The great thing about movie writing is that there's so much to love. Since film is the most intensely collaborative of media, a good move can be appreciated on any number of levels, and even a bad movie might have something to recommend it. That's because a movie isn't one thing, it's dozens: it's a screenplay, a collection of performances by actors, a moving picture, a trailer, a logo, a soundtrack, a trailer, and a dozen other artistic endeavors all assembled into a single production. As you can tell from other Screengrab features like our "OST" soundtrack reviews and Paul Clark's trailer reviews, we love the process of looking at a film not only as a whole, but as the discrete elements that make up that whole. Which is why we're very enthusiastic about "Poster Service", a new feature on the Guardian's film blog.
Enlisting the aid of Paul Rennie, the head of the graphic design department at St. Martins College, the "Poster Service" series takes a look at some famous (their first installment was Gone with the Wind) and not-so-famous (this week features Pink String and Sealing Wax, an Ealing comedy that was a hit in Britain but little-known elsewhere) in an attempt to discern, from a designer's perspective, why some movie posters work and some don't. Referring to the Selznick classic, Rennie observes that "the title of Gone with the Wind immediately communicates an association with the genteel sophistication of the southern U.S. Against a backdrop of the Civil War, the associations of [its] typography alluded to a more luxurious and sensual environment than that of the WASPish north. It's just right for a particular kind of passion romance." Of Pink String and Sealing Wax, he notes, "the Ealing film posters are remarkable on two points. Firstly, and against all the odds, they are recognisable works of art by artists whose work extends beyond the usual concerns of graphic design, cinema and fine art. Secondly, they embrace and give passion to the political dimension of satire and social-realism -- especially rare in cinema."
We're pretty excited to see where Rennie goes from here -- and frankly, we're just as interested, if not more so, in what he judges to be bad poster art than we are the good stuff. What about you, Screengrab readers? What are your favorite, and least favorite, movie posters?
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