The Brilliance of Italian Movie Posters

I yield to no man in my respect for the art of photograpy, but in recent years the media has become awash with photographic images, usually very average ones at that. When it came to movie posters I usually found those that relied on photographic depictions of the film and stars to be somewhat flat and unexciting, particularly when compared to the multicolured panache of a high quality painted poster. Yes, there were some bad ones, but just look at how exciting a poster can be, especially in the hands of the talented, often anonymous, Italian artists.

John Cassavetes - Out of the Shadows

John Cassavetes was a great actor, a charismatic, driven individual and generally recognised as the father of the independent American film. Cassavetes' rep as a director is mainly based on the critical success of four 'features', Shadows (1959), Faces (1968) A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). When Shadows premiered in 1959, it was hailed for its free-wheeling, improvisatory style, jazz soundtrack and gritty, hand-held monochrome photography. Over the years, the film has grown in stature, an example of 'real', 'truthful' film-making. Or so we thought. Now, discovered in the remnants of an old junk shop, there exists a near pristine copy of the same film made in 1957. This is the only known copy of a fully completed version screened that year to mixed critical reviews. A clearly disappointed Cassavetes called back the cast, shot new scenes, re-cut the old materal, re-worked the narrative and arrived at the version released in 1959. So, substantially, a new film. The final version of Shadows, then, is an imperfect movie- some wooden acting, partially improvised, partially scripted, continuity errors and all - but still a ground-breaking masterpiece.
Whether or not the public will ever get to see the original Shadows is debatable as the Cassavetes estate is very reluctant to do anything which may cast a shadow over John Cassavetes legacy.