So I’m walking down the street in Paris… It’s pretentious day at On Food And Film… so I’m walking down the street in Paris and I see a movie poster shop. I’ve been obsessed with movie posters my entire life and always have some hanging on my walls. I did when I was 10, I still have them all over my house. For me it is less whether I like the movie or not but the art of the poster. There are some incredible artists that have done wonderful work over the years. Anyway, I love them.

So I walk in this shop and on the far wall, huge, 3 or 4 times the size of a regular poster, is this:

 At first I wasn’t even sure at what I was looking. It was so weird and strange and compelling and darkly beautiful. I went to the man who owned the shop and asked him about it. He told me it was the polish movie poster to ‘The Godfather”, which as some of you know is my favorite movie. I still didn’t understand quite where this came from… “polish Movie Poster”?  He told me that in Poland, over the years movie posters have become a great art form. He showed me a few more he had, and I was blown away. Thus began an obsession with the strange, wonderful world of movie posters from Poland.

Today, then, a more visual post. I wanted to share some of these posters with you. They are so creative, so cool. Some you can tell right off what the movie is, some it takes a while. How the artists often integrate the themes or plots into the images is so intelligent, so clever.

If you click on the images, you should be able to see them much larger. And if you fall in love with them the way I have, just google “Polish Movie Posters” and you will find many sites devoted to them, both the images and stores that sell them. I can lose hours looking through these images. But on to some of my favorites:

If you know “Cabaret”, you can see how clever this is, integrating the dancing, the swastika, the overall feel of decadence. It also has a very Bob Fosse feel. And then there’s the way the mouth is positioned to mimic… well, moving on…

I love how this captures the boxing element of “Rocky” but has the emphases on the love story, which in many ways is what makes “Rocky” so moving.

“Jaws” is up next.. and even better is “Jaws 2”:

These artists seem to share my obsession with “Rosemary’s Baby”.. there are lots of choices, here are a few:

And my favorite of these:

“Fatal Attraction” has a similar look, very clever:

And a few of the most popular movies of all time:

Since so many people asked, the snakes and skulls one is ‘Raiders of The Lost Ark’… brilliant! And, yes, the “Star Wars” one is phenomenal. I remain angry with George Lucas, though.

Finally, the movie we’ll dive into next week. I meant to post on this earlier, but a few people asked for time to screen the movie. If you are interested, netflix etc “Klute”. It is one of my favorite movies of all time, and the director, Alan J. Pakula, has had a huge influence on me. We’ll toss around “Klute” and Pakula next week:

Have an excellent week… and let me know what you think of these! Or let us know if you find others you like. (Look for “The Shining”, for instance.  It is pretty cool as well.)