As well as entertaining us with motion pictures, the film industry has provided up with some of the finest popular art works of the last century in the form of billboard posters.  These posters trade off the themes inherent in the film they support and their own artistic credentials.  They draw us into a film and extract the films predominant themes in pictorial form.  If you’d like these billboard classics for your home, visit a site like Instant Print posters.

The Exorcist poster is a prime example of film posters done best.  With the title of the film and the hype which must have surrounded its release, the billboard rightly steered clear of vulgarity or overstatement; instead, the poster displays the silhouette of the priest outside a lonely brooding house with light gushing from one single window.  This gives the picture a huge sense of curiosity and anticipation – what is that light?  Why is it emphasised against such a lonely scene?  We’re drawn into the intensity of that bedroom and fear it immediately.

The Alien poster from the hit Sci-Fi film uses similar tricks.  It includes a giant egg with narrow cracks exuding an otherworldly light.  Again, what is the light?  It engages our preconceived notions of what the film is about and lets our curious minds do the running.  It also includes the iconic tagline – in space, no one can hear you scream.

The poster for recent film Moon is a nice composition of a few related styles.  It has that swirling spirograph type design which is similar to Vertigo with a bewildered man at the centre, and it has the effective Alien-like isolationist tag line ‘950,000 miles from home, the hardest thing to face… is yourself.’  The Moon poster is one of the most striking film posters of all time and a master class in movie poster design.

Vertigo is one of the greatest films of the 20th century and the poster fully does it justice.  Saul Bass – the poster’s creator – designed much of the introductory sequence to the film and the swirling lines and falling men give rise to an intense feeling of confusion.  The Vertigo poster is a hugely popular artwork and something of a must have for any self-respecting film buff.  It is inherently minimal and at the same time hugely striking in that magical way that good art sometimes possesses.

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