The movie poster serves several purposes. Most importantly, at least from the studio's standpoint, it promotes a movie. Doing that might involve focusing on a star or stars that people know or having the daunting challenge of capturing the spirit of the film in a single frame.
And on it goes. The movie poster also becomes “a memento of the cinematic experience,” noted Ella Kemp in her 2022 article on movie posters for letterboxd.com. When I thumb through The Art of Noir by Eddie Muller, a collection of film noir posters, some of the cheesiest B movies that pass themselves off as noir, have the most bombastic posters.
The best movies may not have the best posters but they all tell a story. Some posters even try sketching the entire film in a single picture. Exhibit A is a poster in the Muller book, Somewhere in the Night (1946), a film noir that stars John Hodiak as a Marine just out of World War II with amnesia.
“The poster captures his befuddled state of mind,” notes Muller in the book. Swirling around Hodiak are some of the things that the befuddled mind must contend with--the love interest in the picture (played by Nancy Guild), a gun, Lloyd Nolan (who plays a cop), and a hand on a railing (signifying the sanitarium that Hodiak visits to solve his mystery).
That’s a lot of information. Check out film posters of more recent vintage and you’ll notice the trend is not to clutter up the scene with details but offer one telling image.
The New York Times recently covered a New York exhibition, “The Anatomy of a Movie Poster: The Work of Dawn Baillie,” showcasing the work of an artist whose first poster was for Dirty Dancing (1987) and the last for The Tragedy of MacBeth (2021). In between she designed posters for hits like Zoolander and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Baillie also designed the poster for Little Miss Sunshine (2006) that depicted family members chasing after the VW bus they took on their cross-country trip to get Little Miss into a beauty pageant.
If you saw Little Miss Sunshine, you’d recall the scene where the family makes a hasty exit requiring them to hop into a moving vehicle as it gathers speed. It’s not only a comical scene but a picture that spotlights the cast. The Baillie exhibit runs through Sept. 8.
Back to Somewhere in the Night, no fewer than nine cast members are cited on the poster along with the producer and director. In tiny type, you’ve also got screenplay and story credits, and you find out it was adapted by Lee Strasberg. That’s a lot of information. But it’s not unprecedented. Fourteen characters are pictured in a poster for Avengers Endgame (2019).
Some of the players in Somewhere are worth noting. Sheldon Leonard has just one scene but demonstrates his tough guy persona (perhaps most notably evident in It’s a Wonderful Life). Lou Nova plays a hulking henchman who had 40 professional fights including bouts with Max Baer (he won) and Joe Louis (he lost).
Lloyd Nolan is about as easy-going as any homicide detective you’re likely to find on the screen. Had he been a little younger (Nolan played Martin Kane Private Eye on TV in the early 50s) when Columbo was being cast, I wonder if Nolan couldn’t have given Peter Falk a run for his money.
Having just watched the picture, I can’t help but offer a spoiler alert. I normally hate to divulge plot information on old movies but I’m making an exception here because the plot turn struck me as so outrageous.
Before going any further, if you want to see this picture, don’t read any further because I’m cutting to the chase. Okay, warnings issued: our hero and his girlfriend have found what everyone has been looking for throughout this movie: $2 million in $1,000 bills in a suitcase tucked away on a piling under the dock. As they leave, some unknown assailant starts shooting at them. Calculating that his attacker is out of ammunition, our hero and his lady clamber out from under the dock and slip into a nearby mission.
With me some far? That’s 2 mill in the suitcase that a half dozen people have died trying to get their hands on. After entering the mission in total despair, Hodiak suddenly hatches a plan. He rushes up to the kindly old mission director by the front door and hands him the suitcase. “Will you see that Lieutenant Kendall at the police department gets this?” The old guy agrees. But instead of calling the police to come over and get it, the old boy puts his hat on and heads out the door. “I’ll deliver it myself,” he says. What? There was shooting out there a minute ago. Bad guys are everywhere in this picture but Hodiak just smiles and slips the guy a ten-spot for his trouble.
When Hodiak and Guild go out that door seconds later, there’s the ominous form of Lou Nova to take them to the hideout on the docks. Lou, you just missed the guy with all the money!
Anyway, I got that out of my system. The movie’s not bad and the poster’s even better.