The beauty of Russian film posters
We tend to associate the early days of cinema with America – silent epics featuring the likes of Rudolph Valentino or knockabout comedies with Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd or Charlie Chaplin. But cinema was gaining a toehold in other parts of the world, too – not least in Russia, where it would have a mesmerising effect on the population – one that would be employed by unscrupulous politicians throughout much of the 20th Century. Cinema not just as entertainment, but propaganda.
Nowhere was this reflected more than in the posters that publicised these silent films. While American posters concentrated on extravagant boasts and retouched photos of the stars, in Russia things were done very differently, with the focus less on a literal representation of the movie, and more on the emotions that could be stirred by graphical devices and typography. A new book, Russian Film Posters by Maria-Christina Boerner documents this movement.
“The works are more pieces of expressionist art than straight publicity shots”
Looking at the posters today, what’s striking is just how experimental they all are, with bold colours, stark geometric shapes and hand-painted versions of scenes from the films all to the fore. The works are more pieces of expressionist art than straight publicity shots – and no wonder, the Russian studios (and later, the state) employed its most gifted painters to work on them.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 (and the setting up of the Soviet Union in 1922) film was perhaps the most important tool in spreading communism over this vast country. No longer was publicity about getting bums on seats, it was about changing how millions of people thought. The resulting artwork, which shows the journey from naive imagery to abstract modernism, is as startling today as it was then. These posters had a job to do and they did it beautifully – and very effectively.
