You dirty rats asked for it, and you got it. Back by popular demand, and in a single post: the entire film noir poster countdown, including all of the.
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You dirty rats asked for it, and you got it. Back by popular demand, and in a single post: the entire film noir poster countdown, including all of the descriptive text. The reception to this continues to amaze me. It went totally viral, featured on more than 100 different sites worldwide. In the end, the ten posts of the countdown amassed more than 300,000 unique pageviews, and briefly made WDL one of the most viewed blogs on the internet. I hope everyone enjoyed this half as much as I did. Here’s how this started: This was a countdown about graphic design first and foremost. This is not a ranking of movies themselves, but of their posters. In the real world I’m a university graphic design professor (as well as chair of the department of art and art history here at my school) and longtime professional designer. My designs have appeared in what professionals refer to as “the annuals,” (like Print, How, and Graphis) more than 300 times. I’ve been collecting film posters for as long as I can remember and decided it made a ton of sense to do some sort of a countdown that would blend my love of movies with my life as a designer and educator. What’s eligible: Only classic period films were considered (nothing after 1960), though my definition of film noir was much looser for this exercise than it is in than in my essays. Only American issue posters of American films were considered. Only standard one-sheets were considered. (No half-sheets, 3 or 4 sheets, lobby cards, inserts, daybills, etc.) No re-release, reprints, or retrospective posters allowed. Only original, first-run, theatrical release posters. Design / Artistic merit. Composition, color, balance, typography, use of illustration / photography, graphic power, etc. Concept. How well does the poster communicate the film’s message? Is the poster authentic? Is it misleading? Does it reach the intended audience? Originality / Novelty. I reward artistic risk-takers! The Blank Slate rule. All films are equal. Double Indemnity doesn’t get a bump for being Double Indemnity. As a matter of fact, that pink monstrosity doesn't even make the list. In all likelihood, many readers will not have heard of all films on the list, and many will be seeing the posters for the first time. That should be half the fun. My personal taste. The least significant of the criteria. My choices are guided primarily by the above, though it would absurd to imagine my personal likes and dislikes — as well as my emotions — didn’t play some part in my choices. However I’m not hiding behind personal opinion: this is not a list of my favorites. This is an empirical list of what I consider to be the best, with my personal likes and dislikes shoved as far to the side as possible. And while any such list is, of course, purely opinion, not all opinions carry equal weight: this one is highly educated, professionally seasoned, and exercised daily! 100. The Blue Dahlia Here’s a poster that would certainly have been placed higher were it no so crowded, but I like opening with such a well known film. As we go through the countdown we’ll look at plenty of examples of what I refer to as “Stephen King” paperback design: like certain fiction authors, the names of the stars here are more important than the title of the picture, and have been given a more prominent place in the design. The practice is fine, and an unavoidable aspect of motion picture marketing, but the design could have been executed better here. The trio of stars in The Blue Dahlia made numerous profitable films with each other, so it made sense to market this purely as a star vehicle. And while the resulting poster is attractive, it is equally generic: three mug shots that could have been pulled from any Ladd / Lake / Bendix picture. Think of it this way: here’s a movie with a flower in the title, so why not have a flower in the poster, or even the neon “Blue Dahlia” sign we see in the film? Give me some sort of precise reference to the content of this film in particular and I’ll be happy. So why is this poster included when 400+ others were not? The rendering is superb, even if the names at the top seem crammed into the available space. The representations of Ladd and Lake (though less so) here are iconic, and the cigarette smoke that wafts lazily around Veronica’s breasts is the icing on the cake. Too bad big Bill is sporting lipstick, and Doris Dowling (of Bitter Rice fame) is positioned so awkwardly — yet her shoe poking through the title typography is a nice touch. 99. The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry Oddly, some of Hollywood’s most beautiful women don’t translate particularly well to posters, while others become even more beautiful. Ella Raines is one of the unfortunates — take a look at her posters and you’ll realize she never looks as good in art as she does in life. (Lizabeth Scott, on the other hand, shines in her posters like no other actress.) This example is one of the rare exceptions, as the artist has done a fine job of capturing Raines’s extraordinary looks. An equally fine job has been done with Sanders, and this poster scores points for not only the quality of the illustration, but for the striking way in which Sanders’s gaze confronts the viewer. I appreciate the strong diagonal composition, but wish the female figure at the top didn’t seem so awkwardly perched atop Sanders’s head, like a halo on……a Saint? (Sorry, couldn’t help doing that.) Let’s also examine the stars’ names along the right; they should align vertically with the printed margin of the poster. The human eye craves order, and wants badly for things to “line up” — we’d appreciate this poster more were that the case. 98. The Killers Thank heavens this was