I thought of this while viewing “Coming Attractions:
Classic Film Posters from the Konstantino Spanoudis iKON Collection,” at the Barrymore Film Center and Museum in Fort Lee, NJ, not far from where I live in
Bergen County. If you have a chance, rush to see this exhibit before it closes
January 5. Even better, couple your trip with a ticket for one of the classic,
independent, or art house movies playing in this burgeoning mecca for
cinephiles in the tristate area.
The 70 items on display range from 1910, the dawn of
the silent era (which began, this nonprofit center and museum will remind you,
in Fort Lee) to 1981, concentrating mostly on the U.S. but with some foreign
posters for a wider context.
As you look through the materials, you might be
surprised to discover that issues that preoccupy Americans now had their
genesis over a century ago. Censors back then, for instance, focused first on
these posters—an inexpensive alternative to newspaper advertising.
Lithographers were the original creators of movie
posters, and, like the other form they created—circus posters—highlighted, and
sometimes exaggerated, lurid content. Opponents’ anger, then, often
concentrated on the art itself, which would likely be seen by more passersby
than the movies themselves.
As late as the 1930s, American movie posters were
still seen as the products of hacks who labored in an industry more respected
for the money it generated than as an art. So many motion pictures were being
produced then that the useful life of a poster could be only days, leading to
their trashing, recycling, or return to exchange.
French, German, and Italian artists often signed their
work, enjoying greater recognition than their largely anonymous American
counterparts. (A conspicuous exception: Saul Bass, who transformed the
movie-poster industry with his art for Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, and Alfred
Hitchcock—and whose seminal work for Anatomy of a Murder is shown here.)
Konstantino Spanoudis,
a Greek-born Fort Lee owner and curator of iKON Art Gallery, has amassed well
over 6,000 movie posters since he began accumulating this art in the late
1980s.
What’s on display in the museum’s 1,800-sq.-ft.
exhibition gallery reflects his fascination especially with classic Hollywood,
B-westerns, Abbott and Costello comedies, sports, and “race films” (movies made
by Black filmmakers for segregated movie houses).
Nearly 20 of the pieces relate to Bergen County,
mostly Fort Lee, including for:
* Fighting Death (Solex Studio, Fort Lee, 1914)
* Silent “vamp” Theda Bara’s Carmen (made at
Fort Lee’s Fox Studio, 1915); and
* The multi-part Lincoln epic, Son of Democracy
(filmed in Ridgefield Park, 1917).
Among the other titles promoted by these posters:
* Sarah Bernhardt’s Queen Elizabeth (1912), one
of the first silents to promote a specific film and star rather than “the
movies” in general; and
* Gilda (1946, pictured), the film noir
starring Rita Hayworth;
* La Dolce Vita (1960), by Federico Fellini,
one of the imports that these posters advertised;
* A trio of James Bond films, from the Sixties dawn of
the franchise (Dr. No, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice);
* Jaws (1975), and;
* Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
The industry has progressed from an ephemeral
advertising art to one whose most prized items can garner $40,000 to $50,000.
The Barrymore exhibit provides a great way to appreciate two fine arts that
nobody expected much from at their beginnings: the motion picture industry
itself, and the posters that promoted it to a public that eventually couldn’t
get enough of it.
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