Psycho and the "Saul Bass Mysteries"

Comparing Preminger (a notorious martinet, difficult character) to Hitchcock vis-a-vis Bass is interesting, but, of course, there are other datapoints, esp. Frankenheimer and Kubrick (Spartacus's credits are all-time great in the year of Psycho) for whom Bass did amazing work in the '60s.

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I am reminded that Hollywood is but certainly was "a closed shop company town" in which surprisingly few key players often worked on a lot of movies. For instance, there was a time in the 70's, where your big movie scores were being done pretty much by John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, or Elmer Bernstein; Oh, Lalo Schifrin snuck in there and Hitchcock used Ron Goodwin for Frenzy, but Williams, Goldsmith and Bernstein got the most play.

And for awhile in the fifties and sixties, everybody wanted and needed a Saul Bass poster and/or credit sequence.

In 1960, I think he does Psycho, Spartacus, and Ocean's eleven.

In 1962, he does Walk on the Wild Side (very celebrated.)

In 1963, Mad Mad World. (Credit sequence goes on FOREVER.)

And didn't Billy Wilder finally use Bass for One, Two Three and KIss me Stupid? (Some Like it Hot and The Apartment do NOT have Bass credits.)

That said, well, uh...its not like studios needed Bass credits on everything. He's not on Westerns like Rio Bravo and The Mag 7. I guess I'd have to see his credit list to get a sense of how many movies Saul Bass really did the credits on.

And this: somewhere around 1972, the Saul Bass credit sequence was pretty much OVER. Movies like The Godfather and The Exorcist DIDN'T HAVE credit sequences. Just the title would appear -- "The Godfather" -- and the movie would begin. Spielberg's Jaws had a pretty straightforward credits sequence(we're underwater chugging along from a shark's eye view); Close Encounters used the Godfather technique, and unlike the va-va-VOOM excitement of the North by Northwest credit sequence, Raiders of the Lost Ark opens almost boringly.

I haven't been able to find any references but I *recall* interviews in which Frank. described falling out with Bass. I seem to remember him saying something like he was 'creeped out' or 'unnerved' by Bass being on set all the time,

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Maybe Hitchcock was, too (on the Cabin One clean-up set, for instance.)

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and even more explicitly something like 'He [Bass] needed to go off and make his own damn movie'.

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I would expect for "hands on" directors like Hitchcock and Frankenheimer, having a guy like Bass hanging around, making suggestions, etc WOULD bug them. At least with credits and movie posters, that's a concise task. "Just hanging around to kibbutz" can bug a director -- especially if the credit sequence seems not to be the director's work.

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Note that on their final film together, Grand Prix (a big hit), Bass's credit was, “visual consultant; montages and titles by Saul Bass.”

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Sounds like Bass learned well from what Hitchcock awarded him on Psycho. Hitchcock assistant Hilton Green noted, by the way, that he shares the "credit shot" with Bass in Psycho where Bass is listed as Visual Consultant; its as if Hitchcock wanted the two men to be equated as his assistants.

For most people these days and I think most at the time it's Bass's credits and split-screen race montages that are GP's main attraction, but at least some critics hated them. Here's Kael:


"After the first few minutes of Grand Prix (MGM), my companion leaned over and said, 'Now you know what it's like to be run over.' Saul Bass had got hold of heavy tires and Cinerama: you don't go to this movie, it comes after you. And you're not rid of Bass after the titles, he keeps coming back with montages—little World's Fair–type documentaries, simple-minded and square, that pad out the three hours."
(this is from The New Republic 14 Jan 1967, not The New Yorker)

It can't be easy to have a subordinate/collaborator be such a lightning rod for both credit and blame.

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See..you can see Frankenheimer realizing that he had to give up "his" movie to make room for these Bass split screen interludes -- which, as I recall, took us right out of the movie as a dramatic story and made it look like an industrial training film or something.

I suppose Saul Bass, like a lot of "hot talent," had his day...and then stayed too long. But he kept doing posters -- The Shining(1980) has one -- and I think his last credit is "by Saul and Elaine Bass"(daughter? wife?) for the credits on Casino (1995.) Scorsese -- looking to revisit the past yet again.

Family Plot: Hitchcock goes The Godfather route -- almost. Only four credits up front: "Alfred Hitchccock's" "Family Plot" "Screenplay by Ernest Lehman," "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock" and -- we're into the story. Indeed, unlike with as other movies where the stars at least get separate title cards at the end, Dern, Black, Harris and Devane whoosh up on a scroll at the end as if they are featured players!

I mention the post-Bass credits because they are a reason the Big Three are so great -- and I think only with The Birds and Torn Curtain did Hitchcock match them.

Arbogast was to be dispatched post haste. It's all part of making Loomis and Lila Crain become more of the protagonist while building up Norman Bates' mother as the villain.

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Its been said that the sheer suddenness of Arbogast's exit is part of the structure AND the mood of Psycho...the detective gets all this screen time, all this build-up, all this possible heroism and -- ka-BOOM - just like that, he's outta the movie. Not to mention, its a repeat of how Janet Leigh suddenly was out too.

As some critic wrote when the Sam and Lila section begins, "The entire machinery of the basic story starts up again, as a couple investigate the disappearance of the investigator who was investigating the disappearance of Marion..."

Ha. Ha. Ha. Maybe Psycho IS a comedy. Just a little bit....