Burt’s debut, otherwise he’d likely upstage Ernest Hemingway in this design! Lancaster is another curious example of movie marketing: it’s amazing how often he’s rendered in profile, and with a woman in his arms. The posters for Criss-Cross, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, From Here to Eternity, and The Rainmaker all show Burt clutching his female lead. This is the best of the bunch, and even though the quality of the illustration is substandard (Ava, really?), the overall composition more than makes up for it — there’s even something of a criss-cross in the way the title and the illustration work together. Great job with the long shadows cast by the killers — they lead us right to the doomed lovers. I’m also conscious of the attention to detail: despite the small scale and extreme angle, anyone who knows this film (of course you do!) will tell you that the killers on the poster are the very same killers from the film. Finally, all designers will confide that the worst word to design for is “the,” because although it’s insignificant as hell it almost always comes first! As you look at film posters in the future, try to decide whether or not this is done well. The designer here solved the pesky problem of “the” beautifully; the designer on The Blue Dahlia poster, for example, did not. 97. Wicked Woman Like the forthcoming poster for The Beat Generation, I’ve included the poster for Wicked Woman purely because it’s so offbeat. I’ll happily acknowledge that it isn’t an attractive poster, but let’s not dismiss it out of hand either — there may be a few more things going on here than first meet the eye. It’s impossible not to draw the reference to Hawthorne, and instead of a large “A” (and befitting the radioactivity of the atomic age) we are confronted with a woman who is quite literally glowing scarlet — how great is that! In addition to the inventive (and inexpensive) use of two ink colors, I love how the designer has cast us as voyeurs. All of the poster’s scenes are domestic — whether amorous, violent, or indifferent, and we are forced to look at them as if through the panes of an uncurtained window. There’s something very much in keeping with film noir here, in how the film poster reminds us that for many folks the American Dream was a sham, and not every 1950s home was a happy one. I’m a little troubled by the lower image panel — it seems unrelated to the two above; and for that matter the “vampire” panel is confusing as well. Nevertheless, this is such a unique poster that it very much deserves a spot on this list. 96. The Beat Generation Enter the realm of “ugly but effective.” As I first mentioned in my initial post about the countdown, originality will be highly rewarded. Why? Because originality sticks in the memory — and being memorable is everything. I don’t mean to imply that designers and illustrators are vain; it just makes sense that a unique design will linger in the mind longer than something derivative — and consequently increase the chances that the poster will pull in more sets of eyes than those around it and thus sell more tickets. Besides, anyone who has seen The Beat Generation knows that it couldn’t be promoted traditionally. In one sense the design here is a mess: type everywhere, no negative space to be found, and three or four conflicting illustration styles. Yet what does it tell us? Sex, violence, music, and weirdness — a beatnik exposé featuring a hot Mamie Van Doren. For the squares in middle America, this was too much to miss. Me too, I guess. 95. Highway 301 Here’s one of the few posters we’ll see that exploits the semi-documentary style of noir films to great effect. It almost reads like a newspaper page or magazine cover (we’ll see that notion taken to extremes later in the countdown) with “ripped from the headlines” style type-treatments all over the design, a radio-style “Flash!” at the bottom of the poster, and authentic-looking scandal sheet crime photos along the right hand side. All of this visual noise frames a photograph of Steve Cochran pistol-whipping some doo-dad in a pinstripe suit. The expansive field of red in the background is quite powerful as well, it frames the artwork and holds the various elements together, while suggesting blood and action through the choice of color and immediacy of the brushstrokes at the very top. The diagonal composition here vaguely reminds us of the Uncle Harry poster, but notice how much stronger this composition is because the type at the left and bottom “line up” to complete the rectangular shape, and how the title type points us to the poster’s focal point: Steve Cochran. All with only two colors! Five distinct typeface choices though — yikes! 94. Alias Nick Beal Here we have a strong counterpoint to the poster for The Blue Dahlia. What it did wrong Alias Nick Beal does right. A simple, strong composition from top to bottom, it offers us a wonderfully colorful glimpse at Audrey Totter (even if her hips are strangely narrow), as well as a space-filling sketch at the bottom that provides some insight into the setting and the intrigue of the film. The characters have been arranged so as to accommodate the expansive red box that holds the film title and the stars’ names — and here we don’t have stars of such magnitude that they require the top of the poster to be wrecked, despite the fact that unlike the Dahlia stars, Milland was an Oscar winner. Finally, notice how the actors are engaged with one another. Sure, Totter is objectified, but at least here she’s drawn the attention of Milland, who likewise is scrutinized by Mitchell. Since this is a rare film I won’t give anything away, but I will point out that each of the three leads are depicted very much according to character here. 93. Blonde Ice The poster for Blonde Ice, one of the legendary B-films, is another that benefits from not having to include big star names above the