“The Thomas Crown Affair”, Original Release Japanese Movie Poster 1968, B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) Q9
This is an original Japanese B2 poster printed in 1968 for the first Japanese theatrical release of The Thomas Crown Affair, the stylish American neo-noir heist film directed and produced by Norman Jewison and starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. A superb example of late-1960s Japanese design for sophisticated Hollywood cinema, it combines glamour, wealth, romance, sport, and danger in one beautifully balanced composition.
Film background
Released in 1968, The Thomas Crown Affair is one of the definitive cool, high-style crime films of its era. Steve McQueen plays Thomas Crown, a wealthy and bored mastermind who devises an elaborate bank robbery without carrying out the crime himself. When Vicki Anderson, the elegant and highly intelligent investigator played by Faye Dunaway, begins circling closer to the truth, the film turns into a seductive cat-and-mouse game in which romance, strategy, and suspicion become inseparable. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards and won Best Original Song for Michel Legrand’s immortal “The Windmills of Your Mind.”
Poster design
This Japanese poster is wonderfully period and stylish, built around a montage that sells the film as both a crime thriller and a luxury fantasy. A huge close-up of Steve McQueen dominates the right side, while Faye Dunaway stands elegantly at centre in oversized hat and sunglasses, perfectly embodying the film’s chic late-1960s sophistication. Around them are smaller vignettes of kisses, golf, gliding, rodeo action, suited men, and the dune buggy, all hinting at the film’s mixture of wealth, leisure, romance, and criminal intrigue. The oversized red-and-blue Japanese title 華麗なる賭け gives the sheet tremendous wall presence. It is exactly the kind of glamorous, highly displayable Japanese poster that makes this period of Hollywood paper so collectible.
Condition
Excellent. Please review the photos—they show the exact poster for sale.
It is over 55 years old!
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
