Monday, July 30, 2007

Compare and Contrast

I found a great web site today via Boing Boing, it's a gallery of movie posters done by mostly Polish graphic artists. Some of the posters are truly amazing. I'll be posting some of them along with the American versions, you can compare and contrast amongst yourselves.
Bonnie and Clyde:

The American version is not bad, it kind of hip and actiony and I love that they used so much purple, it's almost like proclaiming the Bonnie and Clyde were royalty.

The Polish version is stunning. It conveys the time period when the story took place and it also lets you know there's going to be some intense action, so much red must mean a lot of blood is going to be spilled.

Chinatown:

This is a fantastic Alphonse Mucha like design for Roman Polanski's masterpiece. Faye Dunaway emerges from Jack Nicholson's smoke like a mysterious goddess. She hovers over the landscape of this poster like she hovers over the story in the film. It's hard to top this great design.

This design, while not topping the original American design, sure gives it a run for it's money. Everything you need to know about Chinatown is right there. It's about sex, money, and black hearted people.

It never ceases to amaze me how two people can look at the same thing and see different things or how two artists can be given the same assignment and how their results can differ so widely. It restores my faith in mankind when I see stuff like this.

3 comments:

Becca said...

Wow that Chinatown poster is so cool, very interesting.

Splotchy said...

The Art Institute Of Chicago has a great movie theater.

Seeing as it's affiliated with an arts institution, in the lobby area they usually have some sort of cinema-related display.

For a couple months they had a series of foreign film posters of familiar movies. They probably were Polish, but I don't know for sure. What I do know was that they were absolutely incredible, really astonishing. They were so cool that the first movie I went to see there after initially noticing the display, I made sure I got there a half hour earlier so I could just stare at all the posters.

Thanks for posting this, as well as the links to the gallery.

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

Becca-Check out the others at the link I provided, they are all wildly good.

Splotchy-You are welcome my man.