More Roman Polanski. The BFI is running a season of the director’s work through January and February so Repulsion (1965) and Chinatown (1974) have been put back into circulation nationwide. I don’t live in London but I have a large number of Polanski’s films on DVD so it looks like this month will also see a mini-season in south Manchester. Anchor Bay released a set of Polanski’s first three films (plus a disc of his short works) a few years ago, a great collection whose only flaw was a lack of Jan Lenica’s poster art for Repulsion and Cul-de-Sac (1966). I don’t know what posters are being used to promote the new release of Repulsion but something using Lenica’s artwork would seem essential.
The colour and brush style of the prone figure is very typical of Lenica but when combined with either the Clarendon typeface in the British example above, or the blocky lettering for the French poster, a Saul Bass-like design appears. The gender and eye symbols in the hand-drawn lettering reinforce a resemblance which I’d guess was deliberate. The title sequence for Repulsion, with the credits sliding across a close view of Catherine Deneuve’s eyeball, could almost have been created by Bass; the director’s credit (below) requires no further argument.
