1001 Movie Posters

There has always been a raw immediacy to film posters: provoking and enticing, shocking and seducing audiences across the threshold of the movie theater. The artists tasked with communicating that have been at the forefront of design: groundbreaking visionaries such as Saul Bass and Paul Rand; Eastern European artists using poetic, surreal and often disturbing imagery in highly original and subversive concepts. Other poster artists have woven contemporaneous movements in art and popular culture into their designs, creating a time capsule of the obsessions and concerns of a different era.

Iconic posters for films such as Metropolis, The Man with the Golden Arm, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Goldfinger sit alongside more unexpected and lesser-known artwork for films such as 2001, Star Wars, Taxi Driver and The Birds. Nearly all cinematic movements are included, from early silent masterpieces through German Expressionism, film noir of the 1940s, 1950s science fiction, the psychedelic imagery of the 1960s, the gritty violence and retribution of the 1970s and 1980s, and then onward into the 21st century, where the stripped-back graphics nod back to the Bass minimalism of the 1950s.

An extraordinary visual compendium, 1001 Movie Posters is the final word on movie posters and a must for film lovers and anyone interested in the power of advertising and design.