Some Landmarks of the Cinema Poster
David Robinson
Film posters are a curious byway in the history of advertising art. Selling an entirely individual kind of entertainment, aiming to appeal to the Widest mass audience, their designers have rarely worked in the main streams of graphic design. To those of us who are accustomed to con temporary posters for the Indian or the traditional American cinemas__,. Oddli alike in the primitive and florid graphic styles and bizarre palettes they choose for the representation of mass dreams- it may seem scarcely surprising that film posters have rarely figured in the innumerable studies of Poster art that have appeared in the eighty years since the pictorial poster first gained acceptance as a legitimate medium for the serious graphic artist.
Yet there is a record to be set straight. In the course of those eighty years since 1 895 and the birth of the cinema itself, the art of the cinema poster has seen a spasmodic succession of flowerings, often at the least expected moments and in the least expected places. The special requirements, the special language and the special symbols of film adver tising have on occasion stimulated artists of such originality that their absence from the history of graphic styles demands rectification.
The cinema was in fact born into the great age of the French litho graphic poster, the era of Lautrec and Steinlen and Cheret;- and when the Lumiere Brothers wanted a poster for their new entertainment they com missioned · no Jess an artist than .Jules Cheret himself, who three years before had designed a poster for the most significant fore-runner of the film, Emile Rey~aud's Pantomimes Lumineuses. This poster had already become one of the most admired of its time, so that it is astonishing that Cheret's design for the Lumieres (now preserved in the Cineteca of· Turin) was rejected. Instead the Lumiere Brothers turned to two minor but talent ed artists- Brispot (who provided a vigorous design showing a moustachio'd agent controlling the eager crowds around the door of the Cinematographe) and Auzolle. Auzolle's poster may be regarded historically as the earliest poster to advertise a specific film. It shows a well-dressed family in the front row of a maroon-draped cinema responding joyfully to the fifty-second joke of L 'Arroseur Arrose, the earliest film comedy. It is a subtle poster both in its intimation of the middle-class propriety of 'the entertainment, and in its use of colour. In later years poster artists invariably advertised black and white films with boastfully polychrome posters. Auzolle's candour in showing the screen image in its true monochrome provides a strong and effective contrast with the rest of the design.
In the decade which followed, the Lumier.es' pr~ority together with the industrial acumen of Leon Gaumont and Charles Pathe assured France an undisputed pre-eminence in the world film markets. One demonstration of the French cinema's imperialist assurance was its constant quest for
1 prestige, expressed, on the one hand, in the creation of grandiose cinemas like the Gaumont Palace, built in 1 905 ; and on the other in Pathe's notion of the 'film d'art', a portentous series of films launched in 1 908 vvith L 'Assassinat du Due de Guise, and aiming to star the most prestigious stage stars of the time in film versions of the most respected plays. Poster advertising inevitab ly reflected these aspirations: posters for L 'Assassinat du Due de Guise, or for Sarah Bernhardt in La Reine Elisabeth or La Dame aux Camellias aimed at a distinction appropriate to their subjects.
More original and appealing hovvever vvere the posters vvhich adver tised the short film comedies vvhich vvere the true key to the French hold upon the international audience. To deify appropriately upon the hoar dings
Adrien Barrere Le Duel de Max
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PATH£ FR£RES. EDITEURS lOCATION K VENTE UEf/~SsAPPAR£1/.S PI/THE fRERES.l04.f'lledePam mNCE/ftr£J1tL9Ji,95 such comic gods of the era as Max Linder, Andre Deed, Leonce Perret, 'Rigadin' (Charles Prince), Onesime (Ernst Bourbon). the film companies turned to advantage the notable flowering of caricature in France in the years between the Belle Epoque and the First World War. Of innumerable posters created for the Pathe company by Adrien Barrere, the most appeal ing are the series he did in visual parody of modern art styles, which he would inscribe appropriately, "a Mistinguette et Chevalier, futuristement", or "a Max Linder, cubistement". Apart from the wit of these parodies, Barrere's posters are distinguished by their assured line and elegant academic propor tion. A fellow caricaturist, Auguste Leymarie worked long enough for the French film companies to celebrate, in 1 91 5, the early short films of Charles Chaplin, most notably with a memorable portrait head, simply and boldly titled 'CHARLOT', which must have blossomed strikingly upon the hoard ings of First World War France.
