Firefox or Foxfire? It’s time for another Movie Poster Smackdown! Of course, my favorite French poster of the 1955 Jane Russell-Jeff Chandler film easily blows away the USA one-sheets with Angelina Jolie and Jessica Tandy and is by none other than (yawn) Boris Grinsson.
Clement Hurel (1927-2008) was unquestionably one of the more witty French movie poster designers to decorate the industry. Mimicking Picasso’s range, he transitioned easily from Realism to a looser, humorous Cubist style. He could do silly. He could do sexy. He could do strong. As well any other feeling to express the themes of the inventive film posters he dreamed up.
And he was also an outspoken critic of the movie business when it did not recognize the intellectual copyrights of the artíste and fought to protect artists’ ownership interests right up until his dying day. (via Dominique Besson and Intemporel)
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.”
Here’s two legends going at it on The Postman Always Rings Twice with Rudy Obrero (USA), Renato Casaro (Italian) — plus the legendary (IMHO) Japanese version.
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.)
While most publishing houses are getting spooked off by e-books, Tony Nourmand and the classy staffers at The Reel Poster Gallery in London are going gangbusters into the book biz with their offshoot, Reel Art Press, which will publish limited-edition, signed, and numbered movie poster books. So if you’ve got the dough, they’ve got the paper!
Their first releases will be The Rat Pack and Bill Gold: Posterworks.
In honor of the upcoming movie poster book launch of The Rat Pack by Reel Art Press, I thought I’d feature a trio of International versions of the Vegas hustlers. (The Italian version of Ocean’s 11 is by Jean Mascii, left.)
Like his contemporaries, René Ferraci and Jouineau Bourduge, Michel Landi came into prominence in the French movie poster world in the mid-1960s, just as photography and offset printing was supplanting traditional illustration.
Undoubtedly most known for his iconic poster of the 1968 Steve McQueen classic, Bullitt, Landi also pumped out a fleet of other popular designs for many of the era’s most memorable films.
Movie Poster Museum 