. Others have compared it to the veins in the arm. I can see both comparisons as true.

I think it can be said, that it may also be cards being dealt by the main character of the film, as he was at one time a skilled card dealer. As the title sequence progresses, we see the cards being stacked, albeit in a precarious way, and we watch as the cards come tumbling down. (However, in my research of the opening I found nothing stated by Bass or anyone else, to support this idea.)

Although much has been written about Bass's arm design in the title, and on the movie poster, and not much new can be added that hasn't been said before, I'll just relay what was written on the website saul-bass.com:  "Bass created the famous jagged arm design, suggesting the jarring and disjointed existence of a drug addict. With this design, Bass exploited what he termed the significance of content in design." [3]

Title sequence "The Man with the Golden Arm" Link

References
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 [1] - [2]: Design Museum www.designmuseum.org/design/saul-bass

[3]:  www.saul-bass.com by Tony Nourmand: This article was published in the international magazine, Patek
Philippe, Number 9, Spring / Summer 2000