Creating killer titles.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: Movie titles - REEL WORLD

WHILE I NEVER WOULD contest life's most basic lesson credited to kindergarten--"play nice"--a pivotal runner-up for me was a first-year art class edict that "Titles make all the difference." Regardless of the medium, a good heading simultaneously can be an audience hook ("Fatal Attraction," 1987), a story summary ("Saving Private Ryan," 1998), or a simple statement that resonates with multiple meanings ("Doubt," 2009). Writer-director Billy Wilder had a propensity for movie monikers with arresting plays on words, such as his romantic comedy, "Love in the Afternoon" (1957). After grabbing viewer attention with the mildly erotic promise of an afternoon tryst, the poignant Audrey Hepburn-Gary Cooper love story reveals a May-December relationship.

In Wllder's "Ace in the Hole" (1951), a cynical reporter (a never better Kirk Douglas) finds a self-serving comeback story--a man trapped in a caved-in Native American ruin. Douglas' character milks this human interest saga for strictly personal gain, with no concern for the victim. The title of this dark comedy is bitingly appropriate, a concise story synopsis so punningly flippant in its card-playing slang (despite a life hanging in the balance) as to be the perfect description of a genre in which the individual counts for little.

In contrast to Wilder's black humor brevity with "Ace in the Hole," Stanley Kubrick used a run-on overstatement of a title to underline his signature excursion into this genre, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964). With the message of dark comedy being that there is no message, the nutty nihilism of this lengthy label says it all.

Kubrick, however, was capable of maximizing a brilliantly brief title, too, especially if it meant simply trading upon a proven commodity. For instance, his inspired 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange follows a basic movie marketing ploy: If the public bought the book, they will want to see the movie. Yet, make no mistake, Burgess' title hauntingly poses the story's gut-wrenching moral dilemma: To guard against horrific crimes, does society have the right to take away a living (orange) creature's free will and turn it into something mechanical (a clockwork)?

Memorable literary-anchored film titles sometimes am tied to a single pivotal phrase, such as Ernst Lubitsch's use of a line often cited as the English language's most notable utterance, "To be or not to be," as the name for his 1942...