Movie

Vintage movie posters: the promise before the film

Before photography took over, posters were painted by illustrators who knew how to make a face enormous and a landscape theatrical. The French versions are often the best of them: warmer colour, softer drawing, and a title set as part of the picture rather than pasted on top.

Look at the lettering on any of these. It is drawn to match the image, which is why the sheet reads as one object instead of a photograph plus a caption.

What is in this collection

• Forbidden Planet — Robby, a swimsuit and a flying saucer.
• Fantastic Voyage — the submarine inside the body.
• Yellow Submarine — flat colour, cartoon logic, and a toy of a submarine.
• Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman — the drive-in poster at its loudest.
• Chaplin — the tramp, drawn rather than photographed.

The format itself

A cinema one-sheet was printed at roughly 69 × 102 cm, on paper thin enough to fold into eighths and post in a tube. It was made to be looked at from the back of a lobby, so the drawing is bold, the contrast is high and the credits sit in a block at the bottom.

Reproduced at 50×70 or 70×100 cm, the proportions still hold — which is why a film poster reads as a film poster even in a living room.

How to hang a film poster

These are loud pictures, so give them a wall of their own or a corridor where you pass rather than sit. A black frame and no mount is the standard treatment; a white mount softens them and makes them look like prints rather than posters.

Two from the same decade work well as a pair. If you want to mix, keep the second one graphic rather than photographic — the music collection or the iconic prints are the safest neighbours.

Sizes, paper and delivery

Pigment print on 210 gsm Hahnemühle paper, sizes from 30×40 to 70×100 cm plus A3 and A2. Frame not included. Orders leave within 24 hours and arrive in 3–5 working days inside the EU, in a tracked tube.