Published in Cinema Journal 48:4 (Summer 2009), translated from the German by Noelle Aplevich, this article has become a key reference in academic writing on title sequences in English. Stanitzek surveys the formal and functional characteristics of the Vorspann, arguing that the title sequence is not a threshold to the film but a self-reflexive reading of it — the film interpreted by its own beginning.
The article draws on Genette's paratext theory and extends it specifically to film, giving researchers and students a precise conceptual vocabulary for discussing what title sequences do and how they do it.