Sdtrk: ‘It’s a fine day’ by Jane

FACT: There’s not a man, woman, child, or pet, who isn’t familiar with film posters, no matter what country you reside in. But there are few things out there that come aesthetically close to the Polish film poster, which is a shame, as they’re unique, eye-catching, and wholly original. Some of them are flat-out terrifying, but again, that just adds to their distinction. They are incredible, and you’ll be seeing a few examples here whilst I natter on about them at length, as is my custom. Be sure to click on each image to get a full-size view as well!

‘The birds’ by Bronislaw Zelek / ‘Midnight cowboy’ by Waldemar Swierzy

A good Polish film poster (hereafter referred to as PFP) can stand alone as an artistic illustration, and doesn’t necessarily need to have a film to promote at all. Which is in contrast to how Hollywood does it, where a movie poster is an advertisement and little else. It kinda reinforces my thoughts as to why I dislike Hollywood, as really, ever since the end of the ‘New Hollywood‘ era, which went from the mid-Sixties up to the early Eighties, the movie industry is less about promoting creativity and artistic uniqueness, and much more about how much money they can make. There’s a post I’m periodically working on about the difference between movies and films, but that’s for another time. Unless I’ve finished it, in which case, I’ll replace this very line with a link to it!

‘Danton’ by Wiesław Wałkuski / ‘Blade runner’ by Michał Książek

The main characteristic for over half of the PFPs I’ve run across is that they’re opaque and somewhat cryptic. First time I saw the one for ‘Danton’, which I believe was the first PFP I’d ever seen, I had no idea what I was looking at, and it was, and still is, incredibly startling. To this day, it remains my go-to example of a typical PFP. But the first time I saw it, I was like, ‘so I guess “Danton” is a horror film?’ It is not! It’s a period piece from 1983 starring Gérard Depardieu about Georges Danton during France’s Reign of Terror in 1794. But if you had no clue beforehand about the film’s premise, you certainly wouldn’t get that from seeing that Beksiński-esque nightmare. This stands in contrast to the Hollywood approach, which is Keep It Simple Stupid.

‘Fanny and Alexander’ by Stasys Eidrigevicius

I also really dig how they don’t follow conventional Hollywood Movie Poster Layout models, either. As mentioned, I loathe the meat grinder that is Hollywood, but can you blame me? Setting aside the blandness of the movies themselves, if you take a look at the posters used to promote their product, they are soulless (in a bad way) and boilerplate as hell. This 2013 post on The Wrap really lays out how bleak Hollywood’s approach to movie poster design has been for the past couple of decades, and it’s Not Good. Whereas a PFP inevitably draws you in through its vagueness and mystery… your interest is piqued, and you’re like ‘what’s this about?’ Granted, the vagueness can possibly backfire, as you could be expecting one thing and getting something else entirely; for example, you could be someone in Gdańsk in 1983 wanting to go see ‘Danton’ cos you’re in the mood for a scary film that evening. One thing is for certain, though; with the majority of the designs for PFPs, you’ll find they stick with you as arresting individual images, whether or not you’ve seen the film.

‘Barbarella’ by Kaja Saudek / ‘Predators pavilion’ by Pawel Kaminski

Going back to what I’ve said about Hollywood movie posters being adverts first, art maybe; sure, adverts have the potential to be cool and memorable; you need only check out the work of Saul & Elaine Bass or Paul Rand, among several others, to see that. However, when the posters all look the same, as you’d seen in the link to that article on The Wrap, it’s literally a case of you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. There’s almost zero creativity with movie posters from Hollywood, as they’re merely adverts to try to draw you and thousands of others like you into the theatre, to make some measure of profit on the millions of dollars sunk into whatever blockbuster the studios bolted together. As they’re merely adverts, there’s no effort to create them as something that can stand alone from the film it’s promoting as its own piece of artwork. There are always exceptions, but something like the couple of posters that Vasilis Marmatakis put together for Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2023 film ‘Poor things’ ain’t the rule, either poster-wise or film-wise. (Go watch ‘Poor things’, if you’ve not seen it already, as it’s a wild ride, Mr Toad.)

‘Un chien Andalou’ by Wiesław Wałkuski / ‘Cancer’ by Marek Freudenreich

It’s true that while they’re still advertisments, there are many who believe PFPs are much closer to ‘art’ than ‘product’. There’s a pair of aesthetically-groundbreaking identical twins by the names of Stephen and Timothy who are definitely artistically-minded film directors, as opposed to movie makers; you may know them as the Brothers Quay. Working mostly from their London-based Koninck Studios since 1979, they’ve made two feature-length films, worked on several music videos and telly adverts, and created close to forty short films, both stop-motion and live-action. But the thing they’ve often stated that really opened their eyes to unusual artistic viewpoints was, yes, the Polish film poster.

