THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN (1981) - movie poster painting (prototype)

Vic Fair prototype artwork for the highly-regarded 1981 movie, THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN.

“Actors Meryl Streep, Jeremy Irons, Hilton McRae, Emily Morgan and Charlotte Mitchell under Karel Reisz's superb, sensitive and fluid direction bring Harold Pinter and John Fowles screenplay to the screen in stunning fashion. Some of the scenes will live in the memory for a long time, so powerful are the visuals.

Set in 19th Century England it is the story of a chance meeting between Sarah (Meryl Streep), an eerily beautiful woman, and Charles (Jeremy Irons), a biologist about to be married; they have a brief but passionate affair but her deep sadness and past force her to leave him. The movie works on two chronological levels, switching seamlessly between the two parallel stories which mirror each other in many ways.

Visually, this film is stunningly beautiful and haunting in the way the story of Sarah, a Victorian outcast, unfolds to reveal her history.”

For his prototype artwork, displaying a high degree of finish (for what is effectively a prelim), British artist Vic Fair chose a simple but very effective design of the Meryl Streep character’s portrait enveloping a key moment from the movie. As good as the idea might have been, the design was rejected in favour of what appears to be a mostly photographic image for the resulting movie poster campaign (that still managed to retain much of Fair’s original concept).

“In the history of British film posters there are few characters as significant and influential as the designer and artist Vic Fair. During a career that spanned close to forty years, many of them spent as part of the same ever-evolving agency, Vic lent his inimitable style to several of the most iconic British movie posters ever printed. He designed marketing campaigns for most of the big film studios and distributors, including for the likes of Hammer Films and all of the posters for the very British ‘Confessions…’ series of bawdy comedies. Over the years, Vic also developed a strong working relationship with many of the British film industry’s leading directors, including Nicolas Roeg, Terry Gilliam and Michael Winner.

One of the things that really set Vic apart from his contemporaries were his skills at develop-ing concepts that were unique and stood out from what was often a sea of other ideas, de-pending on how many design agencies a distributor might have been working with. He had a natural talent for concepts that used ingenious juxtaposition of elements to create surprising layouts and he wasn’t one to shy away from risqué concepts, many of which unfortunately never made onto a printing press. Many of these designs did, however, make it through to the end of the process and clearly demonstrate his cheeky sense of humour.”