It is a significant phenomenon that exceptional standards in cinema posters have generally coincided with periods of artistic rather than econo mic confidence. The American cinema was able to take advantage of the war of 1 91 4-1 8 to establish a world-wide industrial dominance that was to be maintained for half a century; yet it was long before the American cinema made any distinctive contribution to the idiom of poster art. Conversely, the Hungarian cinema, economically restricted but bursting with creative ambi tion in the brief period between 1 91 2, when production began in earnest in the Budapest studios, and 1 91 9 when the Horthy regime assumed power, created at once a national cinema tradition (whose major fig.ure·s included Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz) and a distinctive school of poster artists. Mihaly Biro worked with his characteristic, powerful cartoon line; the school included the youthful Marcel Vertes and Vincent Korda, and the gifted and versatile lmre Foldes. The most intriguing figure of this period however was Lipot Satori, barely eighteen years old when he designed his first poster for the Urania cinema.
In the years 1 91 7-1 9 20, S
There was a parallel, contemporary but more durable flowering of the German film poster. German graphic work has maintained a level of distinction throughout the century; but the silent cinema coincided with a particularly fruitful period. Even in the undistinguished days of Germany's pre-war cinema, some of the most noted poster artists were .engaged by the film companies- Hans Rudi Erdt, Julius Klinger, Lucian Bernar~. Ludwig Hohlwein, and outstandingly Paul Leni, originally a scenic designtJr for Rein hardt, who was subsequently to work actively in the cinema, at first as an assistant, later as one of the most notable directors of the Expressionist school.
3 Paul Leni Auf Abwegen
It \NBS characteristic of German poster art that there \Nere distinc tive schools centred in the country's major cities. Since, too, as in Hungary, posters \Nere usually commissioned by individual cinemas rather than national distributors, the result \NBS a remarkable variety in graphic treat ment, often in posters for the same films . The Berlin school, besides Erdt, Deutsch, Bernhardt, Klinger and Leni, produced an outstanding designer \Nhose \NOrk is almost exclusively associated \Nith the cinema and theatre: Josef Fenneker's graphic styles admirably embodied the tortured shapes and dramatic chiaroscuro of the Expressionist movement. The Munich group tended to favour more restrained approaches. Lud\Nig Kainer's posters for the Tauentzien Palast used a cool chalk-dra\Ning effect; \Nhile Jan Tschic hold's austere advertising for the Phoebus-Palast made a lasting impression upon t\Nentieth-century typographic art. (Later, as an emigre in Britain, Tschichold created the house style for Penguin books).
The early 1 920s sa\N other flo\Nerings. The Scandinavian cinemas \Nere still near the zenith that had been reached around the First World War, \Nhen S\Neden had its t\NO star directors in Mauritz Stiller and Viktor Sjost rom, and Denmark possessed the \Norld's first great cinema star, Asta
4 Nielsen, and an up and coming director in Carl Theodor Dreyer. Again, assur ance was reflected in the boldly progressive graphic styles of film advertising. The Swedish poster companies employed artists of the first calibre and gave them freedom to develop their arabesques about the conventions of a popu lar art. In Denmark Sven Brach's film posters first revealed him as a superb designer and a master of bold colour effects. In France the great poster tradition had declined along with the fortunes of the industry. One of the lone efforts to raise graphic standards was the interesting initiative of the Albatross Company-essentially a firm made up of Russian emigres-in commissioning the art director of each film to design its poster.
The most significant posters created for the silent cinema, however, were those of the Soviet Union. As early as 1919 Lenin had declared, "For us the cinema is the most important of the arts". At the basis of the great artistic ferment of the 'heroic' years of the Revolution- as Futurism made way for Constructivism, Suprematism and a whole succession of other '-isms' rather less deserving of remembrance- was the overriding feeling for the interdependence of the arts and life. The true Constructivist artist might design a book, a factory, a poster, a suit of clothes, a film, a chair. So Alexander Rodchenko, a key figure in the Constructivist movement (who actually did most, if not all of these things) was associated with the film maker Dziga Vertov, designed the titles for his films and newsreels, and created the posters for Kino-Giaz and A Sixth Part of the World.
