jacques bonneaud | Movie Poster Museum

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…

First up from The Stanislas Choko Collection is Jacques Bonneaud, who might very well have been the first modern-day poster artist workaholic. He never took vacations as every day at dawn, he would go to work alone at his studio, utilizing his talents for composing dramatic scenes with stunning portraiture and sumptuous colors. Often described as unrelenting, monastic, and unsociable (since he had few friends in the biz) — Bonneaud was a fast worker, which was rare in the lithography world.

But all of his hard work certainly paid off! Over a 35-year career from 1922-1957, he did over 2,000 film posters — even though he wasn’t a huge movie fan. Before each assignment, he simply read the script and took a cursory look at a few B&W publicity stills before he went back to the drawing board.

Unfortunately, at age 60, his style went out of style and he spent the last remaining years of his career at a print shop designing advertising labels for dairy products. However, his gorgeous work still lives on and now you can see it all here.