MANIFEST
INTRODUCTORY PART
by Mario Verdone , Franco Montini
Born from the need to disseminate news of public interest, both from official and private institutions, m. it was already used since the nineteenth century for purposes of information and commercial advertising. This kind of disclosure, originally characterized by simple typographic signs, was gradually associated with images first in black and white and then in color, contextually with the technological progress of the process of color lithography before and up to the photographic reproduction, thus starting to the current form of the m., which emphatically transmits a message through the reproduced image.
The m. film was the first and for a long time the main advertising vehicle of the film. Its characteristics have always been immediacy and recognition. Its function is to attract attention, but, at least until the advent of new promotional tools, such as the flano and the trailer, also to provide the public with a whole series of information. In many cases the m. cinematographic, also assimilated to the type logo function of the film to which it refers, is proposed as it is in different countries, with the only obvious variation of the writings, almost confirming an international culture of realist language. Beyond the style of the different poster designers, the m. cinema differs from other types of advertising for its own distinctive and unmistakable language, which refers to the cinematographic one with the use of rhetorical figures such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche. But, probably, the diversity of the m. of cinema also derives from the fact that in this case not a product is sold, the film itself, but an emotion. cinema is usually the producer or more often the distribution company which, reserving the power of definitive approval, in the past entrusted the realization to a poster designer and more recently, or since photography has replaced the drawing, to a graphic designer. Until the seventies the public life of an m. cinema was very short because it accompanied the release of the film, usually preceding the arrival on the market-hall by a couple of weeks. In the period of greatest splendor of the m., When it was the the only means assigned to the promotion, for each title several subjects were created, different from each other, intended for posting in a variety of formats ranging from very large ones (in-folio), to reduced ones (mostly in eighth) type poster. The 'poster' is in fact in theater and cinema m of reduced dimensions, and of m. has retraced the evolution: from a small notice - like the ancient playbill of English theaters - which reported only with alphabetic characters the essential data of the place where the work was presented, the director and the main actors, gradually enriched the decorative apparatus, generally sober, to later become a reduction of the bigger billboards, not sometimes failing to resort to elements taken from photographs or film frames,THE ORIGINS OF THE CINEMA POSTER
by Mario Verdone
In the late nineteenth century Paris the first examples of m can be traced. modern in advertising posters, produced primarily by Jules Chéret and other artists including Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, active for the Folies Bergères, for the Pantomimes lumineuses by Émile Reynaud and for the Moulin Rouge, while Alphonse Mucha created posters of ornate elegance for the work of Sarah Bernhardt. During the belle époque and during the period of the Art Nouveau, other important names were added to Chéret: Wilette, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Jean-Louis Forain, Leonetto Cappiello and Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron called Cassandre, who claimed that the m., turning to passers-by in a hurry and beset by myriads of images, they had to arouse surprise, violate sensitivity, with brutality but at the same time with style. The world of cinema found in m. a precious ally, used immediately by the Lumière brothers who, although convinced that the Cinématographe was only scientific curiosity and 'writing of the movement' without too many ambitions and of limited future, in the view L'arroseur arrosé focused the public's attention on the 'found 'comedian and they offered a starting point in the billboard for the screening held in 1895 at the Grand café on Boulevard des Capucines. In the first decades of the 20th century. the m. in addition to Cappiello and Achille Luciano Mauzan (who signed the works of Giovanna d'Arco, 1913, by Nino Oxilia; Italian epic in 1914, by Eduardo Bencivenga; Torquato Tasso, 1914; Margot, 1914 , by Ubaldo Maria Del Colle), on names of great prestige and undisputed value. Giovanni Pastrone's film Cabiria (1914) made use of m. advertising to Luigi Emilio Caldanzano and Leopoldo Metlicovitz. Enrico Guazzoni, director and poster designer, created a lithographic establishment where Aleardo Terzi, Federico Ballester and his son Anselmo, Alfredo Capitani, Luigi Martinati, Marcello Dudovich and Tito Corbella (who was the poster designer of Cajus Julius Caesar, 1914, worked for the cinema) Guazzoni and Assunta Spina, 1915, by Gustavo Serena and Francesca Bertini). I m. by Frate Sole (1918) and Giuliano the Apostate (1919) by Ugo Falena, by The Last Days of Pompeii (1926) by Amleto Palermi and Carmine Gallone were the work of Duilio Cambellotti, while Enrico Prampolini signed Thaïs (1917) by Anton Giulio Bragaglia. Anselmo Ballester drew the sts. of films starring Leda Gys (La Bohème, 1917, and Coiffeur pour dames, 1924, by Palermi; Rondine, 1929, by Eugenio Perego). In Denmark, whose cinematography enjoyed considerable prestige in the silent era, Ludwig Kainer made the m. for the films starring Asta Nielsen and Ernst Deutsch the one for Urban Gad's Komödianten (1912) (also with Nielsen).
