Write on Film

I was flicking through the pages of Tony Nourmand & Graham Marsh’s book ‘Film Posters: Horror‘ whilst passing time in Oxford Street’s HMV a few weeks back. As I admired the genres retro and eclectic artwork I was taken aback by one in particular - an exceptionally abstract and unconventional poster for ‘The Fly’. Even amidst the often surreal and crazy posters thrown up by the genre it stood out a mile. The poster was a simplified computer-like illustration of a grey human/ fly creature doubled over, regurgitating a yellow substance on the floor set against a bold red backdrop. Thematically it was of course very much in tune with the tone and the narrative of the film, but still felt a world away from virtually every other poster in the book.

Determined to re-locate it I scoured the net until I came across it on a site cataloguing Polish Film posters from the 50s- 90s and scrolling through the pages of the collected artwork soon became an eye opening and shocking revelation. Gone were the familiar typefaces, techincally complicated and photographic designs that accompanied most Western films which often seemed concerned with headlining marketable big name stars. Instead it was a collection of expressionistic, surreal and often humorous designs that felt closer to what I’d normally associate within book cover designs.

Anyone who’s had the fortune of viewing Polish film posters from the 50s through to early 90s will be able to relate to the sheer shock of other worldly difference and I think this is intensified through the ability to compare and contrast these cultural markers with those produced for the same films in the West.

Consider if you will a film like Weekend at Bernies, a farcical ‘black’ comedy of two naive employees who, for reasons I won’t go into, have to pretend to their would be killers that their murdered boss is still alive. The US posters (as seen below) opted for comical light hearted seaside jappery and big names to present the film to the masses… whilst its Polish counterpart interpreted the quite dark subject matter of the film with a stark black and white image of a posed severed hand sporting, what appears to be eyeballs tied together with string. Overall the poster seemed more in tune with a surrealist horror film - but never the less at least it had found a way to pull art out of an otherwise throw away commercial film (something I’d like to see atempted with todays crop of durge such as ‘What Happens in Vegas‘).

Also looking at the artwork for another film, this time one closer to my heart- War Games. In Poland it was promoted with a stark yellow poster, adorned with a central illustration of a finger looming over an earth shaped button, with the title presented in a synthetic computer like font. The simple combination of these three visuals cut to the core of the narrative without undermining the viewers intelligence at being able to deconstruct the images and find the essence of the film.

Geographical location aside, I was spurred on to finding out more to explain and understand these exceptional posters. Inevitably the postwar communist landscape of the country was a leading factor but to me this seemed slighly contradictory, however a quote from Anna Husarska from this article explains why this was so, “It was the result of a particularly felicitous combination of factors. First, the totalitarian state with unlimited funds at its disposal turned out to be a very good patron. Second, given the general shortages of everything from toilet paper to washing machines, posters weren’t really about advertising, they were art for art’s sake. Third, the primitive state of printing techniques precluded any easy, conventional use of photographs, so the artists were obliged to be more creative. The isolation from the artistic currents in the West was an advantage, too: Polish artists had to follow their own, original path. And because in Poland there was no art market to speak of (art dealers were considered ‘rotten bourgeois’), poster-making offered one of the few opportunities for artists and designers to practice their profession.”

Its amazing to view the work of designers who became artists and names in their own right in a market that did not need to “sell to specific demographically identified consumer groups, or please the chairmen of major corporations, or appeal to the special interests. But they did have to transcend (and fool) a regime that was suspicious of individual expression” (American Films in Polish Posters). Polish posters for the arts, even beyond film, became a hidden place for exploration of the avant garde and surrealist which were banned elsewhere and became part of a cannonised ‘School of the Polish Poster’ -considered by some to be “not so much a school, as a diverse flowering which shared common cause and circumstance, aberrant restraints” (also from American Films in Polish Posters)

These unique trends and styles progressed through the 80s and it seems that it was at the beginning of the 90s, when the winds of political change post the 1989 elections that eventually cast aside the countries communist ruling, which spelt their end. Whilst gaining freedom in other areas of the arts and society it also opened the doors to the mass consumerism and capitalism that had previously been rejected, and the majority of posters moved from art, to tools of mass consumerism.

There was also a loss of a lot of the state funding to the arts leading to the closure of theaters, opera houses which also affected film distributors who could not always justify the luxury of bespoke posters and begun to buy in western artwork. “And thus the refined beauty of the poster has been commonly replaced by the “dressed-down design” where, knowingly, fashion is the chosen source of inspiration while bad taste is the vehicle, decomposition is the form of expression and primitiveness is the means of expression.” (Museum of the City Walls)

Its a shame to see how these amazing designs that feel like a mirror into a parallel universe of film marketing have almost died out. Yet at least now we have the freedom to look back on and recognise these posters for the art that they were. Through the political & social constraints of postwar Poland to the early 90s we have a fascinating snapshot of an obscure and amazing cross section of film and art, that will no doubt provide all those who have the fortune of stumbling across them the same shock and awe that they did for me, and will continue to influence artists and desginers.

A quote which came to mind and stayed with me whilst I was writing this seems an apt place to finish and comes care of Harry Lime in Carol Reed’s ‘The Third Man‘…

“Thirty years of noisy, violent churning under the Borgias in Italy produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance, while 500 years of peace, quiet and harmony in Switzerland produced the cuckoo clock.”