Visual Narratives: The Language of Movie Posters

by ASH KINNEY D’HARCOURT

In recent years, the movie poster has transcended its humble origins. Once considered uncredited works of art, movie posters have risen to prominence as sought-after treasures in art auctions, as prized acquisitions in personal collections, and as exhibits in museums and galleries—a transformation that reflects a growing recognition of the aesthetic and cultural significance of this art form.

Movie posters historically served as a bridge between the audience and the cinematic experience. Their primary role in film publicity has been to distill the essence of a film into its most persuasive visual signs—its adventure, stars, and drama—to entice passersby off the street and into the theater. Among their earliest instances, posters portrayed the act of watching a film itself, incorporating elements such as projectors, operators and motion picture images to demystify this new entertainment technology. However, competition between studios in the early twentieth century quickly led to the development of individualized advertising campaigns with strategic pressbooks that included eye-catching and evocative poster art for each film.

Given the fragile nature of celluloid film, movie posters now serve as crucial historical remnants…a unique archive of visual culture and history.

Once considered ephemera themselves, commercial poster art was displayed in theaters, traded among exhibitors, occasionally stored for re-release or simply discarded. The resulting scarcity of these artifacts make the Ransom Center’s sizable Movie Posters Collection a unique archive of visual culture and history. The collection holds approximately 10,000 posters spanning a temporal landscape stretching from the Golden Age of Hollywood film through the end of the last century. About half of this extensive collection has already been digitized, making it accessible to anyone with curiosity about this art form.

As illustrated in the selection of posters in this blog, this collection provides a remarkable opportunity to explore the social and political shifts, artistic movements and prevailing values and concerns of twentieth-century US moviegoing audiences. Another layer to this narrative is the occasional disparity between what the poster art portrays and the actual content of the film, providing a valuable lens for understanding the evolving tastes and preferences of moviegoers across different historical eras. So who were these audiences? In the forthcoming blog entries, we embark on a journey to unveil just a few of the narratives from the visual culture and cinematic history contained within the compelling posters in this collection.