Saul Bass Tribute Continued - Type Tuesday: Title sequence Cape Fear

This is the last film in my Saul Bass Tribute. I will be posting some great examples of his posters and other designs, and over the next few days this week, I'll be taking a look at designs that have been clearly influenced by him.

Before I go into the last post about Bass's design work on the open titles of films, there are a few things to know about Cape Fear the film, and river it's self.

Cape Fear is a 1991 thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a remake of the 1962 film of the same name and tells the story of a family man, a former public defender, whose family is threatened by a convicted rapist who wants vengeance for having been imprisoned for 14 years because of the lawyer's purposefully faulty defense tactics, prejudicing the accused. [1]

The Cape Fear River is a 202 miles (325 km) long blackwater river in east central North Carolina in the United States. It flows into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Fear, from which it takes its name. [2]

(video link at the end of post)


I remember taking a date to see this film my senior year in design school at Rochester Institute of Technology  (R.I.T.) I wanted to see it for two reasons, one, because Martin Scorsese was the director, and two, because I heard from another student that Saul Bass had done the open title credits for the film. I had learned about Bass for the first time just a year before, and was excited to see a new movie that he had worked on.

I was not disappointed! My date on the other hand, was not as impressed as I was. There was no second date. Not because she didn't like the movie, I think she didn't like me. I did go on and on about how great the movie was at dinner afterwards. I also kept saying, "Really, you really didn't like it? How could you not like it? It was amazing!" Hmm... maybe that's why. Anyway, I still stand by that today! It was an amazing film, and I can't even remember her name.

As I have talked about in my previous posts, Saul Bass has an uncanny way of foreshadowing events in the film to set the tone, and bring the audience into the world of it's characters. 

Here Bass starts out with the sound of a storm. We can hear the thunder crashing, wind gusting, and the rain relentlessly hitting the water. We see the water of the river of Cape Fear as we are jarred by the score of the film by Elmer Bernstein, an arrangement of 'Bernard Herrmann''s original "Cape Fear" score. [3]

Next reflected in the water we see a Bird of Pray, possibly a Peregrine Falcon; a bird I found out in my research, is indigenous to the Cape Fear region. [4] This menacing bird descends upon and swoops just past us to reveal Robert De Niro's name. This is important for two reasons.

1. it prepares the audience to see De Niro as a vicious predator, descending on the innocent family and tearing them apart in the film. 

2. It's not the first time Bass has used an animal to capture the idea of a character in a film. The first time was when he used a black cat to embody the spirit of the main character "Kitty Twist", played by Jane Fonda, in the 1962 film Walk on the Wild Side. This self-referencing is done a few times throughout the opening titles of Cape Fear.

Another self-reference is the fractured type, used to convey the tone of the film. Bass used this technique in his film titles for Psycho.

As the title of the film appears, and then sinks into the dark water, we see an unsettling image of an eye looking up at us from the abyss.

As the face emerges  from the deep, we see a mouth form, and teeth show almost animal like, in the lower part of the screen. This also foreshadows a pivotal seen later in the film.

The face almost comes into full view before disappearing back into the depths of the water.

As the opening progresses, we see a shadowy image of a torso come straight towards us from out of the depths.

Next is a droplet of what we are to see as blood, into the water turning it red with vengeance.

Another set of eyes appear from the red of the water. Was concentrating on the eyes of characters in this opening title a self-reference to his work on the opening of Vertigo, or was it a nod to Scorsese and the opening of Taxi Driver? I'm not sure, but it's very effective.

We soon realize that the new set of eyes are that of an innocent young girl, Danielle Bowden, played by Juliette Lewis and she begins to speak.

"My reminiscence. I always thought that for such a lovely river the name is mystifying: "Cape Fear". When the only thing to fear on those enchanted summer nights was that the magic would end and real life would come crashing in."

(Cape Fear title sequence link)


References
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 [1] - [3]: Wikipedia   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Fear_%281991_film%29

[2]: Wikipedia   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Fear_River

[4]: Star News Online  http://critters.blogs.starnewsonline.com/12384/birds-of-prey-to-be-featured-at-halyburton-park/