Notwithstanding some sloppy funeral arrangements from the notorious hard boiler, it appears that gumshoe writer, Raymond Chandler, will finally be reunited with his beloved wife after all!
Below are a few Philip Marlowe movie posters by Richard Amsel (top left and bottom left), Jack Davis (bottom middle), and David McMacken (top right).
Animal House movie poster illustrator, Rick Meyerowitz, has just come out with a new book called Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead that recalls the 1970’s glory days of National Lampoon when the magazine was actually funny…
…and before the brand lampooned itself by making cheesy, not funny comedies and committing stock fraud.
Jacques Fourastie has often been credited with designing the infamous Pickpocket movie poster. But luckily for us, he’s also done a lot of other French movie posters that we all can be proud of…
The French graphic artist, Raymond Savignac (1907-2002), was already well established in the advertising world for his simple, colorful commercial posters when he started doing movie posters. But lucky for him (and us), the famed director, Robert Bresson, took a shine to his work and the rest is one-sheet history!
You can find a more varied selection of his commercial work here.
Who says all clowns are created equal? Pierre Étaix, most famous in the design world as the illustrator of the iconic red Mon Oncle movie poster, has done it all. Getting his start in showbiz as a clown in the mid-’50s, he later served an apprenticeship under Jacques Tati as his gofer, gag writer, assistant director, and storyboardist.
But that wasn’t enough for the ambitious funnyman Étaix, as he went onto act and direct in a slew of critcally-acclaimed films, including The Suitor and Le Grand Amour — and then also became known as such a comic genius that Paris-Match dubbed him “the French Buster Keaton” and was often compared to Jerry Lewis, to his dismay.
Oh yeah, did I mention that Étaix is still clowning around working, too? The guy just finished up a part in the 2009 release, Micmacs — but if you want to go back to look at his ’60s classics, the films have recently been restored for all to enjoy!
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…
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.
Guy Gérard Noël was born Guy Carré — but later changed his name to Noël because he was born on Christmas day (and also because I’m sure he felt the moniker gave him a little more caché as an artisté).
Although he is undoubtedly most remembered for his seriously spooky output on the Hammer Horror series of posters distributed by Universal from 1950-1973, I personally have always found his romantic drama pieces much more appealing. But that’s just me. If you really want to know Noël, then you must check out EatBrie’s scary collection or, of course, just buy the book.
After retiring to the French countryside in the late 60’s to illustrate books and record covers, Noël died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 82.
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.
Movie Poster Museum 