Criterion & Eclipse Cover Art & Packaging Babble-on Vol. 6

[jindianajonz]

Some unused covers for Insomnia courtesy of Fred Davis's blog

I can't help but feel most of these covers would be better suited for a Nine Inch Nails album. Then again, wasn't this film intentionally shot to be almost blinding? Guess it's hard to make an attractive cover while capturing that feel.

[rwiggum]

A+ month for covers in my book. Scanners is among all-time best, and I don't get the Insomnia hate. It's a great use of negative space, and really gets the frazzled, strung-out feel of the film.

[feihong]

Scanners is really pretty awesome. But to me the Demy covers are very uncomfortable. There's a weird mix of gravure fashion mag typography and Paul Rand-style playful/naive illustration in the design approach. It might have worked in another context, maybe with another filmmaker, but it doesn't at all express the feeling of the Demy films; the swooning romance and exuberance, tempered with--in the words of David Thompson, describing Jean-Pierre Melville's work--"harsh French truths." The concoctions for the Demy covers, by comparison, come off as inconsequential (Bay of Angels), gauche (Donkey Skin) or sadly literal in their graphic schema (Cherbourg and Rochefort). The color scheme of the box is muted in a way that would never make one think of Demy's films. The deliberate imprecision of the Rand-style color cutouts says very little about the director who arranged so many graceful and precise tracking shots, and so many delicately orchestrated--yet rapturous--sequences of film. The choice of such obvious visual symbols, displayed in the crudest ways possible says nothing about the way Demy took archetypal images from Hollywood pictures and transformed them into his own sensitively-wrought iconography. Remember that, while umbrellas do appear throughout Cherbourg, they are of every color that the film can provide for them--and no one umbrella is ever highlighted as the pink one is on the Cherbourg disc cover.

The worst cover is for the main box cover itself, graced with that widely-seen but strangely noncommittal-seeming portrait of Demy. Does this portrait really serve as some kind of shorthand summary of the films, of the journey we're about to take into this man's fervent artistry? That portrait of Demy is often juxtaposed as an ironic counterpoint against the passion and exuberance of his filmmaking, but here it is the sole, isolated expressive element on the box cover--thereby the ambassador for the entire set. In the Demy thread someone asked what to expect from these movies if you'd never seen them, and I think this cover really fails to help you arrive at any helpful expectation for what you're about to see.

I've disliked a lot of Criterion covers when seeing them initially on the internet--only to have to eat crow when I hold the package in my hands or (in the case of the Jules et Jim design) when I've stared at it in contemplation again and again over years. But I don't think I'll be eating my words on this one. The conception is crude at its core, and the details are handled with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Never at any point do any of these designs communicate to me one vital or unique thing about the films of Jacques Demy--and the feeling of what these pictures are like is never conveyed by the nearly arbitrary design direction (it does feel very reminiscent of the Pasolini set, as if the same designer applied something he thought of as his own "style" to the box without bothering to see any of the Demy movies or think about them too deeply). I'm thrilled the set is coming out, but I don't think I'll ever be able to like these covers. It's hard to imagine who at Criterion really liked this approach. It's like they had no real vision of how to approach the visuals for the box.

[Jeff]

[boywonder]

The problem with hastily critiquing Criterion covers from the thumbnails from CC's original announcements on the 15th of each month, is that one jumps to conclusions ...

This box set is looking more wonderful with each new photo. The colors on the box look as if they could come from "Umbrellas" or "Rochefort". I remember when the Mishima box came out years ago ... everybody was screaming. Little did they know that it would be a glorious multi-colored foil affair.

I think this crowd prefers the covers to be tasteful, like many of those boring PBS programs. People know quite a bit about film and cinema history, but few know film and graphic art. Most know very little about European film poster design ...

I say, "Quit your belly aching until the fat lady sings!"

[Minkin]

The problem with hastily critiquing Criterion covers from the thumbnails from CC's original announcements on the 15th of each month, is that one jumps to conclusions ...

