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Hitchcock's Movie Posters (Including "Psycho")

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Back in the 1960''s, Hollywood movie posters often started using something that paperback bestsellers of the time use: detailed "paintings" in color of the stars of the movie, usually doing something interesting, like shooting a gun or stealing a diamond.

On the "macho" side, I think that the greatest 60's movie poster of all time is for The Dirty Dozen(1967.) The painting is perfect, the sense of action is big. I was really EXCITED when I saw all that action in the poster for The Dirty Dozen. As it turned out, the movie wasn't quite as action packed but -- it came close at the climax.

Now..over on the "romantic thriller" side:

If you can(here at moviechat or over at imdb), try to look at the posters for:

Arabesque (1966)
How to Steal a Million(1966)

..they are in the mid-to-late sixties tradition of the "gorgeous painting of gorgeous stars" ; they create an element of sophistication and the belief that if you see THIS movie...you will GET sophistication.

Now, try to look at the posters for

Marnie (1964)
Torn Curtain (1966)
Topaz(1969)

...I don't know if it is because Universal didn't have a good movie poster art department or would spend the dollars to hire whoever did the artwork on the Arabesque/HTSAM posters but -- yechh. OK, the Torn Curtain poster is marginally better than the other two -- Newman and Andrews center it and we've got a "Psycho" knife in hand ripping the poster but...Marnie? Topaz?

Meanwhile, one "follows the art" into Arabesque and gets a Hitchcockian action thriller in which people are murdered and the stakes are life and death. One "follows the art" to How To Steal a Million, and gets a very well produced caper film that...I just can't remember at all.

Hepburn and O'Toole looked great on the poster. This was the time of male/female thrillers and capers, to wit:

Grant and Hepburn(Audrey)
Peck and Loren
Hudson and Cardinale (Blindfold; Universal, so-so.)
McLaine and Caine(Gambit)
Newman and Andrews(for Hitchcock in at once the grimmest and most artful of the lot)

..and I just get that the "murder thrillers" and Gambit with its funny twist on a caper film(the perfect caper dream; the bumbled caper reality) stuck with me better than HTSAM

Note in passing:

While the posters for Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz are pretty bad...the poster for Gambit(another 1966 film, a caper comedy with Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine) is rather charming and ALMOST as well painted as the posters for Arabesque and How to Steal a Million.

Gambit and Arabesque were Universal pictures, just like Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz. SOMEBODY there paid for better posters than for the Hitchcocks...

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

ElizabethJoestar wrote:

@ecarle, can you believe that, beyond its bad reputation, one of the prime reasons I avoided TOPAZ for a long time was because of its uninspiring poster art?

I mean-- it just focuses on the fact that Hitchcock is adapting a novel... wow. The film, flawed as it is, does have some iconic images the poster artist could have exploited. Surely, they could have come up with something better than what we got!

Good poster art should hype you up or at least intrigue you. It's like when it came to TOPAZ, they didn't know how to sell the movie, maybe because it was so different from typical Hitchcock fare. Same with MARNIE.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

@ecarle, can you believe that, beyond its bad reputation, one of the prime reasons I avoided TOPAZ for a long time was because of its uninspiring poster art?

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Ha. Well, I recall looking at the ads -- I was a very huge and new Hitchcock fan based on the classics that NBC and CBS were showing(Rear Window, NXNW, Vertigo, The Birds) plus Psycho out there haunting local TV -- and the Topaz ad just looked WRONG. Could this BE a Hitchcock movie?

Moreover, the ad here at moviechat has a photo of Hitchcock in it, I think -- but not the ads that I first saw.

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I mean-- it just focuses on the fact that Hitchcock is adapting a novel... wow.

--

A novel that...BLOWS UP. The book itself BLOWS UP on the ad. Hah.

Of course , without big stars in it, Topaz had only two selling points -- (1)Hitchcock himself (now a star not only because of the off-the-air TV show and the movies, but because the Truffaut book had made him an auteur God in 1967). (2) The book itself -- a big enough bestsellter by Leon Uris of Exodus fame. Otto Preminger had made Exodus with an all-star cast; here was Hitchcock finally making "that kind of movie" -- with a low-star cast(though Michel Piccoli and Phillipe Noiret lent the film the requisite foreign film "bona fides."

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The film, flawed as it is, does have some iconic images the poster artist could have exploited.

