OLIVER TWIST

Original Spanish 27 inch by 40 inch Poster for the 1948 David Lean Classic OLIVER TWIST, based on the novel by Charles Dickens and starring Robert Newton, Alec Guinness, John Howard Davies, Kay Walsh, Francis L. Sullivan, Anthony Newley, Henry Stephenson, Mary Clare, Ralph Truman, Gibb McLaughlin, Kathleen Harrison, Amy Veness, Ivor Barnard, Maurice Denham, Michael Ripper, Peter Bull, Diana Dors, Edie Martin, Hattie Jacques and Erik Chitty.

Expressionistic noir photography suffuses David Lean’s Oliver Twist with a nightmarish quality, fitting its bleak, industrial setting. In Dickens’ classic tale, an orphan wends his way from cruel apprenticeship to a den of thieves lead by Alec Guinness as the quintessential Fagin.

The superb poster art for this poster is by ”Jano” (Francisco Fernández-Zarza Pérez) (1923 – 1993).

Francisco Fernández-Zarza Pérez, better known as Jano was a Spanish film poster designer, one of the most highly regarded in his time, along with Macario Gómez, alias “Mac”.
During the Spanish Civil War, he collaborated as an illustrator in republican magazines, for which he was sentenced to prison. In the 1950s he worked as a comic book cover artist for publishers such as Dolar, but his main strength was in the area of film advertising, becoming the preferred poster designer for Spanish distributors Chamartín, Filmayer, Hispamex, Mercurio Films and Procines..

The poster is in very good linen-backed condition with minor restoration, particularly along the left end of the original top folf line. There is minor lifting in places at the top right.