Maurice Binder (December 4, 1918 – April 9, 1991) was an American film title designer best known for his work on 16 James Bond films including the first, Dr. No (1962) and for Stanley Donen's films from 1958.

He was born in New York City, but mostly worked in Britain from the 1950s onwards. In 1951, Binder directed two short films in the obscure Meet Mister Baby series; these films were preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015. He did his first film title design for Stanley Donen's Indiscreet (1958). The Bond producers first approached him after being impressed by his title designs for the Donen comedy film The Grass Is Greener (1960). Binder also provided sequences for Donen for Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966), both accompanying music by Henry Mancini.

Binder created the signature gun barrel sequence for the opening titles of the first Bond film, Dr. No (1962). Binder originally planned to employ a camera sighted down the barrel of a .38 calibre gun, but this caused some problems. Unable to stop down the lens of a standard camera enough to bring the entire gun barrel into focus, his assistant Trevor Bond created a pinhole camera to solve the problem and the barrel became crystal clear.

Binder described the genesis of the gun barrel sequence in the last interview he recorded before he died in 1991: That was something I did in a hurry, because I had to get to a meeting with the producers in twenty minutes. I just happened to have little white, price tag stickers and I thought I'd use them as gun shots across the screen. We'd have James Bond walk through and fire, at which point blood comes down onscreen. That was about a twenty-minute storyboard I did, and they said, "This looks great!".

At least one critic has also observed that the sequence recalls the gun fired at the audience at the end of The Great Train Robbery (1903). Binder is also known for featuring women performing a variety of activities such as dancing, jumping on a trampoline, or shooting weapons in his work. Both sequences are trademarks and staples of the James Bond films. Maurice Binder was succeeded by Daniel Kleinman as the title designer for GoldenEye (1995).

Prior to GoldenEye, the only James Bond movies for which he did not create the opening title credits were From Russia with Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), both of which were designed by Robert Brownjohn.

Binder shot opening and closing sequences involving a mouse (an animal that didn't appear in either the novel or the film) for The Mouse That Roared (1959), a sequence of monks filmed as a mosaic explaining the history of the Golden Bell in The Long Ships (1963), and a sequence of Spanish dancers explaining why the then topical reference of nuclear weapons vanishing in a B-52 mishap shifted from Spain to Greece in The Day the Fish Came Out (1967).

He designed the title sequence for Sodom and Gomorrah (1963) that featured an orgy (the only one in the film). He took three days to direct the sequence that was originally supposed to take one day.

Binder also was a producer of The Passage (1979), and a visual consultant on Dracula (1979) and Oxford Blues (1984).

Binder died from lung cancer in London, aged 72.

Source: Article "Maurice Binder" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Maurice Binder, né le 25 août 1925 à New York et mort le 4 avril 1991 à Londres, est un créateur américain de génériques de films, notamment connu pour avoir créé quatorze génériques des films de James Bond entre 1962 et 1989.

Après avoir entrepris des études d'ingénieur, Maurice Binder rejoint l'école des beaux-arts Art Students League of New York.

Il commence sa carrière artistique en travaillant comme publicitaire pour la chaîne de magasins américains Macy's, en menant des campagnes publicitaires et en créant des catalogues de vente.

À l'issue de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Maurice Binder travaille pour les studios Universal Pictures, et devient directeur artistique chez Columbia Pictures.

En 1958, il est engagé par le réalisateur américain Stanley Donen afin de créer le générique d'Indiscret (film sorti en 1958, avec Ingrid Bergman et Cary Grant). En 1960, il crée le générique du film britannique Ailleurs l'herbe est plus verte et s'installe à cette occasion à Londres en Angleterre.

En 1962, fort de son succès grandissant, il est engagé par les producteurs Albert R. Broccoli et Harry Saltzman, alors installés à Londres, afin de créer le générique de la première adaptation cinématographique du roman de Ian Fleming, James Bond 007 contre Dr No. C'est à cette occasion qu'il créa le désormais célèbre emblème générique: la vision du personnage de James Bond au travers d'un canon de pistolet (séquence du Gun Barrel), ainsi que les génériques reprenant des silhouettes de femmes nues, dansant ou sautant dans des effets spéciaux de lumière ou de contrastes colorés.

De 1962 à 1989, Maurice Binder réalise successivement quatorze génériques pour les films de James Bond ainsi que différents génériques pour d'autres productions.

Maurice Binder meurt le 4 avril 1991 à Londres en Angleterre d'un cancer du poumon.

Source: Article "Maurice Binder" de Wikipédia en français, soumis à la licence CC-BY-SA 3.0.