Great Opening Title Sequences

Here are two of the greatest opening title sequences ever filmed. The first is from the 1969 film The Italian Job starring a varied cast that included Michael Caine, Noël Coward, Rossano Brazzi, and Benny Hill. The car is a ‪Lamborghini Miura‬ and the location is the Italian Alps. Although the 2003 remake was a great film with a little more action than the original, how can you beat a score by the great Quincy Jones with a vocal here by Matt Monro? It doesn't get much better than this.



This second title sequence is from the original fatal attraction movie, Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood's directorial debut two years later. I always think of this film as the last film of the Beat Generation, although it comes a good ten years after the peak of that period, It's shot in Big Sur and Carmel which, even in the early seventies, still attracted a lot of aging beatnik artists. But of course, as in SoHo in New York City at the same time, they were getting priced out of the area. I remember for a time in the mid-60s that Joan Baez and Bob Dylan lived in Carmel.

The Misty of the title is an instrumental version by the song's composer, the great Errol Garner, from his album Contrasts. It was a favorite among the jazz club denizens of North Beach and even gets a mention in the great beatnik novel, Shake Him Till He Rattles. Also featured in Play Misty for Me is Roberta Flack's The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face which provides the background for a romantic beach scene.

The opening has Clint Eastwood getting in to his Jaguar XK-150 at his house in Big Sur and heading up the Pacific Coast Highway, over the Bixby Bridge, to his job as a DJ at a Carmel jazz radio station, where he gets a request from a female listener . . . "Play Misty for Me."