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)!

Keep On Truckin’

Here’s some International vintage posters from two classic film noir trucker films, The Long Haul (featuring the heavy workloads of Anselmo Ballester, Georges Kerfyser, and Hans Braun, respectively, in order on the top row) and Thieves Highway (Boris Grinsson, bottom).

Rojac’d!

Before J-Lo and Ray-J, there was Rojac — aka Roger Jacquier, an elegant early 20th Century French movie poster designer whose work no doubt must’ve inspired his contemporaries, René Peron and Hervé Morvan.

Anyway, if you’re interested to learn more about this artist, check out Adrian Curry’s excellent post on The Auteurs website right here

When Péron Met Bogey…

The Caine Mutiny was not René Péron’s only collaboration with Humphrey Bogart as these other movie posters below show this was more than just the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Here’s looking at you, kids…

For The Birds

Wow, these French movie posters for Hitchcock’s The Birds (the first two are by Boris Grinsson) make my eyes go ravenous! And be sure to check out the Cliff Notes Video of the film below…

Marguerite-Ville

From two of my favorite French movie poster artists, Guy Gérard Noël and Clement Hurel (top middle + right), come these ridiculously vibrant versions of the 1955 film, Marguerite De La Nuit

Hurrah For Hurel!

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)

The Promised Landi

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 Smackdown!

Every once in a while, I like to do a poster breakdown á la Posteritati where we compare and contrast the different U.S. and International versions of a past film release. And this time up it’s Two Weeks In September (1967), starring Brigitte Bardot.

Personally, my favorite is the Argentinean version (lower left) with the UK one-sheet (lower right) a close runner-up — but you gotta admire the fearlessness of the Polish version (top, far right) for going totally abstract like those Polish beauties tend to do!