Tony Nourmand Knihy

Sex, drugs, delinquency, Black Power, and rock ‘n’ roll—these are just a few of the themes that have inspired B-movie makers over the past 80 years. The posters created to promote these movies are fantastic period pieces that evoke all the taboos of bygone eras. Before the Hayes Code of 1934, Hollywood had few the poster for Girl Without a Room, for example, left little doubt as to how the young woman would find accommodation. In the 50s, Beats and juvenile delinquents attracted teens to the drive-ins; in the 60s and 70s came Blaxploitation films like Shaft and the first of Russ Meyer’s mammary-obsessed epics, Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill. The posters for these films are masterpieces of visual innuendo, offering, in most cases, far more than the movies themselves actually delivered. Tony Nourmand is co-owner of the Reel Poster Gallery in London and a poster consultant to Christie’s; Graham Marsh is a designer and art director. Together, they have produced Horror Poster Art and Science Fiction Poster Art, and collections of 20th-century film posters by decade.

The 1930s were the cinema's age of innocence when, despite the miseries of the Grant Depression, or perhaps because of them, the emphasis was on escapism and entertainment. With the coming of the talkies, the Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy had supplanted Chaplin as the kings of slapstick comedy. Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn were Bringing up Baby, Busby Berkely's precision-drilled chorus girls were Flying Down to Rio, Fred Astaire was donning his Top Hat and John Wayne was climbing on the Stagecoach to stardom. This was also the decade that set the mould for the Hollywood of the future, firmly establishing a range of genres such as the Western, the gangster movie, the screwball comedy and the musical, while stars like Grant and Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo became international icons. As this stunning collection of poster art confirms, the 30s were also the age of the illustrator, with Al Hirschfield, Hap Hadley and the incomparable Alberto Vargas setting new standards in graphic design. Colour may only just have been making its first appearance on the screens inside the cinemas, but on the hoardings outside the hues were bright and vibrant as never before.

Reflecting the political and cultural climate of this angst-ridden decade was the bleak realism of Taxi Driver and the sinister paranoia of All the President's Men. In the 70s, blaxploitation films made their first appearance while Last Tango in Paris and Emmanuelle edged porno-chic into the mainstream and Apocalypse Now and Dirty Harry defined a new kind of anti-hero. American directors arriving on the scene in the 70s included Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas, Bogdanovich and Woody Allen; internationally, directors like Bertolucci, Fassbinder, Wenders, and Ken Russell made their marks. With over 250 full-color posters from around the world, Film Posters of the 70s is a knock-out showcase for film fans, and anyone interested in graphic design and advertising.

Lights down, curtain up on the cinema of the 1940s, a decade that produced some of the most critically acclaimed movies of all time. These range from the iconic Casablanca, starring a cynical, world-weary Humphrey Bogart and a never-more-beautiful Ingrid Bergman, to Orson Welles' seminal Citizen Kane, and from the optimistic It's A Wonderful Life to the enigmatic The Third Man, recently voted best British film of all time by the critics. This was the decade when Hollywood introduced cinema audiences to one of the greatest of all genres the film noir, still epitomised by movies like Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, Gilda and The Maltese Falcon - a darkly sinister world of gumshoes, double-crossing dames, bent cops and blind alleys. The world may have been at war for the first half of the decade and Europe in ruins for the second, but this was, in many ways, a golden age of cinema. Moreover, as this book shows, the passage of time has not diminished the impact of the 40s poster art that had contemporary audiences queuing to see the latest releases starring movie immortals like Robert Mitchum and Rita Hayworth.

