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.

Easy Rider (1969)

The poster for the 1969 independent drama Easy Rider captures an epochal image of the era. The hand-drawn stars and stripes on the back of Peter Fonda’s jacket create a memorable focal point against the solid yellow backdrop. The poster’s minimalist design and strong graphic elements strip the essence of this film down to its bare bones, a powerful representation of the visual aesthetics and culture of the 1960s.

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Mean Streets (1973)

The iconic poster for Martin Scorsese’s 1973 masterpiece Mean Streets graces the pages of almost every movie poster book published. According to author Emily King of A Century of Movie Poster: From Silent to Art House, the Avant Garde typeface is an enduring example of key art in which the “sloping sides of the letters perfectly complement the stylized plume of the smoking gun and the silhouetted New York City landscape.” The design is often attributed to the legendary Saul Bass, although according to author and collector Tony Nourmand, the credit goes to graphic designer Joe Caroff.

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West Side Story (1961)

The paired images here vividly illustrate the contrast between the original 1961 film release of West Side Story and its later re-release. In the first image, the typeface conjures the gritty ambiance of the city, providing a glimpse into the film’s thematic core. Fast forward to the re-release poster: we see the same typeface, but rendered with a vibrant color palette and imagery that accentuate the dynamic musical numbers that became the film’s hallmark.

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Outlaw Girl (1955)

This poster for the 1955 B-movie Outlaw Girl offers a compelling visual association with Jane Russell’s iconic off-the-shoulder dress and the sign painting typeface in the poster for Howard Hughes’s 1943 The Outlaw. The film is likely to be a version of the 1950 Italian film, Il Brigante Musolino, dubbed and reworked to appeal to American audiences. The graphics on the poster exhibit a rudimentary cut-and-paste quality, suggesting that less consideration was given to its design compared to the film’s original poster. Outlaw Girl stands as an example of the inventive repackaging of a film to leverage associations with popular films to draw audiences that may have otherwise considered the film less watchable.

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