title. While the imagery here is primarily photographic, especially the gigantic image of Miss Brooks and her smoking gun, it benefits the poster — the lack of an idealized illustration of the female star gives the thing an intoxicating trashiness that’s what this movie is all about. Looking past that though, the design holds up under any microscope: dynamic composition, deft blending of type and image, and follow that wafting gun smoke that leads up to the lover’s embrace. If only Brooks’s line of sight conformed to that of the typography, and the boxy drop shadow on the capital “I” could be removed — not to mention the clumsy and unnecessary shadow of the two lovers — this poster might finish higher on the list. 92. I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. Nothing shouts B-movie like a two-color poster, and this is one of the best. Just as we appreciate films made on the cheap, I admire the economy of a poster done to match. There’s really quite a lot to like here: note how Frank Lovejoy, even more immediately than George Sanders in the Uncle Harry poster, confronts the viewer — Frank even speaks to us via that delightful tagline. He points directly at the vignettes of the violence and sex that we’ll see if we buy a ticket — all certain to entice potential audiences. Notice as well the wonderful title typography: not only does it use perspective to steer our eyes to the same place as Lovejoy’s pointing finger, the perspective provides a place for that lone darkened figure to stand — and folks, any time you can so beautifully juxtapose type and image and still maintain readability, you will always find work in the design racket. Let it not go unsaid as well that audiences were sure to notice the prominent positioning of Warner Bros. and the Saturday Evening Post in the poster design: like putting the Good Housekeeping seal on your fifties exposé picture. 91. Short Cut to Hell Primarily notable as the only film directed by Jimmy Cagney, Short Cut to Hell is a tepid remake of the Ladd / Lake classic This Gun for Hire. Regardless of the quality of the movie, this boasts one hell of a poster — and is yet another design that benefits from not having to promote a big name cast. Let’s take a few minutes and really break down the design of this excellent poster, because it’s that good: The first thing to notice is the simple economy of the composition. The designer managed to create a superb poster in spite of a tight budget. Here’s how: we have three-color poster (black, red, yellow), which could be printed far more cheaply than a four-color process design with tightly registered colors. (A poster that doesn’t rely on all those tightly registered little CMYK dots, means fewer throw-aways on the press and significant savings over the course of the print run.) There’s also very little illustration, with images pulled directly from publicity photographs. The top image (notice the trench coat) has been worked over with an ink wash, but my suspicion is that the artist did this in order to make the provided photo suitable for use on the poster — I bet that some aspect of the still was somehow different than what we see here. More evidence of this can be found in the strange cropping of the female figure’s front shoulder beneath the word “Short.” Designers were typically given a sheaf of publicity shots and told to make them into a poster — they had to make do with what they were given. At any rate, using straight photography is a lot faster and cheaper than creating an illustration. Next let’s direct our attention to the photographs themselves. We have a pair of highly descriptive action shots, both letting us know that this a tough-guy movie, with a little cheescake thrown in. What’s even better is how the photos are used to create depth, this is practically 3-D — the hood getting shot at the bottom of the composition erupts from the picture-plane right at us! But his body also overlaps the title typography, which itself nestles beautifully around him. That type, in turn, overlaps the large image in the background, which although farthest away from us, is quite large and very much at the top of the design. Each aspect of the image: the falling figure, the title typography, and the large couple work seamlessly together. Now here’s the icing on the cake: Look at the falling hoodlum one more time. Where does his gun point us? Directly at the title of the movie. Where does his free hand point us? At the text typography! Such posing is certainly no accident! Now let’s look more closely at the big image on top. Where does that rather large and phallic gun point? You got it, and that’s no accident either. Finally there’s the color, which is the mortar that holds these bricks together. The black ink really pops against the yellow and the red, but that large red rectangle is an incredibly powerful composition device. It gives the title typography, as well as the secondary typography, something comfortable to anchor itself to and align with; and it frames up all of the important information in the design. Like a picture frame, it shouts, “Look at me!”, and does it damn well. Although this is only the first installment of the countdown, we aren’t likely to find many entries with better designs — there will certainly be more beautiful posters, more original posters, and more resonant posters, but few more, as we say, designerly. Posters like this one make me love my job. What do you think? 