BOOK REVIEW

Film posters of the 60s, the essential movies of the decade
T. Nourmand, G. Marsh, The Reel Poster Gallery

Aurum Press, London (GB)(1997)
127 pages, about 180 color reproductions, 30 x 24 cm, softcover; ISBN 1-85410-513-2
14.95 GBP (about 25 US$)
in english
$$$ Buy it now from amazon.com! or amazon.com.uk!

Two movie poster aficionados got together to produce this book: Tony Nourmand, who runs London's Reel Poster Gallery, and Graham Marsh, designer and art director.

There is little text apart from short introductions by the two. Marsh recounts film history of the sixties in a brilliant, highly concentrated two page summary, while Nourmand tells us how he was hooked on movie posters. I can't resist the temptation of giving away his personal horror story about "a butcher in Oregon (also the owner of a local cinema) who was systematically working his way through posters from the turn of the century to wrap his meat".

Movie poster fans tend to be more interested in the movie than in graphic design, and the selected illustrations thus show the famous movies, as the subtitle of the book implies. The scope is international for the movies, and also for the posters, and we get to see an american, a japanese and a french poster for Un homme et une femme or a french, a british and a polish design for Planet of the Apes.

Personally, I am very pleased about the inclusion of several polish film posters. To my knowledge, this is the first book that puts Jan Lenica and Wojciech Zamecznik on the same stage as Andy Warhol, Jean Cocteau, Alan Aldridge or Jean Mascii, to name just a few, even though their posters are quit a random pick and far from their best works. Another intriguing glimpse into an little known world are the japanese film posters, and I hope that some day we will find out who designed the poster for Teorema and see more of his work.

What movies do you expect to see in a book like that? Well, The Graduate, Belle de jour, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Midnight Cowboy, 8 1/2, Rosemary's Baby, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Goldfinger, Un chien andalou ... and so on. Don't worry, they're all in there.

The book is planned to be the first of a series and I am already looking forward to the next one. Could we please have a register from now on?