Mad Max

Artist: Tom Beauvais
Format: UK Quad (30"x 40")
Condition: Excellent
Year: 1979

Description
The film that kick-started the career of Mel Gibson. Gibson apparently turned up to the audition with a black eye (the result oif a bar fight) & little hope of landing a part of any sort. The battered slightly abrasive image did the job & Mel's path to international stardom began. British artist Tom Beauvais created an interesting poster design, the silver metallic background hinting of a futuristic setting & inconjunction with the pointed weaponry, clearly highlighting the violent content in the film. The graduated title text, however, harks back to an earlier period, being a device often employed in the advertising of 1950's B-movie Scifi & Exploitation genre movies etc. The film has a low-budget feel to it & the vision of an apocalyptic future in which humans regress to violent scavengers in a fight for survival, probably reminded Beauvais of this earlier form of movie-making. Irrespective, this simple design proved to be very effective. As Sim Brannaghan states in "British Film Posters" (2006), the Beauvais poster strips "the film down to it's basic elements of cop, the car & the road". For a fascinating insight into the life & career of the artist Tom Beauvais (plus further comment about his work on "Mad Max") please see the blogged Interview on http://www.filmonpaper.com/blog/an-interview-with-tom-beauvais/ The poster has been cleaned, de-acidified & linen-backed.