The Paper's reporter Wang Yi
The latest 007 movie, No Time To Die, has recently been officially postponed to October 2021. On the official website of 007 Movie, the final poster released in September 2020 is still there, which is said to be released in November of that year. It didn't take long for the news to be released in April 2021, and now it's changed to October! The release date has changed again and again, but the final poster released last year has almost been copied: Daniel Craig, wearing an omega watch, holding a PPK, and his eyes are shining.
Why not screen online instead? The trend is huge, but the producer Brockley brothers and sisters seem to have an iron heart to overcome all difficulties and make this movie into theaters around the world - the series of films since the first "Dr. No" in 1962, more than half a century, and the audience has long had a tacit understanding of "seeing in the theater". I'm afraid that this is also the reason why the crew artists simply do not change the official poster, and are not afraid of your confidence not to look at it.
In detail, there is no difference between the two posters except for the change of the release date
At the end of last year, the book "History of Film Poster Art" was published by China Pictorial Publishing House. The author, Enhyt Haydn Smith, begins with the following: "As one of the ways of publicity before the film was screened, the movie poster came out almost immediately after the birth of the film. Movie posters were born before the advent of the web and streaming, before the advent of television, DVDs, videos, trailers, electronic media brochures, celebrity interviews, film journals, fan magazines, and even before the promotion of movie stars. For more than a hundred years, this simplest way of film marketing has been the most effective. Posters are constantly changing in size and style keeping up with fashion trends, but their function has never changed, which is to promote movies. ”
A chronicle of movie posters, written in the form of chronicles, is obviously appropriate published by a pictorial publishing house — after all, tracing back to the source, when computers were widely used in drawing in the 1980s and 1990s, movie posters were mostly hand-drawn prints. In addition to gouache, the style of painting techniques also includes prints, drawings, and cartoons. Our childhood impression of film publicity, in addition to the "small tofu block" on the newspaper, the posters on the movie theater windows and exhibition walls - the film cast (director and starring) is naturally known at a glance, the poster design and the highlights of the plot highlights, are the key factors that affect whether people buy tickets and enter the venue. This is the same as brushing the circle of friends now, and being bombarded by pictures and small videos of the film to promote viral marketing, which is obviously not the same.
Five Minutes (1929) Anatoly Belsky's design is an important work of Russian Constructivist posters.
Historically, movie posters have been painted by masters. It is because when the poster gradually withdrew from the visual art stage dominated by it, it had already entered the field of art collection. In the book "The History of CinemaTic Poster Art", the author says that the poster collection arose at the end of the 19th century, when Jules Cherret created a social scene poster in Paris in lithography. As the popularity of posters as an emerging art faded, so did the enthusiasm of the public to collect all kinds of posters. By the 1960s, interest in collecting posters had re-emerged and shifted to the collection of movie posters. Poster collections became profitable.
Nibelungen movie poster (1924) by painter Fritz Lang
As far as the current situation of the film poster auction market is concerned, it is still based on the integrity of the product and follows the law of "the older the more valuable". At the beginning of the birth of the film, the posters of some influential movies in the 1920s and 1930s were the "sharp goods" of the collector's competition. In this regard, the author of "A History of CinemaTic Poster Art" points out that "the fusion of various artistic movements and film poster design in the 1920s created an extraordinary scene for cinema." German Expressionism and Russian Constructivism had a profound impact on the film and its posters. "The 1927 classic silent film Metropolis, the poster for the film is written by the German painter Fritz Lang. "The Mummy" produced by Universal Pictures in 1932 - this is the early beginning of Universal's construction of the "Dark Universe" in recent years. The posters of these two films have been auctioned for nearly two decades , such as winners , eyes on the list and flowers ( more than one poster for Metropolis " ) has been on the list.
Sean Connery passed away, and early 007 movie posters were bullish
As one of the world's leading film and television entertainment souvenir companies, the American "Prop Store" is known for selling rare items and merchandise related to James Bond. At least from 2018, at the end of three consecutive years, the "prop shop" will hold a special auction of movie posters, and early Bond movie posters will always appear as "pressed works".
