Exclamatory Titles
Wednesday, October 9, 2013 at 4:45PM 
We're celebrating the 1968 film year sporadically as countdown to the Smackdown!
The first time I consciously remember obsessing over exact typography in a film title was in 1995 when David Fincher's Se7en emerged and then again when Moulin Rouge! hit in 2001. With the latter I got angry every time I saw someone type that title without the exclamation point. Bazmark movies require their specific punctuation. (See also: Romeo + Juliet. It's just not the same at all with an ampersand!)
Surveying 1968's film releases recently I couldn't help but wonder if that era, a seminal time for the world and the cinema, and that year specifically was the peak of exclamatory film titles? No less than four major films released that year asked you to shout their titles rather than politely sound them out.
BOOM! with Liz & Dick. Which also wins our Best Tagline of '68 for "together they devour life"
OLIVER! the only exclamation point film title to ever win the Best Picture prize (though not the only nominee obviously)
BANDOLERO! with Jimmy Stewart, Dean Martin & Raquel Welch. The exclamation point wasn't exclamatory enough so they had to add all caps in the tagline "a NEW kind of western"
STAR! with Julie Andrews ! as Gertrud Lawrence
Are you fussy about people using exactly correct titles? I am. I mean if you say Moulin Rouge without the exclamation point it's just a dusty Jose Ferrer biopic, don'cha know.
The only excuse for ditching the exclamation point is when you're just not feeling it.
♪ ...or by a comma when the feeling's not as strong... ♫
(Geraldine is such a cocktease.)
Reader Comments (20)
I *love* exclamatory titles, particularly for musicals. Hello Dolly! Star! I also enjoy saying the words "exclamation mark" after it, as in Sink The Bismarck Exclamation Mark. It makes it far more exciting and interesting.
Well, the shash in Frost/Nixon was just annoying.
I always wanted a sequel titled Star!!
JULIE!!
I love "The Informant!" The exclamation mark in the title is as absurd as the story told in the film.
I always write (and say) I Want to Live! exactly as the title is written. That's a title that needs to be spoken as loudly as Hayward's performance.
Don't forget "Holy Smoke!"
Can you imagine Casablanca! Schindler's List! or Gravity!? I wonder if punctuation automatically takes some gravitas off the movie, and just like repeated exclamation marks on the internet (!!!) makes the text not to be taken too seriously.
Not made in 1968, but Átame! must be one of the cases where the exclamation mark makes more sense.
"Airplane!" immediately comes to mind.
Not exactly the same thing, but it hurts my eyes to see Spanish titles written with each word capitalized. That's incorrect.
Glad someone brought up THE INFORMANT! Reminds me of the time I walked up to the box office and yelled out the title when attempting to buy a ticket. The glare the cashier threw back at me was priceless.
Pretentious: Me too! That's what makes it the most fun movie title to say.
I used to get very fussy when people say the music band Panic! At the Disco without the exclamatory, until the band themselves claimed they did not care at all whether they have that on or not. That's when I think to myself: What's all the fuss about the exclamatory anyway?, lol
not a real one, but I remembered "freud!", joey's musical on friends (and phoebe says something about the exclamation point).
After STAR! bombed, even WITH the exclamation point, the studio tried to get some of its money back by cutting out the cussing and re-releasing it as THOSE WERE THE HAPPY TIMES (no exclamation as I recall).
You know who should really think about incorporating exclamation points into their future projects? Lee Daniels. Now I'm actually going to be disappointed if that Janis Joplin biopic he has planned isn't called Joplin!
I love STAR ! ! The second exclamation point is used here to show my feelings for this wonderful Julie Andrews vehicle in which she outshines any other star! Her acting, singing, dancing are amazing in this movie. And to add to the show she looks gorgeous, dazzling and ever soooo glamorous in a record 128 costumes and Cartier jewelry specially designed for her. Julie really is a genuine, positive, totally marvelous, perfectly wonderful STAR!
TB: I would pay good money to see Joplin! but not Joplin. (I would pay even more money to see it if Jane Krakowski was playing Jackie Jormp-Jomp).
I'm with Mike in Canada in seconding Pretentious about I Want to Live! actually there are several Susan Hayward movies you would assume had exclamation points at the end, I'll Cry Tomorrow!, Stolen Hours!, Garden of Evil!, Where Love Has Gone!, so emphatic are her performances at times, which of course makes me love her more not less.
Aside from hers the one that must have the exclamation point to punch across the feeling of the picture is the 1954 giant ant thriller Them!
I'm like Elaine Benes, the more !s the better. However, they do make grammar checking a chore, just like titles with elipses and ?s
Although, if you want to get technical, it's "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" :)
Tell it, Waldemar! It's a beautiful film experience every time I watch it. Julie is a force of nature in this movie. The title is perfectly appropriate, as her breathtaking beauty, talent and presence are on full display. It's time for people to re-evaluate this lost classic!