90. Johnny Stool Pigeon I’d like this poster a whole lot more if not for two things: the contrived pose of Dan Duryea — I can just see the photographer giving him direction, “Dan, hold the gun a little higher…”; and the fact that the designer has made it appear as if he is standing in Oscar the Grouch’s garbage can. The suggestion of violence is great, but why so contrived? There’s also something amiss about the size relationship between Duryea and Mr. Lupino, whoops, I mean Howard Duff — in all likelihood the two were not photographed together. The saving grace of the whole affair is Shelly Winters, who looks extraordinary, iconic, and noir-ish to the nines in her beret, red dress, and fox fur. 89. The Threat This is the first of two posters that I’m all but certain are by the same artist (I wish I knew for sure). Felix Feist’s The Threat is one of those noir films that only hardcore enthusiasts have seen, and they carry a torch for it. The poster features a lot of movement, with various forms surging from one part of the composition to the next. The designer gets a ton of mileage out of the large red brushstroke that contains the film title. In addition to that, it leads the viewer’s eye to the illustration of Charles McGraw. The next point is subtle, almost certainly the unconscious product of the artist’s intuition, but note how the heads of the three figures above the title mimic the swoosh of the red brush stroke — both in the similarity of the arch, and in how that movement surges outward from the face and body of the man with the gun, through the woman, and finally to the nearest face. There’s a degree of campiness associated with the three heads on the left and their taglines, “Must HE die?,” though what some might consider camp, I think, at least in this instance, is pretty cool. 88. Human Desire 87. The Big Heat What is Glenn Ford’s problem? If I were Gloria Grahame, I’d yank the cotton ball out from under my lip and tell him to take his mitts off me. I can tell you in all honesty that placing the posters for Human Desire and The Big Heat next to one another in the countdown was completely accidental — but let’s call it a happy accident. Although both are well done I prefer the immediacy of the large image on The Big Heat to the superior composition of Human Desire, though Gloria Grahame is never sexier than she is on the Desire poster — and the depicted moment between Ford and Grahame never actually happens: It’s Lee Marvin that grabs her like that in the film! Another positive of the Desire poster is that designers are “finally” coming to understand that placing quotation marks around the film title is silly and annoying. We’ll have to forgive the era for the abundance of male on female violence that we see in film noir posters (there’s more to come, in terms of entries and the degree of violence). Perhaps the most interesting (and strange) aspect of either poster is the odd appearance that a tiny Lee Marvin makes in the margin of the poster for Heat. What is he doing there? Who is he shooting at? Between Marvin on the Heat poster and the gigantic red pump on Desire, I’m not sure which poster has the stranger details. 86. City of Fear If we take a look back at the posters from the silent era through the thirties and forties, the majority were produced in tradition of stone lithography that evolved from the Art Noveau period: Traditional illustrations wedded to hand-drawn title typography in organic, curvilinear compositions; with elements of the design nestled together like puzzle pieces rather than adhering to an underlying structure of imaginary horizontal and vertical grid lines. Coming at the very last gasp of the classic noir period, the poster for 1959’s City of Feardemonstrates the evolving design style that was finally finding its way into the art of the film poster. This is most apparent in the unadorned, minimal composition, the selection of modern typefaces, and the designer’s reliance on concept rather than an idealized star image. The fifties were the beginnings of the information age as well as the corporate era, and American graphic design took on a minimal, mass-produced look and feel — an outgrowth of the Swiss Modern style that flourished in Europe throughout the postwar period, and the American propaganda poster designs of the WPA. Hollywood has always been characterized as a copycat industry that finds something that works (be it a star-genre combination, a story convention, or a marketing strategy), and rides it into the ground. Poster design was no different. The poster for City of Fear owes more to the advertising world at large than it does to Hollywood tradition — it took the movie business until the late fifties to catch up to what had been happening in the advertising world for some time. However, one of the reasons I find this poster in particular so interesting is that it still contains elements of the classic Hollywood poster style, such as the bedroom scene at the bottom of the composition and the trio of figures at the top. The designer didn’t have the confidence (or more likely, the permission) to use only the frightened eyes / cityscape imagery, and felt compelled to include the typical scenes from the film — no matter that they don’t seem to fit. Subsequently, the poster becomes a mildly awkward bridge between these two eras of poster design. The two figures at the top are bizarre: they nestle nicely among the red letters, but also appear to be clumsily falling through space. 