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Film posters are not aesthetically as imaginative as they used to be, says Katherine Williams, a specialist in the popular culture department at Christie’s.
Her comment comes against the background of the sale of some 250 vintage film posters at Christie’s South Kensington auction house in London on March 11.
Looking at some of the evocative posters — for example, Dr No, the first James Bond film, or Lolita, which is provocative without making a pitch to paedophiles, or the image of Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s — it is easy to appreciate what Williams means.
In times past, artists created truly memorable posters while today the marketing is more in the hands of technical whiz kids who generate their stuff on computers.
While one should resist the temptation to make a sweeping condemnation of modern posters, Williams probably has a point when she asserts: “Looking at the art work in today’s posters, compared with the art work in vintage posters, I don’t think there is much comparison because the style is totally different. A lot more graphics are used in today’s posters — images from the film as opposed to original art work. Some of the vintage posters we sell are by artists who were specific film poster artists and (have become) very collectable in their own right.”
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Depending on the bidding, price estimates can be greatly exceeded but the beginner can hope to pick up something for 300-500 pounds, for example Trainspotting, the Danny Boyle-directed cult movie from 1996; The Wild Bunch (1969); or The Godfather (1972). Lolita (1962) and Pulp Fiction (1994) have estimates of 400-600 pounds, while Psycho, the 1960 Hitchcock chiller, is priced at 500-700 pounds.
The highlights of the auction include Sunset Boulevard (1950), which has a price guide of 4,000-6,000 pounds, as does La Passion De JeanneD’Arc (1928), while two films starring Audrey Hepburn, Sabrina (1954) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), have estimates of 3,000-5,000 pounds.
Some collectors are drawn more by the actor or actress in a film. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of the most collectable Hepburn posters because it is deemed to be one of her greatest films,” explains Williams.
There are posters for several Bond movies, including Dr No (1962), which has an estimate of 2,000-3,000 pounds. As to whether a poster’s
popularity is a reflection of a film’s cult status or whether it is the other way round, Williams offers this view: “In terms of the market now, it is the film driving the poster but having said that, when these posters were actually designed and made — at the time when the film was released — they were all original posters from those years. So perhaps the poster could have driven the film.”
NOT TIME FOR BOLLYWOOD, YET
Would Christie’s consider holding a similar auction of Indian film posters? It seems the time is not yet opportune though even auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s have helped boost the global market for contemporary Indian art.
“Possibly (in the future),” responds Williams. “You can never say never but at the moment we don’t have a market for Bollywood posters.”
Given the rise and rise of Bollywood in the west, that might change but at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Divya Patel, curator (South Asia), broadly agrees with Williams.
In 2002, she helped curate an exhibition of a selection of the 1,000 Bollywood posters and other memorabilia held by the V&A. When that ended, the exhibition went on a world tour and is currently in Australia.
Patel, who has co-authored a book, Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film, with a section on Bollywood posters, confirms: “The (poster) market for Indian films has not taken off in the main. We try to collect (at the V&A) but we don’t collect at random. There has to be a change in the style of the posters and at the moment there is very little.”
Perhaps that is Patel’s polite way of saying that Bollywood is working to a formula film after film. Sarkar Raj, typically, relies on three big pictures of the three Bachchans. Delhi-6 projects Abhishek and Billu Shah Rukh. In a star-obsessed industry, such posters are probably effective but judged by the artistic standards of the west, they are dead on arrival.
If Patel had to pick two iconic posters, she would choose Guru Dutt’s 1959 Kaagaz Ke Phool and Mother India, “not the original poster from 1957 but from when the film was re-released in 1980 and which most people now associate with Mother India”.
When Neville Tuli held an auction of Bollywood posters at his Osian’s gallery in Mumbai in 2002, the market did pick up, acknowledges Patel, “but it has since petered out”.
It may be that unlike the British, Indians are not too bothered about preserving their cinema heritage, rich though it is. No attempt has been made to save the giant paintings done by the artists of Bombay, not even M.F. Husain’s early film poster work.
But assuming that will change and some film memorabilia will go up sharply in value, perhaps now is the time for would-be collectors to sneak round to their local cinemas at the dead of night and “borrow” posters of Slumdog Millionaire. Fifty years from now, they may be worth quite something.
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Bollywood is working to a formula film after film. Sarkar Raj, typically, relies on three big pictures of the three Bachchans. Delhi-6 projects Abhishek and Billu Shah Rukh. In a star-obsessed industry, such posters are probably effective but judged by the artistic standards of the west, they are dead on arrival