The greatest Soviet posterists of the twenties were, however, the brothers Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg. The Stenbergs had explicitly iden tified themselves with Constructivism in 1 921 when they presented a three man exhibition along with Kasimir Medunetsky; and Camilla Gray, in her study of Soviet art, The Great Experiment, regards their cinema and theatre advertisements and posters as "pioneer examples of constructivist typo graphy and design". In fact, however, the work of the Stenbergs had nothing of the forbidding severity that much Constructivist theory and practice seemed often to imply. Even the poster for a film as serious as Dovzhenko's Arsenal is distinguished by an ingenuity that is almost playful. Ouite apart from the sheer graphic qualities of the Stenbergs' posters, which has never been surpassed (without any allowance for age, their designs for The Gene ral or Earth can stand comparison with any graphic work done in the inter vening four decades) they have the rare and inestimable quality of conveying the essential character and tone of the film. You have no ; doubt that the artists actually saw the film before embarking on the posters.
The later twenties produced a whole school of graphic artists in the U.S.S.R., much of whose work seems even today totally undated, so vigorous and so far in advance of its times it was, and so vividly does it still evoke the enthusiasm and the intense spiritual and intellectual excitement of the era.
Meanwhile the American silent cinema had reached its apogee, both as art and as major industry. Its international domination was consolidated by its growing policy of recruiting the best artists from European cinema
5 Sven Brach's poster for a Norma Talmadge film
(thus Sjostrom and Stiller, along with the actress, Greta Garbo, were lured to America, as well Paul Leni, F . W. Murnau and innumerable actors from Germany, Paul Fejes from Hungary, Jacques Feyder from France, Benja min Christensen from Denmark, and so on): the result was as much to im poverish potential rival industries as to enrich Hollywood. Sound films further consolidated the international domination; and that domination meant that American business methods and American standards and styles in advertis ing were henceforth to be ascendant in practically every film-making country in the world.
6 However romantic one's nostalgia for Hollywood's golden age; how ever keen one's awareness of the heights to which the American cinema strange, uneasy combination of art and industry that it is- aspired at its ~· best, it must be acknowledged that by and large the product of Hollywood was brash and vulgar; that the business men responsible for making and r)'larketing films had learned their trade in the market place and fairground, and saw their interest in appealing to the largest mass of people, a mass of whose taste and intelligence they had in general a very low opinion. This fact was nowhere more vividly reflected than in film advertising. Thirty years after Hollywood's zenith, the greatest film poster artist produced by Ameri ca, Saul Bass, could still write: "Relatively little creative and mature film advertising has been produced in the United States. There are many reasons for this, but they all focalise in the lack of confidence of the advertiser in the maturity and taste of the audience . . .. This attitude can be traced back to the film itself... . "
The American film poster nevertheless developed its own form of popular artistic expression. Many of the characteristics which crystallised in the 1 930s have remained virtually unchanged to this day. The primitive representational graphics of the first pictorial film posters of 1 91 0 remained the technical norm, but new advertising idioms were developed. It became obligatory for the poster to be dominated by massive idealised portraits of the star or stars- because the promotion of stars was a major factor in the marketing of the cinema-generally superimposed over an elaborate mon tage of miniature illustrations of actual or supposed dramatic excitements of the film . Slogans couched in terms of exaggeration and side-show superla tives ("Colossal! Stupendous! Greatest!") shrieked across the poster in lettering specially devised for emphasis and shock. The catch slogan came into increasing use, while contractual obligations resulted in more and more credits, apart from those of the main stars and the director, having to be displayed on the poster. Today American and British film posters often have to carry as much as two or three hundred words of displayed lettering, on whose relative proportions the designer himself has no control.
The American film poster developed its characteristic symbols: stars and searchlights, silk hats and skyscrapers were images which spoke to people in every land of the glamour and joy and escape to other worlds that a Hollywood film promised its audiences.