85. Crime of Passion A very communicative, very cleanly designed and executed poster. Its late cycle date (1957) yet again demonstrates the creeping effect of modernism in film poster design (expansive areas of bright primary colors, crisp lines, typefaces as opposed to drawn letters, photography instead of illustration). We’ve seen a few examples so far where the poster begins to tell a story all on its own, through the sequential panels of a comic strip — Crime of Passion comes the closest. The comic strip is successful because it just whets our appetite. When we arrive at the end of the sequence, THE SIN, THE LIE, THE CRIME OF PASSION, we still very much want to the movies to learn how it all washes out. Another clever nuance of the design is how the first two images are unmistakable in meaning, but the third is quite vague: has she just shot him? Is she about to? Did she simply find his revolver? We have to see film to find out, and that’s what makes this all work. 84. Baby Face Nelson I present to you: cute little Mickey Rooney, snarling maniac. There are a few posters that made the list through sheer bad-assery, and this is one of them. As you can see, Mickey appeared in this rough-and-ready screen persona in two posters, though the design for 1959’s The Last Mileisn’t quite as sophisticated as Baby Face Nelson’s — the type treatment at the top is forced and awkward, and the large, jowly face on the right is a major distraction. (But I like it so much that I had to toss it up on the page!) The clinchers for the red poster however are the ancillary images: I’m digging the shotgun-toting Carolyn Jones up top, even though the poster artist has given her the gravitas of a linebacker in drag; but the real draw are the sprawling dead figures at the bottom. As you can see, the four characters have all been executed, and blood has spilled onto the floor all around them. This sort of imagery was risqué in any Eisenhower-era film, it’s shocking and notable to see it on the poster. 83. Appointment with Danger I’ve been an Alan Ladd fan for as long as I’ve enjoyed classic films, and when Netflix first began to allow users to have their own avatars, Ladd became mine. Appointment with Danger is an excellent hardboiled film that has recently become available on DVD; it’s one I’ve written about here and at the Noir of the Week site. The poster for Appointment is super: eye popping primary colors highlighting two classic images of Ladd in action. As with the poster for Short Cut to Hell, I appreciate how the designer has used overlapping forms to give the poster a fore-, middle-, and back-ground. Referring back to the points I raised with the City of Fear poster, this poster is also one that bridges a style gap: none of the lettering here is drawn, it’s all the result of existing typefaces, yet the composition with it’s large image of Ladd and ancillary images of action from the film is pure Hollywood tradition. Ladd was a huge star at the time, so his name, along with that of Phyllis Calvert (who plays a nun in the film and is consequently absent from the poster) is above the title. Nevertheless, the type all sits comfortably well on the page, and the only real drawback is the black box at the bottom. It irks me how it covers up the falling Jack Webb. One final distraction, which admitted kept me from moving this poster to a better spot in the rankings, is incredibly nit-picky: click to zoom in on this one and dig Jan Sterling’s right arm. Poor woman. 82. Lightning Strikes Twice With taglines such as “A girl without a stoplight in her life” and “The first time you kissed her was one time too many,” all referring to the spectacularly Ruth Roman (the look…the cigarette…priceless), how can the poster go wrong? A great two-color design in the classic fifties Warner Bros. B-movie style (remember I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. and Highway 301 from last week’s entry?), this poster just doesn’t miss. The Post-It note style box at the top bothers me in that the hastily scribbled type seems out of synch with the rest of the design, but it’s a small gripe. This is a stunner. 81. This Side of the Law Long has Ride the Pink Horse held a place in my heart as the greatest film noir title of all time (along with Kiss the Blood Off My Hands), and I love the poster just as much. For my money this is the best image of Robert Montgomery on a film poster, and any image whatsoever of the divine Wanda Hendrix is welcome anytime. It’s a bizarre poster to say the least: a “Hotel Stack” collage illustration scheme, some highly incongruous and suspect typography, a bizarre cartoon-style scene at the bottom, and a shade of green that brings poison gas to mind. Yet for some reason (and probably a visceral one, at least as far as I’m concerned), it all works. The power of gestalt is happening here in some wonderful way and this becomes a poster that just grabs at me. Combine its super magical power with Montgomery’s intense gaze and the poster lands here in the countdown. This is one of those times where being offbeat goes a long way to the positive. Here’s a poster from Fox that set the standard for those black, white, and red posters from Warner Bros. There’s nothing about the design for 1940’s Johnny Apollo that really shouts at you, but there’s a lot to enjoy in the details. And I’ve placed it here in the countdown because it anticipates all of those of the fine Warner posters we’ve already seen. I love the palette: the warm sepia tones of the photography and the secondary type combined with black and the rich red of the title. The attention to detail in the text type is a plus as well — showing us that the designer really cared about the quality of the finished piece — a dedication to craftsmanship often absent from the mass-produced style of the later fifties. The combination of script typography for the first names, with big bold surnames in deco-style hand lettering is just beautiful — as is the cheesecake photo of Dorothy Lamour. Edward Arnold’s part in this film is huge, so his presence in the poster is necessary, but I’d like this a bit more if we could nix him while reflecting the photograph of Tyrone and Dotty in order to get their faces to line up with their names. This is one of the great noir pictures; if you haven’t seen it move it to the top of your list. If we can make the argument that Edward G. Robinson gives the greatest supporting turn of all time by a male actor in Double Indemnity, then an equally strong case for a supporting actress can be made for Thelma Ritter’s in this film. It’s Sam Fuller’s best movie, and maybe Richard Widmark’s as well. Tough, cynical, and subversive; this is everything a mature film noir ought to be. The poster is fine: nice title type holding up a