Legend has it that on their very first day at the Philadelphia College of Art—where they were studying illustration—they walked into an exhibition of Polish poster art that changed their life (though the invaluable catalogue to the exhibition dates the show two years after they matriculated, in April 1967). According to Ron Magliozzi, the curator of the MoMA exhibition, “it wasn’t simply the radical design…or the posters’ revelation of a foreign world of European opera, drama, music, and cinema that irresistibly attracted them—it was the fact that the posters spoke so freely of their subjects, as if consuming them.” It was “illustration art with the courage to be strange and ambiguous,” an idea which would strongly affect the budding illustrators.

And there’s a direct line from those posters that leads to the design language used by one of my favourite bands, Broadcast, as engineered by graphic designer Julian House; it’s blatantly apparent in the art of their second album, Haha sound.

‘Big sentiments make for good sports’ by Zygmunt Zaradkiewicz / ‘I married a witch’ by Wojciech Fangor

If there’s one thing you’ve learned about today, you’re now aware of Polish film posters; your aesthetic knowledge is expanded a bit more than it was yesterday. Unless you already knew about them, in which case, you’re ahead of the game! But what you’ve seen in this post isn’t even a fraction of the ones that are out there — they’re still being made, cos for one, Poland still exists. You also get the impression that since there’s been an upswing in interest in the past decade, particularly outside of the country, that the artists there are like ‘let’s get back to it, lads! THIS IS OUR TIME TO SHINE’, or similar. But you can see loads of them at either polishposter.com or Polish Poster Gallery; other online shops exist, of course. Plenty of prints are even for sale! Although I kinda have my eye on this Stanley Kubrick triptych, but I need to consider where I can put it, so until then, no-one’s allowed to buy it in the meantime

‘In the middle age’ by by Wiesław Wałkuski

Sdtrk: ‘Live at Brixton Academy 1999’ by Atari teenage riot

For decades, I’ve been considering myself to be an introvert — or, at the very least, an ambivert with the needle deep into the introvert end of the scale — and one of the characteristics that introverts like myself are defined as having is an interest in deep experience, whereas your bog-standard extravert is more keen on broad experience. So although I can’t live without music, I only really gravitate towards a handful of genres, relatively speaking; everything outside of those is ultimately grist for the mill. I enjoy the DiY immediacy of punk; the moroseness of post-punk; the austerity of synthpop; the artifice of new wave; the aesthetics of New Romantics, industrial, and Goth; the continental Sixties fun of yé-yé; the innovativeness of shoegaze; the technological nostalgia of radiophonics; the insidious cultural nostalgia of hauntology; the renegade attitude of electroclash; the consistency of Motorik; the danceability of electro and techno; the dynamism of noise, and the aggressiveness of power-electronics.
All I can say that I like about prog rock is the equipment they used, and even then, it’s like ehhh.

There is no way I can take this seriously

Until I moved out of my parents’ house for the first time back in the late Nineties and relocated to my mate Steve’s three-bedroom townhouse, aka the original Deafening silence, I never knowingly heard any prog. Steve was mates with Mike (of Vulne pro fame), Tim, and Wolfgang, and prog rock is the one music genre that all of ’em really dug, and still dig. Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, Rush, Pink Floyd, and maybe a few more besides? As stated, I’d never been exposed to prog — up until that point in my life, it was a direct line from classic alternative (i.e The Smiths, New order, The Cure, &c.) to classic industrial (nearly anything on Mute’s sub-label The Grey Area) to noise (Merzbow, Violent onsengeisha, C.C.C.C, &c.), with a detour into shoegaze (My bloody valentine, Lush, Slowdive, &c.).
I’m sure during the first couple of months of living with Steve, I’d expressed this to him, so he had me listen to his Cd copy of Nursery cryme, an album by Genesis, and I can honestly say that it did nothing positive for me. I can’t even remember how any of the songs sounded — which, in a way, is a bad thing; as an artist, one of your goals should be to leave some sort of impression on your audience, as apathy is no reaction at all. I do recall that like most prog, it’s a concept album, so I had to look up just now what the premise of it is on Wikipedia, and it sounds frankly tiresome.

“The Musical Box” was a lengthy piece that described a macabre story placed in Victorian Britain. A young boy, Henry, is accidentally decapitated by his friend Cynthia while playing croquet. Returning to the house, Cynthia plays Henry’s old musical box, which unleashes the spirit of Henry as an old man. Henry has become sexually frustrated and attempts to seduce Cynthia. The nurse enters the room and hurls the musical box at the wall, destroying both it and Henry.

And that’s just one song! Fuckin’ ‘ell. When I hear the words ‘concept album’, I reach for my gun.

