Laurent Durieux, master of the oldschool movie poster

Ben Marks on the Retro-Futuristic World of Laurent Durieux.

This year, 2013, has gotten off to an equally rousing start, beginning with the January release of a poster for Steven Spielberg’s 1975 thriller “Jaws.” Reportedly, the director himself liked Durieux’s design so much, he ordered 25 copies to give as gifts to his closest friends. Thanks to the buzz that followed Durieux’s “Jaws” (prices for prints from the original edition of 525, which cost $60 each, are now hovering around $200), anticipation is building among collectors, who are hoping a new Durieux will be included in Mondo’s annual Oscars drop during the Academy Awards broadcast on February 24, 2013.

• [jandrese]

  That Jaws poster is beautiful, but is a terrible poster for the movie in question.  Besides, Jaws already has one of the most iconic movie posters of all time, and one of the few people could probably describe if you asked out of the blue.

  Couldn’t he have hidden a shark fin in the background? That’s a movie poster for a Rom-Com!

  • [SedanChair]

    I agree, I need everything to be in my face at all times. Subtlety and suspense piss me off, really

    • [jandrese]

      The whole point of a movie poster is to advertise the movie in question.  This poster is beautiful, but is utterly “generic day at the beach.”  If you obscured the movie name and asked people who guess which famous film this poster belongs to, you would probably not have many correct guesses.  About the only clue you have is the truck, and only real fans of the movie are going to pick up on that.

      • [Capital_7]

        I agree with you completely.  It’s a nice image, but a poor poster that wouldn’t have passed the first round with the producers and director for the film’s release.

  • [West Cot]

    There is a hidden shark fin (in the foreground)!

  • [blitzkriegthecat]

    If it was meant to market something that wasn’t already deeply ingrained into popular culture then I’d agree. As most people already understand what the title means it’s what you don’t see that’s important, much like the film itself. (Also check out the parasol if you’re looking for a shark fin).

  • [L_Mariachi]

    There’s a shark fin on the umbrella.

    EDIT: D’oh. And I’m always complaining about people who don’t read all the comments before adding their own.

• [therantguy]

  It should be noted that almost every Mondo release featuring a movie people have heard of ends up at 3 or 4 or 5 times issue price on the secondary market…i.e. this is certainly doing pretty well for sellers but it’s not some crazy unheard of markup either…

• [Jeremy Wilson]

  If that’s your definition of “master”, you should hang out at gigposters.com more.  Most of this work is mediocre, and suffers from the common “artwork clashes with text” problem that non-designers run into all the time.