traditional, if a bit too symmetrical composition. The star names are down at the bottom where they belong, and the inset images give us an idea of the film’s content and frame up the large artwork of Peters and Widmark nicely. The white background isn’t very indicative of the dark subject matter of the film, but it works on the poster and contributes to the all-American color palette, which must be intentionally ironic given the movie’s cynical jab at the government. What would a noir poster countdown be without that particular facial expression from Joan Fontaine? I guess it’s a little ironic that I should accuse Joan of having limited facial expressions when she appears alongside Dana Andrews on this poster. Dana’s mug shows up twice this week and, you got it, he has the exact same expression in both posters. Andrews was the kind of guy that could show up in one of those “Jib Jab” animations and appear completely normal. Ouch, I go too far. I love the guy dearly — if you read my essay on The Fearmakers you’ll know how much. Nevertheless, Andrews’ range wasn’t one of his strong suits. The poster here is quite nice, with the puzzle pieces doing exactly the same thing as the question mark in the poster for House of Numbers and the title typography in the poster for The Verdict — it looms over the main characters and casts some sort of ominous pall over their lives and their fates. It’s the burden they must suffer under. Here the pieces seem to be closing in on the couple, like some angry mob, shortly to overwhelm them — or at least, one of them… It’s almost every film noir fan’s favorite prison picture, and the movie is hard-boiled enough to live up to its title. I have to admit that it’s also nice to see Burt Lancaster looking tough for once, and not wrapped in the arms of his latest conquest. A superb poster that gets the job done without the use of photography, this features vivid, stylistically consistent illustrations from top to bottom forming an “L” shape that frames the equally well-rendered title typography. Note how tactfully the cast listing is handled here: the designer had to include the names of eleven different cast members, and place them in some sort of hierarchy by gender and billing. It works really well, and the prison-style taglines are a nice touch. This is a busy design, but from the other side of the street we’ll come away with the big image of Burt and the title — the only things necessary to get us into the theater. Most of you already know that this is a remake of the 1941 film High Sierra (be on the lookout for that poster in a few weeks!) starring Jack Palance and Shelley Winters in the Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino roles from the earlier film. Palance lacked Bogie’s pathos, and Winters was missing Lupino’s vulnerability, so the remake falls short of the original, but the poster is still a gem. It’s also worth noting (and this might help explain the some of the design choices here), that unlike High Sierra, I Died a Thousand Times was shot in color. The poster is simply marvelous. I don’t feel compelled to explain this one away, I’m sure you are all on the same page with me on this one. It’s just a stunning design with a wonderfully stilted composition and vivid use of color. The large image is sexy as hell, and all of the panels combine to form a fantastic broken stained glass effect. And can you beat a film with Gonzalez Gonzalez in the cast? Somebody get me one of these! Do I really need to explain this one? One of my criteria for judgment that I mentioned in the initial post claimed that how well the poster represents its film is relatively important to me. Well, as far as this poster goes, the red-blooded American male in me takes it back. There’s nothing very indicative of Blueprint’s story here — the poster design simply gets by on cheesecake power alone, and here it’s enough. Nevertheless, the thing is still well put together. Nice title type treatment in the red box, even considering the cliché of using the stencil typeface to make us think of blueprints — at least the box itself isn’t blue, right? The names are up top where we’d rather not see them, but they balance the two images to their left quite well, and despite the brazen yellow color they do nothing to distract us from Peters, who looks out seductively inviting viewers to see the film. What a great title! Here’s another poster undoubtedly by the same artist who designed the poster for #89, The Threat. I love this one though — it simply shouts “B movie” at audiences, with an illustrative style that approaches that of a comic book. The images are cobbled together, the typography is cheap and clumsy, and the thing is convoluted as hell, but it all adds up to something really great. This may be another example of personal preference pushing objectivity aside for a moment, but this is one of those posters that screams film noir in a way that, although clear to me, I have a hard time putting into words. No stumbling about Claire Trevor though, who makes a double appearance this week — and unlike the pretty woman on the Murder, My Sweet poster, she is all femme fatale here — just dig the sneer on her face. Her illustration is so strong that it distracted everyone, even the artist (!), from the fact that the man holding her has two right hands! Most of you will know this film by its other title, Shoot to Kill. The poster design is exactly the same, I chose to use this version instead purely for the quality of the reproduction. If you’ve seen it under either title, it’s a dog of a movie, but I’ve placed it here owing to the incredibly powerful image of the hoodlum that dominates the poster. Surprisingly, this really stands alone in terms of this kind of treatment of the large male figure carrying the weight of the design. There’s another poster coming later in the countdown that is much more well-known and iconic than