Dr. Noe poster
The Prop Store auction in October 2020 featured more than 100 James Bond posters and related artworks. An unrepaired, British-released Dr. Noe (1962) poster was the most expensive, estimated to be between £8,000 and £10,000. It is worth mentioning that the 1967 spy comedy film Casino Royale (David Nevin as Bond and Woody Allen as the villain), although not among the MGM productions "Zheng Shuo", is also very eye-catching - a movie poster of that year is estimated to be between 2,000 and 4,000 pounds.
1967 Casino Royale poster
On October 31, 2020, the first Bond actor, Sean Connery, passed away at the age of 90. From November 5 to 12 of that year, Sotheby's sold nearly 200 original movie posters, photographs and promotional materials on Bond Street in London, dedicated exclusively to James Bond. It's hard to say whether it was the mourning of Sean's death – the posters for his 1965 and 1967 films "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice" were all valued at between £15,000 and £25,000, apparently up a lot from last month's StoreProp auctions.
1967 Thunder Valley poster
It is also worth mentioning that next year (2022) will be the 60th anniversary of the birth of the 007 series of films - I hope that "No Time to Die", which has been postponed from 2019 to the present, will not become a "tribute film" for the 60th anniversary. Sotheby's auction house's James Bond poster collection spans 60 years, from "Dr. Noor" to the upcoming release of "No Time to Die", covering all 25 films in the highest-grossing film series of all time. From the bright colors, tailor-made suits and pretty "Bond Girls" in early Connery-era movie posters, to the darker, more modern Bond represented today by Daniel Craig.
A retro version of the poster that fans have made for the latest Bond movie, No Time to Die
As the author of "The Art History of Film Posters" puts it, "Some posters do not have much monetary value, but they are often used as a bellwether for film marketing styles, so they are of great cultural significance." A slight change in the emphasis of the poster design may affect the way people observe a particular era of the film. The book defines the films of the 1960s as , " the bridge that best represents the old world and the new world." At the same time, stories of crossing moral boundaries and breaking taboos, explicit sexual, violent language began to emerge. Such a sentence somewhat points out the industry background of the birth of the 007 series of movies.
Defining Bond, the marks that appear after 00 "7"
Poster of "Love from Russia"
In 1962, Mitchell Hooks designed a poster for Dr. Noe, the first work in the Bond series, and in addition to the flagous declaration that this was the "first Bond film", the poster highlighted the erotic meaning of this action thriller — four female characters in the film who had intersected with Bond were listed next to "lady's man" Sean Connery, occupying two-thirds of the space of the poster, and the main villain "Dr. Noe" only appeared in the corner of the poster. Posters for the second Bond films From Russia With Love in 1963 and Goldfinger in 1964, one with a cooler hue (reminiscent of the vast soviet ice fields) and a golden hue, featured the entanglement of love between Bond and the Bond girls, with the villain arranged in the corners of the poster or simply hidden in the black section.
Goldfinger poster
With the advent of the fourth work, Thunderbolt, in 1965, Robert McGinnis and Frank McCarthy were appointed Bond image designers, and the classic image of 007 began to take shape. The number "7" in Bond's code name 007 is deformed into part of the font "LOOK" in the poster, and the contrast between black and white fonts is also reminiscent of Bond's classic style of wearing black dresses and white shirts when he appears in high-end social occasions. It should be pointed out that Sean Connery and James Bond are a pair of mutually successful screen relationships, and as the 007 movies become more popular than one, the English surname of "Connery" on the poster is becoming more and more prominent, and has a sense of design. When Connery first left the series, his successor, George Razambe, was just one name on the list of staff staged in the 1969 poster for On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Poster of Thunderbolt
In 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery officially returned, and the poster highlighted his name and surname as usual, and for the first time added a barrel to the number "7" in 007, which later became one of the typical symbols of the 007 series of films and is still used today. Robert McGinnis is good at emphasizing women's attitudes and sexiness in drawings. He also worked on Audrey Hepburn's portrayal of the Tiffany's Breakfast campaign and later designed a poster for the sci-fi film Space Hero Barbalena, redefining Jane Fonda's screen image. McGinnis continued his career into the new century, and in 2004 he designed promotional posters for the Pixar animated film Superman.
