Design in Film Posters! Round 3!
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| The Good German |
This weeks poster comes from a more recent film: Steven Soderbergh's
The Good German, starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett.
The Good German is set in post-WWII Germany and deals with the aftermath of that war. The film was shot in black-and-white and was meant to pay homage to the noir genre of the 1940s. I haven't seen the film so I can't comment on the quality of the movie itself but I can talk about how much I love this poster. The poster is meant to be a very obvious callback to the
Casablanca poster of 1942. The composition of the photo used and even the fonts between the two posters are similar.
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| Casablanca |
The film itself is a nod to film noir in general but what is so great about this poster is that they capture that spirit of film noir genre in a single shot by making audiences and consumers think back to the iconic
Casablanca poster, arguably the most famous noir film ever made. This poster very well sets the film of the movie, a noir-ish film and all the elements that come with that. Even
Casablanca was set during WWII and dealt with nazis. The iconography of the old-style movie works very well with this 2006 movie. By calling back something incredibly famous movie, and famous for very specific things (romance, war, exotic locations, intrique) some expectations for the new film have already been set and their tapping into a specific audience. The poster works very well to capture the spirit of a genre using old school iconography.
I really like your comparison. And beside Casablanca being one of my all time favorite, the "design" of that silverscreen era is timeless.
ReplyDeleteAs far as movie posters go, although I've never seen the movie nor do I know the storyline, The Good American Poster always caught my eye:
http://www.onlinemovieshut.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/the-american-movie-poster.jpg
Kinda reminds of:
http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/33/MPW-16874
what do you think?
I love it! I've been seeing a lot of this nostalgic callback to older eras, especially in movie posters. Actually, now that I think about it, especially in George Clooney movies. Another one that comes immediately to mind is the poster for his recent movie "Burn After Reading" which was clearly inspired by a handful of older posters.
ReplyDeleteCheck out this article that compares a few of them:
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/24691935.html
I'm really getting into the whole idea of design in posters. There's so much put into them and I love how much can be drawn from a single image like this.
Hey, just wanted to say "thanks!"
ReplyDeleteI wrote a blog inspired by yours.
http://teleido-scope.blogspot.com/2010/11/butch-cassidy-and-american-sorry.html
P.S. I saw "Burn After Reading" at Borders the other day and was totally reminded of your mentioning of it.