There’s exceptions to every rule no matter what the subject is, but one of the reasons progressive rock bounces immediately off me is that the musicians involved all strike me as musos, to a man. It’s obvious that they’re classically trained and have a backlog of virtuosity, but it comes across less as being passionate about what they’re playing, and more like them showing off; a very ‘Look what I can do’ sort of attitude permeates the prog I’ve heard of.
Add to that the level of being up one’s own arse that seems to be a pillar of that genre, and that doesn’t help, either. I believe that if a person is artistically inclined, that some level of pretension is okay, whether it’s in one’s work or even in day-to-day living — as mentioned, I dig classic New Romantic, and I’m a semi-lapsed Goth — but prog strikes me as ALL PRETENSION, ALL THE TIME. The level of SERIOUSNESS as they majestically SING these overwrought LYRICS having to do with FANTASY WORLDS and VICTORIAN ENGLAND over RAMBLING TWENTY-MINUTE SYNTHESISER SOLOS goes beyond escapism for me, and into the realms of you have a very elitist attitude for someone with far too much LSD coursing through your veins. It’s not just unrelatable, it’s also treated as if it’s the Highest Possible Art. Again, music made by blokes who possess a lot of technical know-how, but just aren’t conveying a sense of fun, either in performing their work, or imparting that feeling to their listeners. But then, college rock bands and Weird Al have been called ‘fun’ and they strike me as being unbearably corny, and there are also individuals out there who thoroughly enjoy working with spreadsheets, so what do I know of ‘fun’?

Returning briefly to The Musical Box, there’s a Québec-based band of that name that is a tribute act to early-Seventies-era Genesis, and they perform the same songs, in the same costumes (replicas, I would assume), with the same light and slideshow that Genesis employed. Steve invited me to go with him to see them when they were at the Motor city Casino back in 2018, along with Wolfgang, Mike, and Tim. As I have zero reference points, it all looked to me like they knew what they were doing! It struck me as very theatrical. All I can really say is that the other lads absolutely got more out of it than I did!…
My ticket was free, I should add.

There is no way I can take this seriously

Many detractors of progressive mention that one of the reasons they dislike it is cos the songs go on far, far longer than they should. They’re not entirely wrong, but I can’t completely agree with that complaint as some of the music I enjoy can have long tracks, too. Like Askern’s lamp by Golau Glau (25min 48sec), or Video 586 by New order (23min 23sec), or even Hard lovin’ man by Merzbow (41min 49sec). Obviously those are from some of my favourite genres, but with a lengthy song, it should capture and hold my attention through interesting lyrics, musical dynamism, or both. If you’re singing about some silly prog faff, then my finger is going to inevitably creep towards the Next Track button.
Length, though, is an issue, particularly when you’re being subjected to a song that you’re already somewhat averse to to begin with. I kinda look at it the same way I look at the works of Stephen King, whose catalogue I have zero interest in, as my attitude towards both him and prog is basically ‘this really could have been shorter’.

I will state that at one point I actually purchased a prog album: Burning stone, a 1992 release by the Japanese group Ruins. It was marketed as prog crossed with noise, and I figured for me that’d be the musical equivalent of giving your dog a pill wrapped in bacon. To my chagrin, Ruins usually performs prog crossed with improvisational jazz; two genres that make me wince. The two points in their favour was 1) the fact that they sang in Kobaïan, which is the fictional language created by Christian Vander, the supermuso and possibly racist founder of French prog rock band Magma, and 2) Ruins, at least for that album, consisted of a drummer and a bassist, which is a combo I admire. Much like Death from above 1979, who I loved until I found out they were also problematic! But DFA79 isn’t prog, so they’ve at least got that going for them.
Also, I did go out of my way to get a *coughbackupcough* copy of the BBC Four documentary Prog Rock Britannia: An Observation in Three Movements years ago. The Britannia series, or whatever it’s called, was a cluster of documentaries that BBC Four released back in the early 2000s, with several excellent programmes like Synth Britannia, Punk Britannia, and many others. As ambivalent as I am about psychedelia, I found that even the Psychedelic Britannia film was fact-filled, well-directed, and incredible. I’m the sort of person who, even if I dislike something, I try to learn a bit about it, so I can have a more solid basis for my dislike…

That’s another thing: prog contains quite a few elements that, taken separately, I either don’t mind or I genuinely like! Analogue synthesisers! An appreciation for the literary arts! Seventies England! Being too artistic to be practical! But much in the same way that I would not take eel sushi, some potato chips, mint chocolate, and bacon, dump them all into a blender, and drink the chunky and uneven slurry that resulted, the combination of things which result in prog rock makes me want to lie down in the grass until the earth reclaims me. By its nature, music shouldn’t bore or irritate a listener, but with me, prog hits both of those goals exceptionally well.

I shouldn’t be entirely harsh; after all, it took me two albums each to get into both Throbbing gristle and Merzbow, so perhaps all I need to do is listen to a couple of releases by The Mars Volta or Dream theatre and it all may well click with me! Maybe then I’ll not only gain an appreciation and understanding of the musical aesthetics of progressive rock, finally being able to grasp its intrinsic beauty, but I’ll also be eager to devour more!
Nah, I honestly don’t see that happening. Life’s too short for constant 20min keyboard solos, mate

Sex pistol Steve Jones and his infamous/inspirational ‘I HATE PINK FLOYD’ shirt