The cinema of the 1950s reflected the mood swings of the post-war generation. Optimistic epics and brittle social comedies rubbed shoulders with socially aware dramas and, faced with the new challenge of television, the studios conjured up a host of fresh attractions: CinemaScope, Vista-Vision and 3D, the curves of Marilyn Monroe and the moody mumbles of Marlon Brando and James Dean. In Hollywood, veteran actors circled the wagons against the massed assault of juvenile delinquents as the Wild West became the Asphalt Jungle. In Britain, upper lips remained stiff - though a smile or two was permitted at the latest Ealing Comedy. Films from Italy and France, where the 'New Wave' was starting to break, were still considered strictly high culture, if not threateningly risque, in the Anglophone nations. The images in this book represent the full range of poster art which attracted world wide cinema audiences to the movies of the decade. Some may be familiar, others, long forgotten, will come as surprises. Most are still as fresh and powerful as the day they first appeared.

This collection of posters, lobby cards and other promotional material for Hitchcock films is a work of reference for any fan of the director and for those interested in the history of the cinema or in the development of poster art.

'Jim Marshall's photographs do not merely capture a momentous era in our collective history: they demonstrate what needs to be done, and what can be done, to ensure freedom for ourselves and those who follow us. As the sticker on the guitar case says: 'Peace is the only shelter.'' - Peter Doggett. Jim Marshall's unseen 'peace' photographs, collated and published here for the first time, are a timely document for our world today. Almost 60 years after the creation of the CND peace symbol, this body of work is a beautiful and thoughtful reflection from one of the most celebrated photographers of the twentieth century. It is introduced with a foreword by renowned street artist and graphic designer Shepard Fairey and text by Peter Doggett. Folk singer Joan Baez provides the book's afterword. Marshall saw himself as an anthropologist and a journalist, visually recording the changing times and explosion of creativity and celebrity in the 1960s. He loved street photography, and in between o

Whatever your taste in movies, the filmmakers of the 1990s had it covered. On the one hand, the big studios took advantage of the ever-increasing sophistication of computer-generated imagery to produce spectacular, mega-budget 'event' movies like Titanic, The Matrix and Mission: Impossible; on the other, a new generation of independents like Tarantino and the Coen Brothers was winning its spurs with low-tech and often low-budget productions such as Reservoir Dogs and The Big Lebowski. Spielberg turned his attention to the Second World War with Saving Private Ryan, Eastwood and Costner gave the Western a new lease of life with Unforgiven and Dances With Wolves, and the Brits chipped in with two unexpected successes, The Full Monty and Trainspotting. From the eerie psychosis of The Silence Of The Lambs to the romantic fantasy Pretty Woman, this was a decade that offered something for everyone. Hollywood may have become besotted by all things digital, but print on paper, in the form of the poster, remained one of the most important means of promoting movies of all kinds, and the poster artists of the 90s proved that they could still produce striking and alluring images. This book reproduces the pick of the decade.

The cinema of the 60s reflected the mood of a decade when everything - art, fashion, politics, philosophy - seemed to be in flux, and the film posters of the period provide a kaleidoscope of images that capture the very essence of a turbulent decade. From french 'new wave' to british 'kitchen sink', from Sergio Leone to Andy Warhol, from Bond to Barbarella, the cinematic ethos and icons of the 60s are all represented here as they were first perceived by audiences in London and Los Angeles, Tokyo, Turin, Berlin and Bangkok.

The cinema of the 1970s reflected both the anxieties and the escapism of an angst-ridden decade. The bleak realism of Taxi Driver and the political paranoia of All the President's Men co-existed with the androgynous fantasy of Rocky Horror Picture Show. In the 70s, 'blaxploitation' made its first appearance; Last Tango in Paris and Emmanuelle edged 'porno-chic' into the mainstream; 'ethno-cool' reached new heights in The Godfather'; Clint Eastwood traded his poncho for a .44 Magnum in Dirty Harry; Star Wars blasted audiences into hyperspace; Jaws hit the New England beaches and Apocalypse Now did for Huey helicopters what Saturday Night Fever did for white suits and flares. The images in this book represent the full range of poster art which attracted world-wide cinema audiences to these and many other movies and reveals just how much current fashion owes to the style of the 70s.