Poster of Eternal Diamond
Sean Connery was plagued by domestic violence scandals during his lifetime, and in the early 007 series of films, Bond often slapped the State girl in order to obtain information - corresponding to the evolution of the female image in the film, the position of the female image on the poster also shows the development and change of the feminist movement. Basically, in the 007 movie posters before the 1970s, there were always more than three female characters in the picture, Bond was surrounded by them and maintained the classic gun holding style, while the Bond girls all appeared in a sexy posture, their breasts and hips always pointed in the direction of Bond or in physical contact with Bond, which was considered to indicate that they presented a "seductive and tempted relationship". From the mid-1970s to the present, especially after the end of the Cold War. The 007 movie poster shows a reduction in female characters, sometimes one Bond Girl (who is in the same camp as Bond) and at most two Bond Girls (one good and one evil or right arm). There is no apparent mass division and vector pointing between the Bond and Bond girls as before, "which shows that bond girls no longer rely on Bond, they are more independent, and they are in the same position as Bond." ”
A poster collection of several Bond films starring Roger Moore in the late 1970s and early 1980s
In the 60s, another "face" of spy movies
Among the candidates for the first Bond role, gary Grant was a frequent hitchcock film, and Sean Connery, after becoming famous, also starred in the Hitchcock film Marnie (1964). North by Northwest (1959) is arguably the culmination of Hitchcock's spy genre, and in the poster Saul Bass designed for the film, Roger Thornhill, played by Gary Grant, falls backwards in free fall, seemingly through a series of square and rectangular frames. In a black and red square in the middle, the character of Eva Marie Centrum shoots him. There is no doubt that in addition to the image of the male protagonist is not so wise and divine, the presentation of the relationship between the characters is actually quite the "inner taste" of the 007 movie.
North by Northwest poster
In the early 1960s, there was an intensifying confrontation between East and West, especially between the Soviet Union and the United States (the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted in 1962). Reflected in the film, it is the spy thriller that holds and consolidates its prominent position. Unlike spy movies in the 1950s, which tended to simply present a binary of good and bad in their plots, in the 60s, a number of serious spy films began to directly distrust Western governments and serving intelligence agencies, and showed a certain reflection on the real world and pessimism on the human level — yes, although Ian Fleming's 007 series dominated the box office in that decade, the spy genre also offered another more subtle, low-key, and grounded possibility.
Spy Network Ecstasy (1962) The colors of these squares refer to the American flag. The top of the poster contains black, indicating that there is evil in American life. The actor's expressions and accompanying pictures add to the sense of uneasiness.
The Western spy in these films is no longer just a hero who consciously and voluntarily acts according to established rules, he sometimes has to overstep his authority, or even skip the level to complete his work, which shows that the times may be entering a new era in which ideological opposition is no longer so clear- The Manchurian Candidate (1962). The 2004 film was remade, starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep) was the first serious spy film of the decade, presenting an exotic world far from the same year's "Dr. Noe." The color of the squares on the poster refers to the color of the American flag, and the black color block above the red, white and blue indicates that there is also evil and evil hidden in the life of American society.
Spy in Berlin (1965) John Le Carré's novel is already internationally acclaimed, so there is no need to promote its genre. However, the film hints at a world far removed from Bond's charm and its imitators.
Three years later, John Le Carré's low-key and shady spy novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) was brought to the screen, a black-and-white film that was tense and claustrophobic. The British agent played by Richard Burton initially hates the country with high walls, but when he is on a mission, he gradually realizes that things are far from simple... The poster of this movie is extremely simple, in addition to how many carry the "history of the wall" of the East German people, the location of the agent played by Richard Burton is actually not on the east side of the wall, nor on the west side! The wall seemed to pass right in front of him. John Le Carré passed away at the end of 2020, and many fans re-emerged from the old movie, a world far removed from Bond's charm and its imitators.
Image source of this article: 007 film official website and "Film Poster Art History"
Editor-in-Charge: Chen Shihuai
Proofreader: Ding Xiao