June 20th, 2010 marks the 35th anniversary of the release of the movie JAWS. This post is part of Radiation-Scarred Review's 2010 SHARKATHALON, which celebrates this milestone with blog posts around the web.These are a few of the foreign movie posters for Jaws, Steven Spielberg's summer blockbuster masterpiece. Above is the French poster, with its title translated not as Jaws but Teeth of the Sea. The tagline is "She was the first," which is not bad at all but I don't think it was ever used on American posters.
Now this one is pretty amazing and rare, a pre-production announcement poster. It's just astounding, with the victim and the shark back-lit by a blazing sun. The unfortunate dude seems to be all decked out in sharp '70s attire, you can see the enormous shirt collar. Don't know which character he's supposed to be. You can also see the cover of the original hardcover, where I don't think the artist knew exactly what a great white shark looked like.
An evocative, poetic, and yet still bloody, poster from Poland. I especially enjoy the bloody chomp taken out of the title. Nice touch. The artist is Dudzinski Andrzej.
And a Thai poster that presents us with the familiar shark image (originally painted by Roger Kastel for the paperback edition of the novel) and well-done images of the main characters and scenes. Love the dorsal fin behind Chrissie, an effective bit of artistic license. Again, the shark in the upper corner reveals an artist unfamiliar with our beloved Carcharodon carcharias.Stay tuned; more Jaws appreciation forthcoming!
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3 comments:
Great stuff, Will. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do for my June 20 post, but I was going to kick it off with a foreign poster (which I did for my post about All the President's Men a few months back). It's great to see what other countries consider will be the imagery that will sell the film to their audience.
As usual, the Polish poster is both upsetting and beautiful.
That pre-production announcement poster is gorgeous!
The Polish poster I only found recently but I've been familiar with their bizarre takes on American films for awhile. It's like the JAWS 2 teaser, isn't it? "Upsetting and beautiful" is pretty apt. Same deal with the preproduction photo--never turned up in any of the JAWS stuff I read pre-internet, but it's so striking, I wonder why?
... and each of them rightfully terrible. The American theatrical poster is burned into my brain. Love it.
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