In their increasing eagerness to capture a wider viewing audience for their annual awards ceremony, you’d think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences would create a few more categories the average moviegoer could really get excited about instead of Best Sound Mixing or Best Live Action Short which only a handful of people ever get to see. How about Best Title Credits? It’s an art form in its own right. Graphic designer Saul Bass certainly proved that years ago with his innovative opens for the films of Otto Preminger (Carmen Jones, The Man With the Golden Arm, Saint Joan, Bonjeur Tristesse, Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent, Exodus, The Cardinal) and Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho). But even before him, opening title credits were a key component of the film, often setting the tone and even encapsulating the movie’s theme or storyline into a compact visual nugget.

Here are some of the more memorable ones that come to mind when I think back on favorite films or those which couldn’t match the brilliance of their title credits.

1. MAD LOVE
Karl Freund’s atmospheric rendering of the oft-filmed novel “The Hands of Orlac” starring Peter Lorre. The credits appear as ghostly writing on a windowpane.

2. FIVE STAR FINAL
I cite this one as a representative example of how Warner Brothers would often handle opening credits for their assembly-line programmers. A simple but iconic design followed by a brief introduction of the major cast members as their character and in descending order of importance.

3. KISS ME DEADLY
After a mysterious open where Ralph Meeker (as private eye Mike Hammer) picks up a frantic hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) on a deserted road at night, the credits roll down the car windshield at a sharp angle while the soundtrack broadcasts music from the radio.

4. FAHRENHEIT 451
Francois Truffaut’s first and only venture into an English language film was generally deemed a disappointment but the title credits were unique in that they were read over a montage of television antennas.

5. THE HAWK AND THE SPARROWS
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1966 philosophical comedy features a delightful title sequence which is sung in mock-opera style to Ennio Morricone’s playfully eccentric theme music.

6. THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA
Numerous Walt Disney movies have dazzling opening credits but this one draws you immediately into its floor level view of the world starting with the title character’s face peering into a mouse hole accompanied by a lulling song for pre-schoolers.

7. THE SPY WHO LOVED ME
No list of great title credit sequences would be complete without a James Bond film represented but I love the way this one transitions from an opening action sequence – Roger Moore as 007 skiing off a cliff into thin air and drifting down, down, down – into the stylish graphics accompanied by Carly Simon’s hit single.

8. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
There is a simplicity and elegance to the opening of this credit sequence that sets up the child’s point of view that informs the movie as it did the book. And Elmer Bernstein’s evocative music sets just the right tone.

9. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
Steven Spielberg’s entertaining account of real-life con artist Frank W. Abagnale (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) was a return to the classic form of Saul Bass in its opening credits – a playfully shifting animated design that sets up the film’s deceptively lighthearted tone.

9.THE SAFETY OF OBJECTS
An offbeat independent film that followed in the wake of “American Beauty” and also explored dysfunctional families in suburbia. It didn’t really work but the opening credits in which the main characters are represented by figurines emerging from cuckoo clocks was inspired.

10. MIMIC
Guillermo del Toro’s shamefully neglected urban horror thriller from 1997 has a mesmerizing open designed by Kyle Cooper, who also created the more famous title credits to “Se7en.”