![]() The fact that the actors names are placed below the title and director reveals that the movie itself is more important than the people who star in it. That seems to be a goal of the design, to muster interest and remain ambiguous, in a way that’s not annoying or frustrating, but intriguing. There’s no direct statement made about the movie from the poster. As stated in Art of the Modern Movie Poster: International Postwar Style and Design, “he sought a single, iconic image to summarize a film, rather than relying on star portraits and scene illustrations” (Judith Salavetz, Spencer Drate, Sam Sarowitz, Dave Kehr 441). Sight is the sense that dominates when assessing this poster, especially: in most movie posters, a person is using his eyes in order to take in information, but this one relies mainly on one image to get the point across, so it’s an even more basic use of sight. What conclusions regarding the film they come up with are up to them not much is given away in terms of how characters look, or the setting of the film, and nothing of the plot. With this poster, the audience is given an image of a disjointed human body, the names of the actors, and that’s it. The audience can only see the information that is given, and interpret it in a way that makes sense to them. In terms of the written tradition of communication, this poster speaks to the less malleable characteristics of text and symbols. Nothing is put together perfectly in the movie, and that’s reflected in the poster. The disjointed font of the title as opposed to the smooth, clean font of the actors and actresses names is also a contrast and also highlights the fragmented nature of the film. The subtext message of that body is played upon the piecing together of a human body, implying murder, and also the piecing together of a case in order to solve that murder. Obviously, the text is discursive, but it’s tied together with the image of a body. There’s no need to pay attention to order, at least on the first half of the poster, because it’s just an image. With regard to the visual aspect of the movie poster, it speaks to a more presentational approach. There is an abundance of color, however there aren’t that many colors, just two that highlight the different aspects of the poster. The poster itself is colorful, but not in the traditional sense. The symbol used and the title are an example of consonance in that the idea of piecing a case together and the concept of murder tie directly into one another. It’s ambiguous, but not in an annoying way, rather in a way that invites the potential audience to discover more about the movie, hopefully by seeing it. The simple human body, cartoonish and minimal in nature, split up into pieces, plays on the title word “anatomy,” and also hints at the content of the film, without giving too much away. ![]() The single image, combined only with the names of the actors and actresses and director, is very clear, and not so busy as to turn the potential viewer off. According to Emily King, author of A Century of Movie Posters: From Silent to Art House, Bass “maintained modernist belief that it is possible to strip away layers of complexity and arrive at a single visual essence” (King 54). The poster itself isn’t extremely busy, instead choosing one symbol to represent the entire film. Looking at the six c’s of communication, the poster especially highlights clear, concise, and colorful. Saul Bass’s Anatomy of a Murder poster is a multifaceted form of media aimed at generating interest in the film, as well as making a statement about what kind of film it is, in a manner that doesn’t reveal too much about the content of the plot. In any sort of communication medium, rhetorical artifacts included, the goal is to find the right balance and the appropriate strategy to meet the goals of the medium. People are supposed to look at something, read something, or just get an idea somehow, of what’s being said and how things relate to each other. The whole idea of communication is completely contextual.
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