Posterwire.com is a movie poster weblog. From images of the latest Hollywood one-sheets to vintage movie posters, this film poster weblog hopes to offer a bit of insight into film key art.
With all the recent events in Lebanon, we came across this post on The Sulla Institute weblog:
I saw the flag used by Hezbollah and it occurred to me that it looked as if it was inspired by the movie poster for the Otto Preminger film EXODUS. Very odd… that was a movie that portrayed the Jews creating the state of Israel in a very heroic light.
Yes, that is odd… and a bit of a reach… just like all those arms reaching for a rifle (or an AK-47 assault rifle in the case of the Hezbollah flag) in both designs.
The Exodus movie poster was designed for the 1960 film by legendary graphic designer Saul Bass (Bass also designed the film’s title credits). The Exodus poster remains one of the more interesting Saul Bass movie poster designs — particularly for his ability to blend an illustrated graphic (the silhouetted arms extended with the gun overhead) with a photographic element (the fire burning away the image of the poster).
The yellow Hezbollah flag design features:
Across the top is a quotation from the Koran, from which Hezbollah took its name — “Verily the party of God shall be victorious” — and at the center is an AK-47 in silhouette, in the hand of the Shiite martyr Husayn, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad. In the background is a depiction of the globe, suggesting Hezbollah’s role in the worldwide umma, or community of Muslims. Along the bottom of the Hezbollah flag is written “The Islamic Revolution in Lebanon”.
We will leave it to others in the “blogosphere” to determine the value in saying the Hezbollah flag is “ripping off the Jews” by comparing it with a movie poster designed by a Jewish graphic designer for a movie about the creation of the state of Israel. (The imagery of a gun raised overhead isn’t exactly a singular idea or uncommon image.) It does give something for political pundits to link to on their weblogs. It is interesting how movie posters can sometimes be associated with current events, controversies and politics.
We have covered various movie poster illustrators in the past, but the modern movie poster is a graphic designer’s medium. And when discussing movie poster design, the subject begins with legendary graphic designer Saul Bass.
Saul Bass brought a designer’s sense of iconography and purpose to film posters, and more importantly, to film-making in general. The man who created the AT&T logo designed only a few film posters in his early career, but his designs were enough to change the direction of film key art. When looking at his poster designs for films like Anatomy of a Murder, Vertigo, and Exodus, one can see how Bass was able to encapsulate a film’s narrative direction in a visual identity through graphic design.
His early success in film poster key art led Saul Bass to his most famous contribution to motion pictures: designing opening title sequences. Until that time, a film’s opening credits were likely to be a mundane listing of personnel involved with making the film. Bass changed all that when he established film title design as an art form, especially in his famous collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock.
The influence of the groundbreaking design work of Saul Bass continues today, whether it’s the playful opening titles in the recent film Catch Me If You Can or the controversial “homage” in the one-sheet for the Spike Lee film Clockers.
