Ryszard (Richard) Kiwerski

Review of the poster for REBEL RESISTANT by the Cinémathèque Française

January 6, 2016

Dated 1970, this Polish poster titled Buntownik bez powodu literally takes up the original title of Nicolas Rey's film, Rebel Without a Cause. Made in 1955, at a time when films about American youth and juvenile delinquency were multiplying, Rebel Without a Cause was released in the United States barely a month after the premature death of James Dean in a car accident.

The author Ryszard Kiwerski signs a surrealist photomontage, as characteristic of his many film posters as it is far removed from the imagery of the promotion of the fifties. Fight scenes, often with knives, and duels in the form of car races are then as many recurring iconographic motifs used to identify this flourishing genre. Fifteen years later, in Poland, no dual with knives, nor James Dean in his eternal red jacket as on the original posters of Rebel Without a Cause, but a striking highlighting of a racing scene that goes wrong.

The poster is organised around a unique visual, with two mirrored car illustrations, like playing card figures. Distorted by an impressive low angle shot, the two cars face each other in a tinted black and white, completely out of step with the flamboyant colours of the film, a disturbing tailspin that energises this graphic composition as dark as the film. In the center, nested between the bodywork and the tires, the truncated and barely recognisable face of James Dean echoes his tragic destiny.

93 x 67 cm

Poland

1970

Offset - color