Over-branding the movies
Battle of the Mega-egos at the Multiplex
Robert Altman, one of the idiosyncratic directors who sought to minimize the opening preliminaries in a film.
By Max Alvarez
MAXALVAREZ.COM
[dropcap]There[/dropcap] was a time when a Hollywood film commenced after a single studio logo faded to black: a roaring lion (M-G-M), a woman bearing a torch (Columbia), a star-crowned mountain (Paramount), a monogrammed shield (Warner Bros.), a spinning globe (Universal), a radio tower atop a globe (R-K-O), a temple-like structure illuminated with searchlights (20th Century-Fox), or a white winged horse (Tri-Star). Today, these are merely the beginning of a series of pretentious logos for affiliated production companies.
Nowadays, a major commercial release rarely has less than three computer-animated logos at the start as if to guarantee audience recognition and awareness. In truth, these logos exist to inflate the already healthy egos of the producers and executives. This excess of corporate logos makes one wistful for the days when only one logo – or no logo at all – appeared at the start of a feature film.
Just 10 seconds of graceful but memorable branding, then the main dish. The lion symbol—”Leo, the Lion”—was chosen by the studio’s publicity chief in an indirect homage to his alma mater’s icon, the Columbia University mascot, and because the owner’s family name, Loew, means lion in German. (1)
One of the great pleasures of watching most films distributed by United Artists before the late 1960s was the absence of any type of UA logo. The pictures simply faded in on the titles, or an image. The most memorable example of the classic UA approach was Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), which literally begins with an action shot of a woman running down a highway at night. The official titles do not begin for several minutes – and they run backwards!
For a brief period in the 1960s and early 1970s, it was fashionable for certain commercial releases to eschew studio logos altogether. Alfred Hitchcock avoided using the traditional Universal logo on his last four features. Francis Ford Coppola dispensed with the Paramount mountain at the start of both The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather, Part II (1974), opting instead for the words “A Paramount Picture” printed in white lettering on a black background. Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) likewise opened without the Warner Bros. logo and even the 20th Century-Fox logo is absent from many of the original Planet of the Apes films of the early ‘70s. Despite being a co-production of 20th Century-Fox and Warner Bros., the artless blockbuster The Towering Inferno (1974) similarly opened without either of those studios’ logos.
With contemporary Hollywood production awash in corporate bureaucracy and protocol, it is inconceivable that a current film director could convince transnational subsidizers to be content with receiving mere presentation credits on screen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit: R.Berdah-Canet
Max Alvarez is an author, film historian, and speaker, on Hollywood and world cinema culture. A former Smithsonian Institution Visiting Scholar and film curator at National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., Max has been a member of the acclaimed SEC Roughriders Toastmasters speaking club in Manhattan since 2009, serving as club president in 2010-11.
A survivor of the 1980s film and television industry in Los Angeles, Max Alvarez has worked as an entertainment journalist, film and theater critic, motion picture preservationist, archival researcher, teacher, museum programmer, and copywriter. His presentation partnerships to broaden understanding of the cultural impact of film have included the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, Columbia University, the New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Brainery, New York University/Stern School of Business, City University of New York, the American Film Institute, The Library of Congress, the U.S. Department of State, Fulbright Scholars Program, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and numerous European embassies. His work has been published in the Chicago Tribune, The Milwaukee Journal, The Independent Film & Video Monthly, and Film History: An International Journal.
(First iteration: October 16, 2012)
NOTES
(1) The studio’s official motto, “Ars Gratia Artis“, is a Latin phrase meaning “Art for art’s sake“;[13][14][15][16] it was chosen by Howard Dietz, the studio’s chief publicist.[16][17][18] The studio’s logo is a roaring lion surrounded by a ring of film inscribed with the studio’s motto. The logo, which features Leo the Lion, was created by Dietz in 1916 for Goldwyn Pictures and updated in 1924 for MGM’s use.[16][19][20] Dietz based the logo on his alma mater’s mascot, the Columbia University lion.[16][18][21][22] Originally silent, the sound of Leo the Lion’s roar was added to films for the first time in August 1928.[15] In the 1930s and 1940s, the studio billed itself as having “more stars than there are in heaven”, a reference to the large number of A-list movie stars under contract to the company. (Read more, Wikipedia)
APPENDIX 1
Major Studio Logos
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