Art of the dark past 5/5

The same book, left, the large hardback and right, the paperback with an extra chapter.

Film Noir posters obviously reflect the contents of the movies with lots of background black and hand-lettered typography similar to actual titles on the screen (remember those that were angled and some of the letters were really big, coming from the front and stopping when the whole title was readable on the screen) and always in capital letters. The three hundred posters in the book capture the exuberance of the style. It is fair to say though, that none of these were made as examples of creative design, in the style of, for example, a Saul Bass poster like The man with the golden arm, Anatomy of a murder, Exodus or Schindler's list. You can see some here: Past Print: Saul Bass movie posters (westread.blogspot.com) Movie posters decades ago were the responsibility of marketing departments.

Paintings of the stars in action were a standard graphic treatment for any movie poster before photos took over. The author mentions how stylish many of these illustrations were but they were just churned out by reasonably competent artists who lowered their standards to fit in with the Noir poster style. They had to compete with bold titles, other cast members and with smaller type the directors, producers and screenplay writers.

Each poster gets some technical details and nicely the author adds a few words about the theme of the movie. An interesting chapter is four: The usual suspects - Noir's most familiar faces. Nineteen stars are mentioned with several posters of their best Noir appearances.

I think it's worth mentioning that this paperback is a straight reprint of a hardcover, coffee table, version published by Overlook Press (ISBN1585670731) in 2002 and still available at about the same price as this paperback. It's beautifully printed on gloss paper. The only difference between the two books (apart from the smaller size paperback) is the addition, in the paperback, of an extra chapter with twenty-six posters. I think the Overlook hardcover is a much better buy.