In the 1920s, among the poster designers of the Soviet Union there were some of the protagonists of the avant-garde season such as Aleksandr M. Rodčenko, El. Licitzky, Kazimir S. Malevič, the brothers Vladimir and Georgij Sternberg, who moved away from their style to focus on popular expressive forms, simple and clear. Rodčenko and the Sternberg brothers e.g. signed m. for Bronenosec Potëmkin (1925; The battleship Potëmkin) by Sergej M. Ejzenštejn; Malevič signed the m. of the German film Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922; Dr Mabuse) by Fritz Lang. Coinciding with the Jugendstil and then with the expressionist season, Germany had refined masters such as Ludwig Hohlbein, Paul Schenrich, Thomas Theodor Heine, Julius Klinger and E. Deutsch, who also dragged painters such as Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner into this art, Hermann Max Pechstein, Oscar Kokoschka. The various currents, including Expressionism, are well illustrated by Hellmut Rademacher (1965). Otto Arpke and Erich Ludwig Stahl drew the m. Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920; Dr. Calligari also known as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari); Paul Schenrich those of Anna Boleyn (1920; Anna Bolena) by Ernst Lubitsch; Boris Bilinskij those of Die freudlose Gasse (1925; The way without joy) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Karl Michel those of Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage (1926; Faust) by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Calligari also known as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari) by Robert Wiene; Paul Schenrich those of Anna Boleyn (1920; Anna Bolena) by Ernst Lubitsch; Boris Bilinskij those of Die freudlose Gasse (1925; The way without joy) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Karl Michel those of Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage (1926; Faust) by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Calligari also known as The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari) by Robert Wiene; Paul Schenrich those of Anna Boleyn (1920; Anna Bolena) by Ernst Lubitsch; Boris Bilinskij those of Die freudlose Gasse (1925; The way without joy) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Karl Michel those of Faust - Eine deutsche Volkssage (1926; Faust) by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.
Of particular level are the numerous m. Poles that were created by the artists of the Academy of Plastic Arts in Warsaw: they differed from the ornate and aestheticizing style of the m. Italians and French of the period through a concise and symbolic representation of the subject, released from purely advertising information and immediate and accessible recognition. Among the artists, who also collaborated in the post-war period in Italy, we must mention Jan Lenica, Anna Lipinska and Józef Mroszezak.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CL Ragghianti , The contemporary poster , in "sele arte", Sept.-Oct. 1953, 8, pp. 43-49.
Polski Plakat Filmowy. L'affiche polonaise de cinéma , edited by T. Kowalski, Warszawa 1957.
M. Verdone , Rodcenko in the avant-garde , in "Black and white", 1964, 4-5.
H. Rademacher , Das deutsche Plakat. Von den Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart , Dresden 1965 (trad. It. Milan 1965).
The Italian poster for the centenary of the lithographic poster , Milan 1965.
R. Barilli , Il Liberty , Milan 1966.
Y. Brunhammer , Lo style 1925 , Milan 1966.
Memories graphics. From the historical manifesto to the avant-garde production , Rome, Rome 1967 (catalog).
M. Gallo , The affiche. Miroir de l'histoire, miroir de la vie , Paris 1973.
J. Forneris , Jules Chéret , Nice 1991.
R. Ulmer , Alfons Mucha , Köln 1993.
R. Hollis , Graphic design. A concise history , New York 1994.
Graphic arts in European silent cinema , curated by R. Palmieri, Rome 1995.
The movie poster from the second post-war period
by Franco Montini
There were numerous causes which, in the immediate post-war period, brought about a real revolution in the area of m. film. A first reason was strictly technical: from the end of the 1940s, in fact, we witnessed the definitive transition from lithography to offset printing, or photolithography. In other words, up to a certain period, the m. it was made by hand reproduction with the lithographic pencil, projecting the sketch on a stone plate first and then a zinc one. This type of procedure severely limited the creative possibilities of the authors, forcing them in particular to use a few colors. Subsequently, through photographic reproduction on the plates, all sorts of limitations fell: any brushstroke could be reproduced. I m. they enriched themselves, although they began to tend towards excessive rhetoric.