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Whether they were stars or not, the people in Topaz were either beautiful or compelling..perhaps their FACES (nicely rendered) should have been grouped on the poster. With John Vernon's Rico Parra for timely Cuban menace(and OOPS..there were folks who thought Castro and Che were heroes, not villains, by 1969) and Roscoe Lee Browne for timely African-American suave.

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CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Good poster art should hype you up or at least intrigue you. It's like when it came to TOPAZ, they didn't know how to sell the movie, maybe because it was so different from typical Hitchcock fare. Same with MARNIE.

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Well, the Marnie poster is perhaps the worst of the lot. Though Hedren and Connery are beautiful people, the orange color scheme and clunky lettering suggests a movie far below Hitchcock's level of sophistication. I suppose -- with the grim and kinky love story that centered the film -- the kind of "pretty paintings" of the stars that made the How to Steal a Million and Arabesque posters so "mid-sixties" suave -- wasn't available. But SOMETHING better.

Its funny about movie posters. While we can still, today, see the "modern at the time" look of the movies of the 30' and 40's in films themselves -- the POSTERS are from a different era entirely, kind of a "sketchy art deco" look And then there is a sort of "clunkiness" to a lot of posters of the 50s -- Strangers on a Train , for instance.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hitchcock hit a great run of posters for his three great movies -- Vertigo(poster BY Saul Bass, the only one he did for Hitch; very stylish); NXNW(ONLY the poster that put everything in it -- Rushmore, the crop duster, Grant and Saint -- NOT the one that only shows Saint shooting Grant.

Psycho is another deal. The greatest logo of all time (not by Saul Bass, by Tony Palladino from the novel cover) to suggest the slashing horror of the film; Janet Leigh in bra and half slip for sex, John Gavin shirtless for sex(a tee-shirt was brushed onto him in some newspapers). And the real star of the piece -- Tony Perkins -- relegated to looking nervous in a corner, smaller photo than Leigh.

"A completely new and different experience in screen excitement" was the Psycho ad tagline in poster. Truer words were never spoken(the slasher film arrives out of nowhere) -- but The Birds ended up with the taglines that Psycho SHOULD have had: "Sheer stabbing shock!" "...could be the most terrifying film I"ve ever made." Its as if the promoters were scared of advertising Psycho was such a horror film...but, upon its success, went whole hog with The Birds.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The posters from Marnie through Topaz were not so hot. Came the 70's, 1972 and the Frenzy poster...I'm of two minds. Its more dynamic than the fhree posters before it, but still smacks a bit of "Universal studios cheapness." Still the overall effect of the poster is GREAT: Neckties swirling to encircle screaming Anna Massey, with the words HITCHCOCK's and FRENZY swirling in the shape of the ties flow....I saw Frenzy one time(out of many) at a multi-plex in 1972 and the title was in that swirling shape from the movie, on the marquee.

Two good taglines on the Frenzy poster: "From the master of shock -- a shocking masterpiece!" Shock conjured up visions of Psycho -- and the gag was that Frenzy was MORE shocking -- in terms of being brutal and disturbing, somewhat sick. At least in its one big scene. "A deadly new twist from the original Hitchcock." Here -- as with the neckties in the motif of the ad, was a take on just what KIND of shock this movie would have: necktie strangulations, the tie twisting to kill the victim.

Note in passing: in the Psycho trailer, when Hitchcock is trying to describe the Arbogast murder at the foot of the stairs, he says..."its difficult to describe the twisting of the...of the...well, never mind, let's go upstairs."

"The twisting of the---" I guess Hitchcock meant how Arbogast twists physically to and fro as he falls down the stairs?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hitchcock's final poster for his final film -- Family Plot -- is a busy one, not as bad as the late 60's posters but still a bit "clunky." My one regret is that while Bruce Dern and Barbara Harris figure in it(running) and Karen Black is the centerpiece(in her blonde villainous wig, with gun)...William Devane is NOT in the poster. Little known he may have been, but hey, he was the villain -- and the cast list is FOUR.

But what's this? Hitchcock himself -- a rather disembodied head, winking(relevant to the final shot of the movie) is in the poster. He's the "star" of the movie, to be sure. But he looks a bit aged and tired...this is not the "peak period" Hitchcock of the NXNW/Psycho period(when he was overweight but not wrinkedl and saggy.)

Still, Hitchcock in his own poster proved a nice way to go out...final film, put the maker right in there.

