The Living Daylights

Artist: Brian Bysouth
Format: UK Quad
Condition: Excellent
Year: 1987

Description
The black background provides a great backdrop for Brian Bysouth's colourful & dynamic illustration which introduced Timothy Dalton as the new James Bond. Bysouth references the classic gun barrel imagery that accompanies the opening credits of Bond films & placed a photograph of Bond in the circular aperture (photograph by Jim McCrary). As Sim Branaghan points out in "British Film Posters" (2006), this was the last Quad poster to feature classic painted artwork & this fact has given this poster an extra cache among the collecting fraternity. This particular poster is a rare unfolded example & has been cleaned, de-acidified & linen-backed. For reference purposes, we include an image of the Quad poster Advance (photograph by Keith Hamshere).  As Dennis Gassner states in "James Bond: 50 Years of Movie Posters" (2012) , the poster emphasises the change in style of the new Bond, Timothy Dalton being a much tougher incarnation compared to Roger Moore's more suave humorous interpretation. The US poster Advance showing the classic 1960's Aston Martin grille is also shown (both these images courtesy of www.moviepostermem.com). Bysouth is the most successful British artist of James Bond film posters, the bulk of the canon being the work of American artists such as Robert McGinnis, Frank McCarthy, Dan Goozee & Bob Peak. Apart from the Quad for "The Living Daylights", Bysouth, was responsible for the artwork for the Quad for "For Your Eyes Only" (1981), the very collectable "white tuxedo" 1-Sheet for "A View To A Kill" (1985) & the overall art direction for "The World Is Not Enough" (1999).