HARMFUL POSTERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21136, 19 March 1932, Page 11 (Supplement)

HARMFUL POSTERS.

UNFAIR TO THE FILMS.

EXAGGERATION OF ELEMENTS,

" Be as blatant as possible " seems to be the stock direction given by many film magnates-to the men who design posters tor the cinemas, and the results are the cause of much of the agitation at present being carried out against films. Countless complaints are being made from theatre-goers, who have been enraged and disgusted by grotesque caricatures plastered on bill-boards ail over the city. Occasionally theatre lobbies have been disfigured by lurid " cutouts " of scenes which give a totally false idea of the standard of the picture. Strangely enough, the protagonists of the " passionate poster " do not seem to realise that, their efforts to attract people to the cinemas by pictorial exaggeration of the cruder elements of the film are harmful rather than helpful. The film has grown up, found its voice, and acquired a new importance, but many of the posters used to advertise it are as crude as ever. The most admirable pictures, expensively and skilfully produced, are disgraced by glaring posters unworthy of a second-rate circus. Innocent love scenes are transformed into erotic illustrations, and are blazoned forth for everyone to see.

Why should the stars he slandered, the film-goer's intelligence insulted, and the screen brought into disrepute bv publicity methods belonging to the days when no cinema exterior was complete without a vividly-coloured representation of the hero clasping the heroine to his manly bosom ? These purple placards must be thrown away before they do any more harm.

If posters are necessary, let them he drawn by artists whose aim is to make them as life-like and attractive to the eye as possible.