A YouTube member has been posting some beautiful Maurice Binder title sequences, including those from my favourite movies, Arabesque (mysteriously not released on DVD) and Charade. I love the modernist nature of Binder’s work, and while he is best known for the James Bond gun-barrel sequence, there was a lot more to the man’s designs.
The following two are mated to Henry Mancini scores for Stanley Donen films.
Another favourite (again with Mancini, and Donen producing and directing) is this opening from the Audrey Hepburn–Albert Finney film
Two for the Road:
A few more to round off this post. We have
The Grass Is Greener, which shows that Binder could do a very cute sequence with babies. The second is Raquel Welch packing a parachute in
Fathom. Ken Hughes’
Billion Dollar Brain is unusual and less pleasant, but it fits with the tone of the last Harry Palmer film. But even here, Binder’s sense of modernist typography continues.
His style continued into the 1970s and remained, in my view, current for that decade. The last for this post is from the James Bond movie
The Spy Who Loved Me, and is closer to what some associate with Binder (girls and Helvetica). The Marvin Hamlisch song, performed by Carly Simon, is particularly fitting. The titles to
Moonraker, which I find to be very 1970s and with a John Barry-composed song, are not yet on YouTube.
In all cases, there is a sense of timelessness, which shows just how suited the principles of modernism were to title design. These ideas are still often observed by some of the most famous designers out there, such as Wayne Fitzgerald.
