The new poster for The 2013 Cannes Film Festival is a tribute of sorts to the 1960s Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward starrer, A New Kind of Love — although I’ve always had a deep crush on the French version by Roger Soubie (top right). (DHD)
Tag Archives: roger soubie
Come Sail Away!
Until They Sail (French grande, 47×63) from Roger Soubie…
When Monsters Met Maidens…
From December 14-18, 2012, The Swann Auction Galleries presents Monsters and Maidens: A Film Poster Collection, featuring some of the darnedest damsels in distress designs that any movie poster lover has seen, including works by (clockwise from top left): Roger Soubie, Boris Grinsson, Alfredo Capitani, and Anselmo Ballester. (MOPO)
Gone With Le Vent…
Just in case you haven’t set eyes on the delicious movie poster collection of Eatbrie, then check out his latest French take on an American classic — the Thomas Hart Benton-like two-panel for Gone With the Wind by artist, Roger Soubie.
Fiscal Clift?
Who would’ve thunk that all these expensive Montgomery Clift posters were causing the world’s debt crisis? Guess I wouldn’t expect anything less than top dollar from such iconic Internationally-known artists as Roger Soubie (top left, middle, lower middle), Mac Gomez (top right), and Boris Grinsson (bottom right).
Metropolis Ripoff?
Although not on the scale of the recent Metropolis poster scandal, even a mid-century master like French poster artist, Roger Soubie (left), can be inspired by the classics…
Meet The Sauvages…
Here’s some savagely beautiful sauvage (means “wild” in French) things from Boris Grinsson (top), Constantin Belinsky (The Wild One and bottom, middle), Roger Soubie (Hud, middle right), and Clement Hurel (bottom right)!
A Dash-ell of Hammett, please?
Look out, film fanatics, because Noir City’s annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival begins this weekend and runs through January 29, capping off with a Dashell Hammett marathon, including screenings of the 1931 and 1941 versions of The Maltese Falcon…
And don’t miss out on these French poster beauties (drawn by Roger Soubie) of that other Hammett classic, The Glass Key.
Halloween Howl!
CRY…SCREAM…It’s Halloween!
Gun To The Head!
Scary Phones!
Who you gonna call? Sorry, wrong number! Here’s a terrifying line of some of the scariest (and not so scary) movie posters featuring telephones, including the French versions of Experiment In Terror (Georges Kerfyser) and Phone Call From A Stranger (Roger Soubie).
French West!
Even though my pops loved ‘em, I’m not really a super huge fan of Westerns. However, if you take that All-American genre and mix it up with the sometimes anti-American sentiments of the French, you get an artistically interesting movie poster art combination.
Jean Mascii is credited with The Dollars of Nebraska while Boris Grinsson did The Man From Laramie (style A) and Stage to Thunder Rock; She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Cattle King are by Roger Soubie.
They’ve Got Personality!
Back in the mid-1940′s, Paramount hired Roger Soubie to do a series of French Personality Posters to promote its stars in Europe, most notably Veronica Lake, Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Lamour, and Ray Milland.
And if any movie studio needed someone that could highlight the beauty, radiance, and charm of its “product” — it’s apparent that Soubie was the right artist for the job.
eBay Deal of the Day: Timeless Books!
A few years ago, Stanislas Choko, owner of the renowned Intemporel Galerie in Paris, came out with a handsome set of poster books featuring legendary 20th Century French artists, Roger Soubie (Martine Boyer, Pierre Bourdy), Boris Grinsson (Jean Segura), Guy Gerard Noel (Christophe Capacci), and Jacques Bonneaud (Claude Bonneaud, Erwan Serveau).
(FYI, Intemporel means “Timeless” in English for all you non-Francophiles out there.)
Anyway, I recently discovered on Intemporel’s eBay store that Choko has slashed 60% off the prices of each book down to $15 (or, make that 12 Euros from the normal 29)!
So no matter where you’re from or what language you speak, this is an absolute steal as these handsome little tomés feature some of the most beautiful French posters ever created in the history of motion picture art…and thus will most likely be the closest chance I’ll ever have to getting my hands on them!
At first glance, picking a favorite of these books is like picking a favorite child. But since I don’t have kids, I’ll have to say that I probably most enjoyed the Boris Grinsson book. But of course I’m a little biased since I’m a huge Grinsson fan and love a lot of the comedy films he worked on. So depending on your personal taste, it’s really hard to go wrong with any one of these treasures.
IMHO, here are my takes on each of these lovely books below…
B is For Boris
The life of Boris Grinsson could be a movie. Born a Russian Jew in 1907, he abandoned his dreams of acting to become a designer in Berlin. But then after doing an anti-Hitler poster depicting the Führer as an archangel of death in 1933, the Nazis soon came after him and he fled to rural France with his German wife. For years, he survived doing farmwork in the liberated zone, painting frescoes in dance bars, cafes, and, yes, movie theatres.
It wasn’t until after the war ended in 1944 that he was able to safely return to Paris and his one true love: designing movie posters. He joined The Synidcat, a French publicity agency, where the established veteran, Roger Soubie, got all the “A” films and Grinsson did all the “B” movies. But Boris finally found his calling as he soon became highly sought after and never met a commission he didn’t like, as he covered pretty much every genre from animated cartoons and comedies to epic period dramas and action thrillers.
A year before he died in 1999 at the age of 92, Stanislas Choko’s Galerie Intemporel organized a retrospective of his voluminous work at Espace Saint Jean in Melun, France.
Soubie Special!
While Boris Grinsson was busy doing all the “B” movie posters for The Syndicat, Roger Soubie was the A-lister at the firm. And his top ranking was well deserved as his finely depicted sexy sirens and sci-fi scenarios indeed put him on another planet.
Martine Boyer and Pierre Bourdy’s book showcases Soubie’s flamboyant style with splashes of color and insight, illuminating the artist’s substantial entry into the 2,000+ club. But as lithography was supplanted by offset printing and photography, Soubie met the same fates as those of his comrades, Bonneaud, Grinsson, and Noël, and moved onto other areas of travel and advertising design work until his death in 1984 at the age of 86.
Furiously In Love
When I was growing up, Elizabeth Taylor was probably more known as Michael Jackson’s goofy, boozy pal than the sultry sex symbol she became famous for in the 1950′s and 60′s. But in Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger’s new book, Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and the Marriage of the Century, readers get a backstage pass to the volatile, red-hot romance between two of the greatest actors from Hollywood’s golden age.
They were married and divorced twice over two productive, but hard-partying decades — and Taylor was more than capable of drinking him under the table. And it’s been reported that right before Burton died of a brain hemorrhage at age 58, he had sent one last letter to his old flame, which she received a few days after his funeral, and apparently still sits on her nightstand to this day.
*NOTE: The stunning French version of The V.I.P.s below (middle, right) was done by Roger Soubie.
Soubie Doo!
The poster work of French artisté, Roger Soubie, is like a beautiful, unattainable woman. Chic. Sophisticated. And expensive! So it’s no wonder that his style translated well for his many vintage travel posters, too. And recently, Le Intemporel Gallerie in Paris came out with a limited edition book celebrating Mr. Soubie that you can peek at here.
French-cock!
Most cinephiles love Alfred Hitchcock — or at least appreciate the consistent output of “The Master of Suspense”. So now I’d like to combine two things we all can admire — Hitchcock and the French posters of his movies, many of which were done by Boris Grinsson (Vertigo, Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, To Catch A Thief) and the super glamorous Roger Soubie (Notorious, North By Northwest).
(Disclaimer: Rear Window is actually the Belgian version, but I couldn’t resist!).
