RED AND THE WHITE

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster proof (a trial print of the poster before the lettering is added) for the 1967 Miklos Jancso War Movie THE RED AND THE WHITE (CSILLAGOSOK, KATONAK) starring Jószef Madaras, András Kozák, Tibor Molnár, Jácint Juhász, Anatoli Yabbarov, Sergei Nikonenko, Mikhail Kozakov, Bolot Beisenaliev, Tatyana Konyukova, Krystyna Mikolaiewska and Viktor Adviushko.

Set in 1919 during the brutal Civil War which raged in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, this is a war film unlike any other. Hungarian volunteers supporting the ‘Red’ revolutionaries fight a war of atrition against the ‘White’ counter-revolutionaries who are seeking to restore the old Czarist order. Virtuoso in style and technique, Jancsó invites us to study the mechanisms of conflict and power to produce a unique film portrait of the utter futility of war.

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 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. Most of these posters were printed at the prestigious Westminster Press and Ward & Foxlow.

The poster is in very good unfolded condition.