Here’s a cool Film Noir mashup video edited by Serena Bramble that was screened during last spring’s San Francisco Film Noir Festival, hosted by local noir-it-all, Eddie Muller.
(NOTE to all you ADDers: Hang in there as the music montage kicks in at the :34 second mark!)
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.
One of my favorite all-time movie poster artists is the Argentinean illustrator, Osvaldo Venturi — who I didn’t even know existed until a year and a half ago when I stumbled upon his work in The Art of The Modern Movie Poster from The Posteritati Gallery in NYC.
Venturi’s elegant posters from the 1940s and 19450s are more like paintings than one sheets, filled with vivid, swirling bursts of color and large dramatic faces of movie stars (perhaps he was the one who invented the notorious “floating heads“).
The price ranges for these beauties are all over the map from thousands of dollars on eBay to just a couple ten spots on EMoviePoster if you get lucky. So, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, “if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”
WARNING: This post is not promoting domestic abuse — but merely just highlighting a few strange illustration quirks from the Let-Me-Slap-Some-Sense-Into-You-Mentality of the 1950s. Funny how they expressed relationship drama back then. Can you imagine how focus groups would react now if they put out a one sheet with Leonardo DiCaprio slugging his female co-star?
In any event, here’s another Movie Poster Smackdown Slapdown! (Le Tumulte is by Boris Grinsson and 99 River Street comes courtesy of Paul Waines at the All Poster Forum, which you should join immediately if you enjoy the wonderful world of movie posters.
And two more interior design movie posters…The tantalizing Love In The Afternoon (by Saul Bass) and the French version of The L-Shaped Room (Georges Kerfyser).
Lately, I’ve been on an Argentinean movie posters kick — but don’t cry for me, Argentina…even though some of these country of origin posters do nearly bring me to tears!
And one of my favorite Argentinean poster artists goes by the name Essex. Wish I could tell you more about him (or her), but aside from the recognizable signature and a few listed credits on some movie poster websites, such as LAMP and Posteritati — that’s all I could find! But all you need is to take one look at Essex’s version of The Lost Weekend and you too will soon get lost in the beautiful haze…
(By the way, his John Hancock reminds me of the old Esso Gas logo.)
Yesterday, I mentioned French poster artist, Jean Mascii — and if you aren’t familiar with his work, he is basically to 1960s dramas and westerns what Robert McGinnis is to James Bond’s US movie posters. In fact, he even did his own French rendition of Goldfinger.
But of course, Mascii was no one-hit wonder as we all can attest by admiring his bold, rich colorful portfolio of International one-sheets below…
A colorful character off the screen, Tony Curtis liked it hot, but always played it cool (even on his movie posters), appearing in a few Hollywood classics as well as a bunch of stinkers…in large part to finance his lavish lifestyle!
This past weekend, I finally got a chance to see The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. And while I never was a huge Disney fan growing up (okay, maybe The Seven Dwarves were kinda cool), it’s hard not to be impressed with how this humble Midwestern kid turned his little animation studio into an international entertainment giant. (No cryogenics jokes, please!)
The legacy of Mr. Disney has been handled with great care as the museum features a smart layout of spotless exhibit rooms, archival videos, and interactive games — but what appealed to me the most was the classic collection of vintage Disneyland posters that mimic the simple, clean lines of French travel posters and have clearly stood the test of time…and no doubt inspired the Pixar animators during the making of The Incredibles.
Movie Poster Museum 