Architecture of: "Call Me By Your Name" [2107]

Villa Albergoni in Moscazzano, Italy
Director Luca Guadagnino
Production Designer Samuel Dehors
Set Decorator Violante Visconte di Modrone

Architect of Film: Saul Bass, Title Design for "Casino" [1995]

Casino [1995]

Beginning with the choristers' explosion of voices in J.S. Bach's Matthäuspassion, playing under the literal explosion of an automobile into a ball of fire, Bass's titles bleed into a churning montage of saturated colors, and vivid, abstracted views of the title location's blinking marquee lights. With the figure of our story's (dead) narrator floating in fiery space at the beginning, and again at the end of the sequence, we are given an aptly seductive introduction to the glamorous vocation & ignominious demise of the story's lead character, the mafia-employed, chief enforcer of a seductive, 1970s Las Vegas ...... Casino.       

                                 

Architect of Film:Saul Bass's Title Design for "Anatomy of a Murder" [1959]

To a swaggering score by Duke Ellington, the solid black, scissor-cut, abstracted shapes of a disassembled human figure pop and slide into our grey background view - but not necessarily in order, and ultimately not clearly connected. With the roughly drawn text of the titles thrown up in stark, white relief we are quickly informed that although the body is clearly a murdered one, how & why may be somewhat of a puzzle. As always in his title designs, Bass introduces the story to come, not with a bland exposition, but rather a startling subtlety. 

Watch the animated sequence below -