Thief Poster

British quad for Thief... I'm only posting this to stave off the temptation to buy this gorgeous poster which I spotted on ebay earlier. I'm thinking about where it could go in the house but I’ve pretty much used up all the wall space my wife will allow me. It's a beautiful piece of design, and as far as I know this artwork is exclusive to the British release, capturing well the gaudy, neon look of those painted wet streets. The film's poor performance in the US no doubt prompted United Artists to devise a different marketing strategy for the film's international release, and the decision to go with a more conventional crime film concept was understandable. As much as I love the film's US one-sheet poster - a transparent rendering of James Cann's face against a furnace of white-hot sparks, it does suggest a futuristic, hi-tech science fiction thriller rather than a tough, no-nonsense crime film. The Violent Streets re-title doesn’t have the modernist cool of the original title, but this film was made in Chicago, and reportedly filmed in some very rough neighborhoods, so the re-title feels well earned. To cover all bets, the British poster modified the original tagline: "Tonight, his take home pay is $410,000...tax free", adding “He’s a thief”, but it doesn't quite work as well as reading it on the American poster. Michael Mann's film arrived at the beginning of the 80's, and reflecting on the tagline with its focus on aggressive, deregulated money-making, it feels very zeitgeisty. Not quite the kind of laissez-faire economics Reagan promoted but nonetheless one imagines the profit potential of the thief's line of work appealed to the burgeoning yuppie class and the obsession with fast money.

My only quibble about the British poster is the awkward promo insert for Tangerine Dream's soundtrack, which I presume was due to the confusion of the album retaining the original film title and the US one-sheet artwork. In fact the first UK pressing of the soundtrack came with a hype sticker which advised: "The soundtrack of the film re-titled Violent Streets" lest there be any doubt of the connection. I'm listening to the soundtrack now as I put this post together and it's easily the group's best soundtrack work, much more so than Sorcerer I think - the opening section of the film scored to the track Diamond Diary is arguably their finest moment on film. I mentioned earlier that the US poster may have misled people into thinking the film was some kind of dystopian science fiction but the look of the film coupled with Tangerine Dream's score does lend the impression that the film is taking place not quite in the present, but perhaps a few years in the future. Certainly, the three-dimensional look of the nocturnal city, the street and signage lighting reflected in the wet alleyways and roads, creates a striking layered density that anticipates the look of Blade Runner's 21st century Los Angeles...