I think this crowd prefers the covers to be tasteful, like many of those boring PBS programs. People know quite a bit about film and cinema history, but few know film and graphic art. Most know very little about European film poster design ...

Whoa! "Red River" is sure one big messy dueling battle of oversized and garishly colored fonts over a pedestrian sepia-toned film still. We waited this long, and this is the best we get? I do hope our protagonists don't hit their heads or stumble on the crazy "v" or the numerous "h's" strewn over this sloppy stew!

[Lowry_Sam]

Scanners is the best original cover art Criterion has come up with in quite some time, ordinarily I was going to pass on this one, but the artwork just might push me into picking it up. I also love the nostalgaic Demy artwork with muted color & 60s design, quite appropriate for the box. Insomnia isn't stunning, but it is a lot better than many other recent titles. The Big Chill's cover replicates the banality of the film quite well...and it won't be joining my collection so I don't care.

[swo17]

This box set is looking more wonderful with each new photo.

So...with each of the one new photo?

[cdnchris]

Il sorpasso

[cdnchris]

Like Someone in Love

[cdnchris]

Overlord
Ace in the Hole

[flyonthewall2983]

Look at them going all Jethro Tull on Ace In The Hole

[cdnchris]

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Red River

[Yaanu]

Red River

I'd ask for a picture of the inside of the book, like the first page to see how the formatting looks, but I guess that would be difficult without a scanner or without damaging the book itself.
Still beautiful. I can't wait to see how "Picnic at Hanging Rock" looks.

EDIT: Actually, the quality of the novel itself, by which I mean production/binding quality, ought to be brought up in the final review of the release.

[Jakamarak]

I know, initially, there was some disappointment about the artwork for The Essential Jacques Demy. It seems to have gone unnoticed that Criterion recently altered the universal background color for the set. The original image they released had a sort of pale putty background -- and that is the version still posted on Amazon and most everywhere online.

Now the background color on the images posted on the Criterion site have a more tan/slightly orange tint to them. Not sure it makes much different in the design overall, but the Criterion logo stands out more.

[Zot!]

I think people were more dissapointed in the faux-primitive shapes and "outsider-art" designs that were employed for the covers, reminiscent of the Pasolini thing with the crossed out mistakes and such. In neither case does it reflect the style of the films themselves. It does look cheap to me. I mean seriously, who has trouble drawing an umbrella...and the pee yellow Denueve in the oblong triangle. Hideous.

[Michael Kerpan]

The Deneuve inset should obviously also be pink-tinted.

[domino harvey]

outsider-art

Huh? Go to your local flea market and pick up a magazine from the 60s

[Zot!]

outsider-art

Huh? Go to your local flea market and pick up a magazine from the 60s

I was referencing both the Pasolini and Demy this when I said it but like I mentioned, the intentionally crude shapes are inappropriate if they were trying to reference the "jet-age". This is not pop-art, this is poop-art.

[WorstFella]

outsider-art

Huh? Go to your local flea market and pick up a magazine from the 60s

I was referencing both the Pasolini and Demy this when I said it but like I mentioned, the intentionally crude shapes are inappropriate if they were trying to reference the "jet-age". This is not pop-art, this is poop-art.

Why not take this to its logical conclusion and just say "poofart"?

I'm in the camp of liking the box design more than the individual films. I realize that the individual cases have to conform to the box aesthetic, to some degree, but I'm not a big fan of generalized graphic elements with stills splashed across them. It doesn't look cheap to me, but it does fail to give each film its own identity.

Still, not repulsed by it or anything.

[jindianajonz]

"poofart"?

I could see that word going two different ways....

[domino harvey]

Po' of art

[captveg]

Red River

Judging by the pics of the packaging, is this book thicker than any previous release?

[knives]

It doesn't seem that way. Other films with books have roughly the same size. I'm pretty sure, for example, The Furies is thicker.

[swo17]

The Furies has the thickest book in my collection at 267 pages, though Mr. Arkadin and Vampyr come close.