Bond films: title sync (more notes in description)
I love when this happens in a film, particularly when it's done quite intentionally, as if to announce its identity to two senses at once. Sung or spoken, doesn't matter. Sometimes, even outside Bond, the timing or even the order of the credits is out of the ordinary just to make it work. (I like it best when the title is neither seen nor heard until this moment, and I have to admit Moonraker fails here. But it and FRWL are too good not to include in the montage.)
The Spy Who Loved Me is the biggest exception, mostly in historical context, being the only one of the first 14 that could have matched but didn't match the timing (and whose song has the title but isn't named for it). It would be a long wait, of course; instead, when the title does appear, word by word with uneven rhythm, it has an almost uncertain, tentative quality. "Is this when I come in? Wait, no? Yes? With no accompaniment?"
It's a lot to take in at once. Pause, rewind, try to follow the clips with a half-focused eye...
Additional thoughts:
1. Robert Brownjohn and Maurice Binder as title designers probably get the most credit for sticking to the concept. Binder did continue through the Dalton era, but those timings would be excruciating. And timings in GE/DAD are achievable, but maybe the shift away from frontloading the title in the lyrics just heralded a new era. It's fine.
2. Sometimes the song credit itself appears while it's being sung (again), but it's far less interesting and a bit more imprecise/unintentional.
3. For Your Eyes Only is the only Moore title song to start with the film title, and it's also the earliest-synced vocal. Thunderball is the only Connery entry (with vocals) *not* to start with the film title, and is the latest sync by a long shot!
4. Bond historians know about "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" and how it was almost the title song for Thunderball. A copy is included in a DVD commentary as an alternative title-sequence experience, and the lyrics don't start until the title has appeared! I'm a little hazy on how this all works, but my understanding is that the producers were hesitant to have a song without the title in it and stipulated the title had to appear before any MKKBB vocals, but also that it was an early candidate, while the slow start to the credits would only be necessary for the Tom Jones song. How do these pieces fit together as cause and effect? Did anyone really plan for both an incredibly long vamp and slow title sequence?
5. On the simpler side, fans and eagle-eyed viewers know Octopussy promised "From a View to a Kill" (as the short story is titled) but the "From" got dropped. Could it have been too hard to fit into the lyrics, forcing the producers' hands? (This film is also the last to sync at all, but without it, that distinction would leapfrog back to FYEO!)
6. The first vocal use of Skyfall is really as two words, but I listed its time anyway. 80 seconds in, it's truly a match for the film's title. Just for what it's worth.