TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF A WOMAN’S LIFE

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1968 Dominique Delouche Drama TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF A WOMAN’S LIFE (VINGT-QUATRE HEURES DE LA VIE D’UNE FEMME), based on the novel by Stefan Zweig and starring Danielle Darrieux, Robert Hoffmann, Romina Power and Léna Skerla.

The unhappy love affair of a middle-aged woman who falls in love with a young man who is a compulsive gambler. She fails in her endeavour to make him give it up.

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.

Printed by Ward & Foxlow, Harcourt St., London W.1.

The poster is in very good unfolded (rolled) condition with a long diagonal crease at top right and slight crumpling in the top right corner, a very small tear in the right edge and a couple of surface creases.