this one, but the mood of the figure in that poster lacks the ferocity and menace of the one in play here. The combination of the great figurative illustration and the colorful gothic typography makes this one a no-brainer. Note: designers use the word ‘gothic’ to describe tall, sans-serif letters — I realize everyone else in the world uses the term differently! Then we have the poster for 1942’s The Guilty, a Poverty Row product from Monogram. Unlike the ambiguity of the image for Murder, My Sweet, this poster is absolutely dripping with film noir. What I love about it is how, despite the use of color photography, the image ‘feels’ black and white, if you get my drift. The shadows … the clothing … the way the man clutches the woman … the title of the film itself: all are indicative of the public’s conception of film noir, and for that matter, mine as well. A wonderfully evocative image, I won’t even get started about my feelings for Bonita Granville, we’d be here all day. Ah, Rita. We were all wondering when you’d show up. What’s that — you’ll be back again in a few weeks? We knew that too, doll. I have a feeling she won’t be a blonde next time though. Here’s Rita as one of film noir’s better femme fatales. I don’t mean to channel Coco Chanel here, but I love the lines of this poster. It would actually be easy to dismiss this as pure glamour — that is if the actress weren’t Rita Hayworth and the incredibly prominent tagline, impossible to ignore, weren’t so menacing. Once we read it, it becomes awfully difficult to look at the image in the same way — and somehow it isn’t until after we read the tag that we notice the woman is positioned against a scarlet background. Very sexy, very subversive, very subtle. You probably know by now that I’m predisposed to typography when it falls at the bottom of the poster, and the treatment here is very successful. I’ll have to tally up the performers when all is said and done, but if Claire Trevor doesn’t make the most appearances in the countdown I’ll be really surprised. This is probably the best treatment she ever got on a film poster, and that may be partly because the poster itself is so good. The big image of a cigarette-smoking Lawrence Tierney is pure film noir, and anticipates the style of contemporary movie posters, but it’s Claire in the classic femme fatale pose that sells the tickets. The composition here is exceedingly simple and strong, with a juxtaposition of imagery and style that is incredibly evocative of a tornado — see it? There’s one tagline — that’s all this poster needs. It’s positioned well and says a mouthful. The rest of the type balances the tag and occupies just the right amount of space in the composition. You guys all know why this one is here, so instead of lauding it as an example of great design work, instead it gives us an idea of the extraordinary power and popularity of Confidential magazine. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Confidential, it’s the original scandal sheet, and was one of the most important pieces of fifties pop / Hollywood culture. Recently the subject of a book I haven’t had the chance to read yet, Confidential and it’s bizarre history is worth looking into. This is the final entry from the artist that I’m betting worked on the posters for #89 The Threat, and #48 Hoodlum Empire. Similar to Crime Wave, the illustration tells many stories in its wonderful comic book style. Like its siblings, this poster has an unsophisticated composition and type treatment, but is so emblematic in its representation of the urban landscape so central to film noir that the sum of the poster is truly greater than the parts. Sheesh, I know it’s a lotta text, but c’mon — this is one of the greatest poster images in all of noir! What a great pose…and the girl even has a gun. I love how classic this is, covered from top to bottom in hand drawn letters — surprising for a poster from 1954. Sure, there are a few typefaces there, but they don’t dominate and despite the sheer volume of text, everything fits together harmoniously and nothing reduces the power of the central image. If this were a little less busy, I’m betting it would have cracked the top twenty. From a content point of view, this is pure Spillane — somebody sure got this one right. This is one of the coolest posters in the countdown. You’ll notice as we move forward that there are fewer and fewer unknown films that make it this far, but one look at this poster tells you that it surely deserves its placement. The gun-toting female figure is great: she’s sexy (even if her dress is a bit too Les Miserables for my taste), and by positioning her at the edge of the design instead of in the middle we really get the impression that she’s on the lam. The silhouette of the Colt 1911 is brilliant though — it draws heavily on the tenets of the modernist style, yet still manages to hold a part of the narrative illustration: the wall she hides behind and them men who pursue her through a dark and forbidding urban landscape. She stands on the title typography, and her weight has managed to shift it onto a diagonal, enlivening the composition of the bottom of the poster. Sublime. The violence here is so reminiscent of the covers of EC Comics Shock SuspenStories! A great image made even better by the artists attention to detail: the broken strap on the left shoe; the helpless policeman looking up from the fire escape the small, unrelated drama being played out in the alley far below — not to mention that the performers actually look like themselves. I consider the stars names at the top of the design to be something of a pleasant failure, but the title typography is out of this world, and doesn’t disturb the illustration at all. Move the title to the top and the names to the bottom and this could have moved a lot higher — it remains one of the most jarring and powerful images in the countdown. A full bleed