To determine a further 'genetic mutation' of the m. cinema was the advent of television and mass motorization. For years the iconographic model of m. cinema had been the storyteller's poster: the affix was the only information tool for the public and therefore tended to provide a summary of the events narrated through the description of the mother scenes. Reading this type of m. he needed long and dilated times, made possible by the fact that he moved slowly around the city, preferably on foot. With the advent of television and more generally with the development of the media, the m. it gradually lost the function of providing information on the advertised film. On the other hand, at the same time, the mass motorization made the movements faster, restricting the consumer's visual field. The m. of cinema had to adapt: the posters had to be able to read quickly; rather than telling the film, they were simply deputies to draw attention. Thus the iconographic models changed; the number of subjects proposed by each m. lessened, the attention shifted, more than it happened in the past, on the face of the protagonist or the protagonist on duty. The presence of the star was definitively enhanced. Its function in the structure of the m. it was twofold because the star was both a product and a testimonial. It is a unique case in which the two functions coincide and this element was also another of the reasons that made the m. of cinema different from any other type of advertising communication. The actor on the m.
A new generation of poster artists accompanied these mutations. In Italy, where the m. author was a feature of the film market also recognized by American filmmakers, after the great 'old men' (such as A. Ballester, Capitani and Martinati) who had marked the cinematographic imagination between the two wars, a new group of young people emerged poster designers: Giovanni Mataloni, Augusto Favalli, Ercole Brini, Rinaldo Geleng, Angelo Cesselon, Manfredo Acerbo, Averardo Ciriello, Sandro Symeoni, Enrico De Seta, Nano (pseudonym of Silvano Campeggi), Carlantonio Longi, Enzo and Giuliano Nistri, then Dante Manno, Ermanno Piero Iaia. Brini and Nano in particular were assiduous collaborators of the great American productions that directly entrusted them with the advertising campaigns for highly popular films: from Notorious, whose m. was designed by Brini, in Casablanca, Ben Hur, West side story whose m. they were designed by Nano. While being part of an iconographic tradition now sufficiently codified that, in a period in which cinema still represented great mass entertainment, it was rooted in the furrow of popular illustration, each of the new poster artists was quite recognizable for the style, which implies a precise artistic personality. Cesselon became the leading portrait painter of cinema; in his m. always dominates the first floor of the diva or star on duty, captured with extraordinary verisimilitude, but also with a typically cinematic framing cut. Acer-bo specialized in dramatic cinema: his m. they are lively and inventive, full of action, of environments, of characters outlined with an effective and pictorial style; as also happens in the affixes of two other famous poster artists with a clear pictorial matrix: Brini and Symeoni. De Seta, on the other hand, had to specialize in comedy for his ironic touch that clearly denounces the origin of the caricature.
In the next generation, from the mid-sixties, only one name really emerges: Renato Casaro, extraordinary illustrator of hyper-realistic style, also highly appreciated abroad, often called in Hollywood, particularly for spectacular and action films, and known among the others for m. of For a Fistful of Dollars and of They Called Him Trinity. Since the seventies, however, it has been possible to witness a progressive impoverishment of the m. film, which, especially in the field of genre production, was mostly made with photographic material. In fact, producers and distributors attributed less and less importance to m. as a useful advertising vehicle and, while continuing to commission it, especially by tradition, they intended to reduce construction costs as much as possible. In recent years, in the m. the cinematographic function has definitively ceased to exist, entrusted to other instruments, first of all to the trailer. The m. it has turned into something else: in the brand of the film itself. The design has given way to graphics with sometimes even very brilliant and ingenious solutions: for example, the ghosts that come out of the no-stop sign for Ghostbusters or the Batman sign for the famous saga. This is how the poster's posting strategies have also changed: in the case of an event film, the promotional campaign, entrusted simply to a brand, or an advertisement, can also start well in advance of the release in theaters. The m. it has become a sort of teaser, or a call made to create a waiting atmosphere. But as it happened with the old storyteller's placards, even the brand is more original, innovative, artistically valid, the better it performs the function for which it was designed. In the cinema an m. successful continues to be an effective and indispensable promotional tool.
bibliography
Seduction, promise and sublimation in the advertising of great films , edited by F. Montini, R. Striano, Rome 1991.
Italy at the cinema: posters from the Salce Collection 1911-1961 , edited by E. Manzato, Venice 1992.
B. Martusciello , The art of cinema posters , in Homage to Audrey Hepburn , Rome 1995 (catalog).
Motionless cinema. Popular cinema posters and poster designers from the 1960s to the 1980s , edited by S. Naitza, Cagliari 1997.
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