Amazing Soviet film posters (5/5)

The Soviet film posters book I'm writing about is the large-size version (ISBN 978-3836589529, 34x26mm with 320 pages) and not the smaller version (ISBN 

 978-3754405543, 15x21mm with 512 pages). Both sizes have the same cover design, so you need to make sure you get the larger copy, which I think is the better of the two.

The 250 posters are so unlike anything produced in the West during the 20s and 30s. They rely on incredibly strong graphics, especially photomontages, to put their message across to the public. The only common element is the use of faces in lots of different photographic and art styles. 

The posters are presented on black pages throughout the book. Each gets a reasonable-length caption about the film, plus technical details naming the designer, size, date etc. The author writes a worthwhile essay about the designers who created this amazing art. The back pages has brief biogs of them and a three-page index. 

The city of another day of sun (3/5)

A book with five chapters revealing a visual history of LA from 1850 to 1965. It's basically pictures and captions. The longest, with eighty-two pages, is 'Paradise 1945-1965' though I'm not sure why LA from 1965, up to at least 2000, isn't considered. I found it very much a pop look at the city with plenty of non-interesting photos, for example, several of folks sitting at tables in restaurants or clubs, smiling and looking at the camera. This type of photo is relevant to the individuals shown but of little interest to anyone else.

There's a bit of everything included (so long as it's available as a picture) commercial, domestic and motel architecture, suburbs, transport, street scenes, entertainment (lots of this) industry and more. Unfortunately, all this pictorial material is just dropped into each spread with no overall book design to hold it together. LA deserves better than this and it has been done in 572 pages. Check out 'Los Angeles: portrait of a city' (ISBN  978-3836502917).

The reel black art 4/5

This is Taschen's second Noir book. Same title, same authors (though a slightly different cover typography) published in 2015 with 686 pages (ISBN 978 3836543569). This new edition has 896 pages but both books consider the top hundred movies. I  found it odd that Noir movies, at least in this book, start with the 1920 'The cabinet of Dr Caligari' and run up to 2019 with 'Uncut gems' and 'The Wild Goose Lake'. 

For me, Noir style involves a certain kind of screenplay, direction, lighting, location etc and is basically an American genre. Starting around the 1940s ('High Sierra' or 'The Maltese Falcon' for example) and fading by 1960 ('Odds against tomorrow'). Anything either side of these dates I would class as non-Noir crime movies.

The format for the hundred is the same throughout the book. Each movie starts on a spread with technical details on the left and a poster on the right-hand page; the following six or eight pages have captioned stills and a worthwhile essay about the title. The first fifty-two pages have three illustrated essays about the chosen hundred. Ten back pages list a thousand movies in year order; no doubt you'll find your faves in this listing.

This is a memory-jogger of a book for fans of Noir (or crime) movies. A slight downside is that all the pages are black, which shows up finger marks. 

Fans of Noir will enjoy this marvellous book of posters, which you can see here:

Westread Book Reviews: The vine of crime yields bitter fruit 5/5 (westreadreviews.blogspot.com)

UK

Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites : Müller, Jürgen, Duncan, Paul: Amazon.co.uk: Books