--

While there are no Hitchcock posters in the sixties with that great "painted art" that marks How to Steal a Million, I guess his posters for his best films were pretty good, after all. High marks for Vertigo, NXNW, Psycho (with reservations -- unlike as with the sequels, the famous HOUSE isn't in the poster); The Birds(a pretty famous merging of Tippi Hedren and Jessica Tandy into one terrified victim; I remember that poster from childhood.)

Then a bad run of posters through a bad run of movies.

A comeback poster for a comeback film -- Frenzy. As this was the best of the late films, this was the best of the late posters.

Family Plot? A bit of split decision for me. Too busy -- no Devane. But I recall that TV Guide ran a two-page glossy spread of this poster in that popular magazine -- it got a LOT of views.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

ElizabethJoestar wrote:

It's such a shame that Hitchcock posters took such a downgrade in quality come the 60s and 70s, because I find the 60s and 70s to be a kind of golden age for movie poster art. So many iconic posters hail from that period: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, STAR WARS, MY FAIR LADY, WEST SIDE STORY, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, etc.

I don't mind the FRENZY poster but yeah, it's underwhelming when Hitchcock had Saul Bass all those years ago. At the very least, it's striking.

The PSYCHO trailer is a masterpiece of movie advertising. I actually think it's much more inspired than the usual movie trailer-- especially since we see no footage from the movie itself. In an era where trailers often give too much away and scripts "leak" onto the internet months before movies hit theaters, this is such a refreshing approach to see.

When Hitchcock mention the "twisting," I'm guessing he meant to evoke the image of Arbogast's body twisting as he fell down the stairs. That's all that makes sense.

PS Interestingly, the PSYCHO trailer features footage of Vera Miles screaming in Janet Leigh's place in the shower. I don't recall, but was Miles originally considered for that part?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

It's such a shame that Hitchcock posters took such a downgrade in quality come the 60s and 70s, because I find the 60s and 70s to be a kind of golden age for movie poster art.

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I agree. I'll opine here: I think that the poster for "The Dirty Dozen" (1967) is the greatest of 60's posters, at least in its adherence to the "glossy painting" school of poster. Its the "macho" inverse of the more sexy How to Steal a Million artwork.

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So many iconic posters hail from that period: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, STAR WARS, MY FAIR LADY, WEST SIDE STORY, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, etc.

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Those posters were actually more artful and "meaningful," I suppose than the "character painting" posters for Dirty Dozen and How to Steal a Million. Saul Bass did a lot of posters(only Vertigo for Hitch) and ensured that these posters (and logos) stood out as their own item.

The Clockwork Orange poster from the 70's was downright weird and perfect. Right down to the lettering. I like the poster better than the movie. Hah.

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Hitchcock's posters after The Birds are generally subpar. I guess I'll blame Universal -- and yet, such Universal movies as The Sting and American Graffiti and of course Jaws -- had GREAT posters. I'll guess that that young and powerful makers of those films demanded that the poster work be "farmed out" to better artists that the Universal regulars?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

elizabethjoestar wrote:

When Hitchcock mention the "twisting," I'm guessing he meant to evoke the image of Arbogast's body twisting as he fell down the stairs. That's all that makes sense.

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Yes...the more I think about it, yes. Hitchcock (without identifying the victim or even the sex of the victim) rather gives us a "shot by shot description: "She met the victim at the top....in a flash there was the knife...and the victim tumbled and fell with a horrible crash...the back broke immediately...its difficult to discuss the twisting of the --"

Hah. Proud daddy of a great murder sequence. And --"the back broke immediately." A grisly detail. We don't sense that in the movie. Arbogast might have died from t he fall if he wasn't being stabbed to death!

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PS Interestingly, the PSYCHO trailer features footage of Vera Miles screaming in Janet Leigh's place in the shower. I don't recall, but was Miles originally considered for that part?

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Evidently, not. Stephen Rebello in his book on the making of Psycho reveals two lists of actresses considered for the roles of Marion and Lila.

The lists each had a different "set" of actresses. I think Hitchcock wanted a bigger star for Marion even if Lila (Hitch told Truffaut) was really the female lead. Hitchcock generally got his first choices for all the roles in Psycho save two: he wanted Stuart Whitman for Sam Loomis(agent Lew Wasserman pressed for client Gavin) and he wanted "method" heavyweight Kim Stanley for Lila(she wouldn't work with Tony Perkins for some reason; his bad acting rep around then?)