vintage film poster, how cool is that! Have you ever seen a film poster from this era without a border? Few were made, and this is certainly the best of them. We’ve seen many limited color palettes, but none this limited — and it’s surprising to think that in the entire body of classic noir this is the only poster that uses black and white to such stunning effect, if at all! An outstanding poster is every regard, from the composition to the quality of the illustration, to the typography, and on and on. The image of Victor Mature perfectly summarizes his character’s frame of mind: world weary, terrified, and constantly looking over his shoulder. Note also the way the letter “I” in “Kiss” is used to cleverly integrate type and image. I also love the subtle knife-shaped shadow speeding into Mature’s head from the right. This is pure film noir, the only thing missing is Tommy Udo and the wheelchair. 1. Sunset Boulevard Steve Sunday May 31, 2011 at 6:25 PM This is a great post - thanks very much. It makes me want to decorate my house with all these posters. I never will. It also makes me want to watch all the movies - I have only seen around 6% of them. I probably never will get round to seeing most of them because of sites like this - the internet is just too damned interesting. Yes, it is your fault. Mark July 5, 2011 at 2:27 PM Certainly you may! I like the poster for Johnny Eager, but I don't think there's anything particularly noir-ish about it. It has always struck me as growing more out of the star tradition at MGM where the male and female leads are depicted in a romantic pose. I've always had a predisposition against posters where the star names trump the title of the film as well. The poster for Killer's Kiss is great - I remember putting a great deal of thought into whether or not to include it. In the end I decided against it because we can't see the front side of the person with the axe — who is the biggest thing on the poster. It also felt a little like a horror film poster, but then again, I almost included it. As for Out of the Past, the poster just never resonated with me beyond the iconic image of Mitchum. It's a good poster, but I tried to be especially careful not to include those from the iconic films just because they were so well-known. The primary reason I left it out is because I don't think the image of Jane Greer is quite right. Her outfit looks old-fashioned, as if it were more suitable for a western. Nevertheless, looking back at this poster in particular I think I could have squeezed it in somewhere. Thanks for the comment! I wish there had been a few more along these lines. Anonymous July 5, 2011 at 4:14 PM I know that choosing the top 100 is an impossible task, and I appreciate your comments on those three posters. But if you are REALLY looking for more posts along these lines, I would also suggest that anyone interested in this topic also check out the wonderful posters for 'Nightmare Alley', 'The Hitch-Hiker', 'Ace in the Hole', 'The Dark Corner', and 'I Walk Alone' which IMHO has the greatest Noir tagline of all time. (Damn. I may need my own blog.) Fantastic stuff. Mark July 5, 2011 at 4:37 PM You missed The Hitch-Hiker, it's right there at #14. I think the poster for The Dark Corner is fine — it was another that I considered and ultimately dismissed (if only those blinds cast a shadow, a la 'Trapped'), this design would almost work better for another of Ball's films, 'Lured.' I disagree pretty strongly about your other choices though. The Nightmare Alley design comes across more as a typical vehicle for Tyrone Power, again in the forties tradition of studio star vehicle poster designs. Sure, he's smoking, but there's little else about to that evokes noir. The poster for Ace in the Hole doesn't work at all. Poor photo choice coupled with bland typography — and it hasn't aged well. I like the notion of the implied violence in the pictorial relationship of Douglas to Sterling, but it's a dud as far as photos go — an illustration would have worked so much better! The poster for I Walk Alone is fascinating. I would appreciate it more if it were for a lower-budget Poverty Row film, instead of one with Douglas, Lancaster, Scott, and Corey. There's something very amateurish about the cobbled-together composition that I like, but it seems to ill-fit this particular movie. I'm certain that little cap pistol in Burt's hand was pieced in after the fact — and that the hand probably isn't Burt's anyway. There's just too much text on that poster, or it's too darn big. Either way I think it doesn't work. Thanks — I'm just letting you know where I'm coming from with the response, not trying to be argumentative :-) I really appreciate the comments and the chance to talk about some other posters that I wasn't able to include. I wish I could post images in the comments so others could chime in. I have a feeling you and I are simply have a different set of parameters for what adds up to a strong design. Thanks again. Mark January 24, 2014 at 12:48 PM Yes, I can help you. Just let me know what you'd like to know! First, does your poster have a large portrait of Mary Astor smoking a cigarette, with the title in black letters at the bottom? Is the poster folded, rolled, or does the poster have a canvas or paper backing? What sort of condition is it in? If your poster is original and in great shape, it's worth a few thousand dollars ! Rob J April 11, 2015 at 5:32 PM "Blonde Sinner" was known by its' British title original title "Yield To The Night". The US poster bore nothing in relation to the film which was Diana Dors' finest moment. Like Marilyn in "Niagara", she was a superb actress who was forever typecast as the "blonde". However, she got the ultimate accolade as a still from the film was used for the cover of a Smiths album. It doesn't get any better than that.
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