COPYCATS

Apparently, it doesn't take much to start a trend in Hollywood.  Elaborate main title sequences, which had gone out of fashion, came back in style during the late 1990s: think of the ingenious animated opening to Steven Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, to name just one example.

But this past year, Hollywood made a move in the opposite direction, as one filmmaker after

From the opening titles of The Haunted Mansion

One image from Imaginary Forces' celebrated title sequence for Se7en.

another opted to eliminate everything but a title card, and save the rest of the credits for the end of the film.

Why?  The answer, I suppose, is to get audiences "into" the movie as quickly as possible... though this presumption of A.D.D. on the part of today's moviegoers is contradicted by the length of the movies themselves.  What's the good of hurrying viewers into Pirates of the Caribbean when the film itself runs two hours and twenty-three minutes?  (That film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, was also responsible for Bad Boys II, which ran an inexcusable 147 minutes.)

Still, nothing succeeds like success in Hollywood, and if it's perceived that hit movies don't waste anyone's time with credits, that's what everyone wants to do.  There were some exceptions in 2003-the elaborate opening credits that Imaginary Forces created for The Haunted Mansion was better than the film itself-but it seems as if the tide has turned. 

The very fact that there is a tide says something unflattering about the nature of mainstream moviemaking.  Why shouldn't filmmakers feel free to explore different ways of introducing their stories?

For instance, why has no one returned to the 1950s/early 60s trend of having action before the titles?  It didn't take long for this to become a cliché, but it certainly was popular for a while.  No one made better use of those pre-title moments than Sam Fuller, in films like Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss... and I'll never forget the opening of Jerry Lewis' first solo film, The Delicate Delinquent, which used its perfectly-orchestrated opening gag (an innocent, bungling Jerry interrupting a rumble between two gangs in an alley) to lead into its introductory titles.  Even William Witney's The Cat Burglar, recently unearthed by Quentin Tarantino for a showing on the Trio network, grabs you with its opening footage of the title character breaking into a woman's apartment.

The first film to use this technique, so far as I know-and it's still arresting after sixty years-is Lewis Milestone's 1939 production Of Mice and Men.  Because it was released by United Artists, which didn't have a stock logo like Paramount or MGM, the film opens "cold," on the dramatic action of two men running for their lives.  They are George and Lenny, played by Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney Jr., and when they manage to escape their pursuers by hopping a train, they slide the giant door of the freight car shut-and the titles appear on that surface.  What a great way to start a movie!  (Milestone used a similar, if less dramatic, approach ten years later for The Red Pony.)

I recently watched the new DVD of You'll Never Get Rich (1941) with Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth.  That film opens with the familiar Columbia logo, but then cuts to Robert Benchley, being driven in a touring car.  He asks the chauffeur to slow down, as he notices something outside his window:  it's a series of roadside signs, of various shapes and sizes, that display all the credits for the film.  When the camera passes the last sign, Benchley tells the driver to speed up again, and the film begins.  Neat! 

The message is simple:  there's more than one way to start a movie.  I hope directors and producers remember that in 2004, and do more than copy what "everyone else" is doing. 

P.S.  Who was the first major moviemaker to place a director's credit at the end of a film-and what was the price he paid for that decision?  The answer is at the bottom of this column.

People love lists, but I don't like making them.  They're too arbitrary for my taste, so I resist as best I can... but at the end of every year, there's great pressure to come up with a "Top Ten."  My compromise is to present my list of favorite movies of 2003-which isn't limited to ten. 

LEONARD MALTIN'S BEST FILMS OF 2003

• Lost in Translation
• Cold Mountain
• Dirty Pretty Things
• American Splendor
• Finding Nemo
• Capturing the Friedmans
• My Architect
• The Barbarian Invasions  
• The Fog of War
• House of Sand and Fog
• In America
• Thirteen
• The Human Stain  
• Together
• The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
• Mystic River
• The School of Rock
• Big Fish
• A Mighty Wind
• The Station Agent
• Whale Rider
• Owning Mahownny

Incidentally, My Architect is a source of some frustration, as it's only played in New York City and in a handful of film festivals.  That makes it officially a 2003 release, and means it's eligible for the Academy Awards, but most of my fellow West Coast critics haven't seen it, so it hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves in Hollywood circles.  A wider release will begin later in January, and I urge all of you to seek out this extraordinary film-as moving and memorable a story as anything I've seen this past year.   

And if you're surprised to see something as "lightweight" as The School of Rock on my roster, that's exactly the reason I don't like Top Ten lists.  They tend to focus, as most award-givers do, on the most significant films.  There's nothing wrong with that, but at a time when so few people seem to know (or remember) how to provide sheer entertainment, without limiting or talking down to its audience, this film does stand out.  I don't think any other movie of 2003 provided more pure enjoyment. 

I have other things on my mind that I'll be discussing in future columns, including the challenge of DVDs that present alternate versions of movies, and the exciting news that the John Wayne movie The High and the Mighty will finally be released on video-along with some other 1950s titles you might not be so familiar with.

Find out more about Leonard's brand-new newsletter. It's Movie Crazy, too.

I'll close out this new year's column with the answer to my trivia question above.

When George Lucas produced The Empire Strikes Back, he knew that he wanted the film to start with the scrolling text that would remind viewers where the Star Wars story left off-just like an old Saturday matinee serial.  Irvin Kershner, who directed the film, had no objection to moving his credit to the end of the picture, but the Directors Guild of America did.  They spoke out against Lucas, as producer, in the harshest of terms, explaining that they had fought long and hard to secure contractual guarantee that a director's name be the last, and most prominent, credit at the beginning of a movie. To do otherwise was a betrayal of the Guild and his fellow directors. 

So Lucas submitted his resignation to the DGA, and the credits appeared the way he and Kershner wanted them to. 

I guess they were twenty years ahead of their time.