LOVE

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1971 Karoly Makk Hungarian Drama LOVE (SZERELEM), based on two stories by Tibor Déry and starring Lili Darvas, Mari Töröcsik, Iván Darvas, Erzsi Orsolya, László Mensáros and Tibor Bitskey.

The poster art is by Peter Strausfeld. Strausfeld was interned in the Isle of Man at the Onchan Internment Camp during the War where he met the Austrian producer George Hoellering. In 1947 Hoellering opened the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and invited Strausfeld to produce some posters for the cinema which he did in wood and lino-cuts till his death in 1980.

The film deals with the period of Mátyás Rákosi’s terrorism, when people “disappeared”, to reappear only rarely. Love is the story of a political prisoner’s wife and sick mother, both of whom await his return, the mother being sustained by the delusion that her son is pursuing a successful career abroad.

The Academy Cinema, built in 1913, was saved from conversion to a shopping arcade in 1928 by Elsie Cohen of the original Film Society, who proceeded to run it as an arthouse which is how it was ran till it’s closure in 1986.

The posters became a London landmark, in fact very few were used outside of London, resulting in very small print runs of 3-500.

The poster is in very good unfolded (rolled) condition.