Beautiful End Credits: How a Film Lets Us Leave

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Pig’s cast credits are part of its farewell. Their lettering, and the transition with ‘I’m On Fire’, let the atmosphere of the last scene linger. That is what I like about them: the names arrive without making me feel that I have been abruptly handed over to a different film.

I like beautiful end credits. I am considerably less fond of being kept waiting for an extra scene. Give me names worth looking at, a voice worth listening to, a good way out. Turning the credits into a queue for the next bit of story makes a different demand on my attention.

That distinction matters. Enjoying the credits can be part of enjoying the film. Waiting for a bonus can make everything on the way to it feel like an obstacle, however carefully it has been designed.

Pig: let the atmosphere linger

The film’s press notes credit Cassandra Violet and Tyler Rydosz with arranging and performing ‘I’m On Fire’. [1] Knowing those names gives the music another point of interest: somebody made the sound that I want to carry away.

Our essay on songs that stay after a film ends follows what ‘I’m On Fire’ does within the story. Here, I am interested in the change of attention around the credits. The people who made a film become visible as names while its last scene is still on my mind.

A credit sequence need not perform a grand new trick to make that transition satisfying. Lettering has its own presence. How easily a name can be read, how much space it is given, and how soon another takes its place are aesthetic decisions as well as practical ones. In Pig, my preference is for the sense of continuity. The film has finished telling me something; I would like a moment to keep it.

Ambersons: a face gets another name

In the black-and-white The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Orson Welles gives the cast and crew a spoken farewell. His voice has already helped tell the story; now it introduces the people who made it. [2] I like the invitation in that. There is still someone addressing you, even though the characters’ business is over.

After the technical credits, Welles introduces the cast. Portrait-like shots of the actors dissolve into one another as he names them. Film scholar David Bordwell draws attention to the little movements within these images: a head turning, a gaze shifting. Tim Holt gives a quick, furtive glance towards the camera that Bordwell reads as remaining in character. [3]

Keep an eye on that glance. The name directs us towards the actor, while the expression can still recall the person he has been playing. The credit does not need to wipe the character away before acknowledging the performance.

I find that more interesting than a clean switch from pretending to being oneself. Naming a performer changes what a familiar face asks us to notice. We can remember a character’s behaviour and begin considering how somebody made it visible. Here, even an introduction has a little acting left in it.

The familiar voice also changes its job. It moves from describing the fictional world to acknowledging the work that gave it form. A name has a rhythm when somebody says it. An image has a duration before it gives way to the next. Those are still choices you can enjoy, even when there is no further plot to resolve.

There is a complication to keep in view: RKO substantially cut Ambersons and replaced its ending. [4] The released film cannot be treated as an untouched expression of everything Welles wanted. Its surviving credit sequence can still be examined on its own terms, without asking it to make that production history come out happily.

When you reach the end of The Magnificent Ambersons, let Welles make the introductions. I won’t test you on the names afterwards. Watch what a face does while you hear one.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t — make the names perform

A magician’s film has another possibility: make the names part of the act.

Laundry’s credited account of its work on Now You See Me: Now You Don’t describes experiments with typography, transitions, timing and illusion. The designers say they approached the revelation of each credit as a trick, misdirection or reveal. The page separately lists the teams for the Main on End sequence and the Main Title. [5]

That is the makers’ description of their approach. It gives a useful alternative to the quiet departure I value in Pig. A credit sequence can carry a film’s tone forward through performance, just as Welles’s spoken introductions do through a familiar voice. A film about magic has a good reason to introduce its makers with a little sleight of hand.

I would judge such a sequence by whether the trick makes the name worth attending to. Does the reveal help me notice who is being introduced? Does its rhythm feel like a continuation of the film? Those questions matter more to me than how many visual ideas the designers can fit in.

There is a point at which a display of the makers’ cleverness can crowd out the protagonist and the feeling I have carried from the story. That is an aesthetic risk, rather than a verdict on this sequence. The makers’ account establishes the intention; it does not settle how well the finished departure works.

Please don’t turn the farewell into a waiting room

The appeal of these approaches lies in what there is to attend to: the atmosphere around lettering, a face being introduced, a name becoming a little performance. The credits have something to offer while they are on screen.

An expected extra scene can change that relationship. I may find myself scanning for the moment the names stop, rather than noticing the names. The credit sequence becomes the interval before the thing I am waiting for. That is a poor bargain for a beautiful piece of design.

It can also weaken the last scene. I want to leave with what it has given me; the promise of another scene asks me to keep a space open for something else. A bonus may be enjoyable on its own terms. I still dislike the way waiting for it can take possession of the ending.

Acknowledging the people who made the film matters. My objection concerns the experience built around that acknowledgement. I would rather enjoy the credits because they are worth staying with. I don’t want their names to become the wallpaper of a holding area.

No attendance register, please. I was having a rather good time with the farewell.

References

1. NEON, PIG Press Notes (2021). Film and music credits, including ‘I’m On Fire’, arranged and performed by Cassandra Violet and Tyler Rydosz.
2. Farran Smith Nehme, ‘The Voice of Orson Welles’, The Criterion Collection, 26 November 2018. Welles’s narration and the closing cast and crew acknowledgements.
3. David Bordwell, ‘The Magnificent Ambersons: A Usable Past’, Observations on Film Art, 30 May 2014. The closing cast portraits and their movements; the reading of Holt’s glance is Bordwell’s.
4. The Criterion Collection, The Magnificent Ambersons. Film identity, black-and-white format and RKO’s changes to the released version.
5. Laundry, ‘Now You See Me: Now You Don’t Main End Titles’, Motionographer. Credited makers’ account of their design approach; the page distinguishes Main on End and Main Title teams. No publication date is displayed.