RITE

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1969 Ingmar Bergman Drama THE RITE starring Ingrid Thulin, Anders Ek, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Erik Hell and Ingmar Bergman.

This experimental film focuses on four characters—a trio of actors charged with obscenity (Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Björnstrand, Anders Ek), and the judge assigned to try them (Erik Hell). The Rite alternates between criminal interrogations and interpersonal confrontations shown in flashback, leading to a final “performance” that makes for one of the most bizarre moments in Bergman’s filmography. Staged on bare sets and shot almost entirely in close-up, The Rite condenses a decade’s worth of cinematic exploration into seventy-five tense, unsettling minutes.

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 and has been Conservation Paper-Backed.