The first significant effort to break away from the universal tyranny of the Hollywood style came in Britain-which had previously failed to create any national tradition in poster advertising, in the later days of the 1 939- 1 945 War. Michael Balcon, as head of Ealing Studios, placed Monja Danischewsky in charge of publicity and engaged S . .John Woods to take over the graphic design department. In 1 943 Morris Kestleman designed a singularly effective and attractive poster for San Demetrio- London; and subsequently many leading British artists of the day-.John Piper, Edward Bawden, Edward Ardizzone, Leslie Hurry, .John Minton and .James Boswell -were commissioned to design posters. Not all the results were altogether satisfactory: there was a tendency for Ealing posters to remain first and
7 H. A. Rothholz They Came to a City
foremost high class illustration rather than truly effective publicity design. Among the notable successes however were a bold bill for Champagne Charlie, designed by Woods in collaboration with Eric Frazer and Barnett Freedman, Rothholz's De Chirico-like landscape for They Came to a City, and Woods's vigorous and memorable design for The Man in the White Suit.
If the British initiative ultimately fell on barren ground at home, it is certain that it helped inspire the programme of high quality graphic work inaugurated in the Polish cinema in 1 946, and still surviving after thirty years. The programme was launched by Henryk Tomaszewski's poster for the British film Black Narcissus and by Erik Lipinski's for The Court of the Nation. The object of the Polish posters was to offer a graphic abstract or synthesis of the film- as for instance in one of the most celebrated, Trepko wski's poster for The Last Stage, which summarized the film's content
8 s imply by sho\Ning. a broken carnation before the striped material of a prison-camp uniform. W ith only slight fluctuations of quality, the Polish poster h a s sustained over the years a remarkable level of graphic e x cel lence, producing successive generations of ne\N designers like Lenica, Palka, S\Nierzy, Gorka, Hibner and Staro\Nieyski, \Nhose surrealist and often horri fic visions make him one of the outstanding graphic artists of the present day.
F. Starow ieyski Everything for Sale no•lon p1ctura
J~IMJ~~ ~~~OO.lr lL~~ lR<~lMlO~~ ~~~~~M ~lR and JO EPH N. WELCH M .J udge W aver Saul Bass Anatomy of a Murder Other socialist countries h a ve been stimulated by the Polish exam ple, the most notable being Hungary, where a more direct, less intellectual style has been involved in defining the essential theme or flavour of the film through telling pictorial metaphor. Especially noteworthy have been the designs of Kass and Mate. Vyletal and Flejsar in Czechoslovakia; Bionov in Bulgaria; Bertram and Segner in East Germany have been the most suc cessful artists in the field in other Eastern European countries. In the Western world, the most sustained and influential effort at raising standards of graphic design for cinema advertising has been the 10 work of Saul Bass, whose distinctive, economical style and ability precisely to define the character of a film in a simple graphic symbol, makes his pos ters singularly effective and instantly recognisable. In Western Germany an energetic revival of the film poster was effected by two independent distribution firms, Walther Kirchner, established in 1 953, and Atlas Films, established in 1 960. Among many outstanding and generally young artists commissioned by these two firms were Karl Blase, Hans Hillman, Isolde Rostgaard Hanoi Martes 1 3 Baumgart and Jan Lenica, one of the most distinguished artists to have come out of the Polish film poster tradition, and a film maker in his own right. The most energetic attempt of recent years to revive the art of the film poster however has been in Cuba where, as in early Soviet Russia, both the film and the poster have been recognised as primary weapons of revolu tion. ICAIC, the official organisation of the Cuban film industry, has launched a programme of posters of quite remarkable graphic quality, designed by a small group of very young artists, generally employing silk-screen printing techniques, which afford the possibility for very free use of colour. The prevailing style of the Cuban poster is at once aggressively contemporary and rooted in national art forms. Newer designers- Nico and Dimas- are however already breaking away to develop styles distinct from that of the founders of the school, Sachs, Azcuy, Rostgaard and Reboira. Even though most of us, in most parts of the world, are condemned to gaze upon the exhausted conventions of a poster tradition that flourished in Hollywood almost half a century ago, we can still take heart that here and there the supreme visual medium of our century occasionally discovers appropriate graphic methods for its publicity. For that publicity must be recognised as a vital link in the chain of communication between film maker and audience. 12