Movie Posters

Collecting movie posters is one of the favorite hobbies among movie lovers. What is the secret to their undying popularity? Maybe it is the combination of their beautiful design, the fact that they are independent works of art, the popularity of the movies, and the sweet nostalgia they carry with them.

Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1959. The movie adaptation of the novel by Jules Verne

The market value of certain movie posters rapidly increased during the past decades. Movie posters are so popular among collectors for various reasons, but their artwork is what gives them constant popularity and makes them valuable items on the market.

Style and visual art

The style of the movie posters frequently changed throughout the decades. Today we can easily recognize whether the poster is from the 30’, 50’, or 60’. Usually, the style of these posters corresponded to the general tendencies in the visual arts of the time. Bauhaus made a strong impact on the style of the movie posters, as well as some other art movements, did. Noticing this, we should remember that artists hired to design movie posters were usually already highly acknowledged visual artists. These artists already belonged to certain art communities and movements, hence they brought different art school styles to the movie posters.

Frenzy by Alfred Hitchcock (1972)

Phenomena of a  movie star

Different artistic movements are not the sole cause for such a variety in movie poster styles. In its early era, the film was not fully acknowledged as an art form. This was the cause of one phenomenon that we can hardly imagine today – there were no movie stars. In the years of the birth of the cinema, actors were proud of their roles in theater, not of their roles on the screen. This is why actors of that period did not want to be signed as participants in the movies. Due to this early posters did not include the faces or names of the actors. Having a movie star’s face on the poster is a much later trend.

Artists

Many art lovers today admire the talent of the old movie poster artists, but when it comes to collecting movie posters it gets very hard to find the names of these authors. This is also due to the one of early policies in American film production. At the beginning of the XX century, the American film community didn’t care a great deal about movie poster artists. This way a large number of these artworks remained unaccredited. Luckily, this was not the case with the European film community.

L’oro di Roma (Gold of Rome) by Carlo Lizzani (1961)

The art of movie posters established itself through the years as the way for painters or comic drawers to leave yet another respectable artistic footprint. Movie posters were also a highly successful way for artists to celebrate and popularize their style. As these tendencies grew, a new style of visual art found its place on movie posters – conceptual art. Mentioning conceptual art cannot go without mentioning Frank Frazetta – a concept artist who made a remarkable imprint in the history of movie posters, thanks to his unique and recognizable style. Besides Frazetta, many other artists earned worldwide fame as movie poster illustrators. We can always easily recognize the styles of Reynold Brown, Frank McCarthy, Renato Casaro, John Alvin, Bill Gold, Robert McGinnis, and Saul Bass on movie posters.

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