Customer Reviews

Lawrence Bassoff Collection Presents Crime Scenes: Movie Poster Art of the Film Noir- The Classic Period, 1941-1959

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With the growth of interest in film posters and a subsequent similar growth in books on the subject, this book stands head and shoulders above most of the competition. Unlike similar books which are simply hodge-podge collections of poster images, Lawrence Bassoff has created a book that is nearly as much fun to read as it is to look at.Although lightweight on text, there is no padding in this book. The comments on the films themselves are incisive and knowing. By featuring posters from various countries, Bassoff allows the reader to see how different films have been sold in different countries. Part nostalgia trip, part reference work, part cinema graphics history and wholly entertaining, CRIME SCENES adds up to far more than the sum of its parts. After Bassoff's first book on the film posters for Errol Flynn films, CRIME SCENES can only make one wonder: what next from a such an obvious expert in the field? I loved it!

Though published in 1997 I'm surprised it's still available and quite cheaply, too. The bulk of the book is devoted to thirty-six classic noir movies with background information but the main point of the title are the posters and lobby cards. The large page size means that the images get the size they deserve but here's the problem: they have been printed in three colors instead of the four that normal color work is done in. The missing color is black and I find this very odd because black has been used to print the headings and text.

The missing black means that the dark and black areas in the posters just looks insipid and sort of very dark grey. The vibrancy of the posters has been ruined to my mind! I'll stick to my favorite noir poster book: Art of Noir: The Posters And Graphics From The Classic Era Of Film Noir , by Eddie Muller.

***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

A nice coffee-table book with gorgeous photographs of classic movie posters. The text gives succinct information about the movies advertised and the value of some of the posters profiled. Also, a run-down of classic film-noir stars is included.

there excactly 193 Movie posters and Lobby cards describe inside this book, you can open it in MOVIE POSTER@BOOK DATABASE to have more informations on it

he's my cousin, so of course i thought this book was good.