What to do with this poster which looks like an abstract composition, formally most resembling the rhythmically arranged decoration of the Tutankhamen mask? Well, for Treutler as a poster designer, the main challenge was to add his own contribution to the film. The main colours of the composition – of course – remind us that the action takes place during the colonial war between Great Britain and France: the former are the allies of the main character growing up with the Delewars, the latter conspire with the Iroquois (Dunham falls on their arrows). Instead, we can see the shape of a white head filled with a toy figurine of a British hussar, who is about to fall backwards being struck by an Indian arrow – this is probably Major Dunham (whose daughter Mabel is more important for the plot than he himself). However, the poster does not show the expression of a honoured warrior at all. The entire composition is filled with a pale face… adorned with an Indian plume in which every other feather is red! The Indians painted them in this colour only when they decided to commemorate an outstanding militant act. So we will not find Leather Stocking (the main character of Natty Bumppo) on Treutler’s poster. Of course, not everyone got caught up in this tale of the myth of American masculinity, which is about being both civilized and wild in a frame of self-conscious transformation.
#The pathfinder movie by james cooper series#
The TV series was said to be an exciting production at the time, prepared as a Christmas gift for viewers and able to get especially young people off the streets. As you can see, only the German title emphasizes the adventures of the main character, not the charm of Lake Ontario, which is sometimes said to be the strongest point of Cooper’s novel. To find out more, you have to look for the titles given by the local European distributors, because the film is known under various titles: Aventura in Ontario (Romania), Dobrodružství v Ontáriu (Czechoslovakia), Indiankaland Ontarioban (Hungary), Die Lederstrumpf-Erzählungen, Teil 3: “Das Fort am Biberfluss” (West Germany / TV), La legende de bas de cuir, Episode 3: “Aventures en Ontario” (France / TV). Polish film magazines wrote briefly about the film at the appropriate time. Romanian co-director, Sergiu Nicolaescu, whose name appears as the second on the Polish poster – otherwise a very effective and, of course, a regime-supporting artist – was not mentioned at all in the German and French TV versions. Moreover, it was extracted from a four-episode television series (broadcast in West Germany and France) and was shown in the cinemas in Eastern Europe as a single picture. Meanwhile, it turns out that the film is a Franco-West German-Austrian-Romanian co-production. Treutler gets a commission for a movie poster. The Pathfinder has been present in Poland since 1928, when the first translation of the book was published. This title is the third part of the famous The Leatherstocking Tales (in Poland more commonly known as The Hawk’s Eye Pentalogy). Jerzy Treutler – a lover of American cinema – goes to the screening of The Pathfinder, a film made in 1969, based on the adventure novel by an American author, James Fenimore Cooper. Because maybe it is better not to come at all… So it is better to make sure earlier what they will display, at least for general gist. None of the artists knows who will receive the commission to paint the poster. The Film Rental Center (the monopolistic distributor in the times of the Polish People’s Republic), when obtaining another film, organizes a screening for graphic designers. Retrospektywa, Mój pies Wulkan) outlines in an interview conducted by Ewa Reeves : Let us try to imagine the situation that Jerzy Treutler (on the artist’s work see: Jerzy Treutler. A poster is said “to have to do something”: to talk, shout, appeal, persuade, exhort, sing (we have quoted this Jan Lenica’s deep truth about a singing poster more than once …).
0 kommentar(er)
