Look back through David Lynch’s iconic film posters
David Lynch‘s career as a filmmaker began in 1967 when he had the idea to animate one of his paintings. Despite being a one-minute loop that depicts six men regurgitating to the sound of a siren, Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) kickstarted Lynch’s journey to becoming one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Created whilst he was studying at the Pennsylvania Academy, the short film won a prize at the end-of-year exhibit, which led one of Lynch’s wealthy classmates to commission him to create a piece for his home.
With the leftover money, Lynch began making more short films, experimenting with ideas inspired by dreams and his subconscious. By 1977, his debut feature, Eraserhead, was completed. Noted for its carefully defined black-and-white dark, shadowy aesthetic and accompanying intricate sound design, Lynch’s background as a multi-faceted artist was blindingly apparent.
Since his debut feature, Lynch has released nine more feature-length movies and helmed Twin Peaks and its 2017 revival series, alongside a string of other projects. The filmmaker is known for his surreal approach to cinema, often creating complex and non-linear narratives. Lynch’s films operate in a mystical world of their own, usually concerned with themes of sex, violence, dreams, guilt, identity and doppelgängers.
Lynch’s creations are always visually striking, helping to convey the bizarre and unusual themes that permeate within them. Whether it be the deep crimsons of the Red Room in Twin Peaks or the neon cobalt and smoky reds of Blue Velvet, the director’s projects are always soaked in lush colour palettes. His combination of visual and thematic surrealism spawned the term ‘Lynchian’ due to the director’s idiosyncratic and original style.
Despite the weird and often wacky nature of Lynch’s work, the posters for his movies reveal very little. Starting with Eraserhead, all that is given away is a black-and-white image of lead actor Jack Nance’s face staring into the distance, his hair almost resembling fire. The monochrome image is as shadowy and elusive as the film, embodying the film’s aesthetic in a single shot. The poster for The Elephant Man, Lynch’s sophomore film that earned eight Academy Award nominations, retains a similar atmosphere to the Eraserhead poster. It perfectly captures the oppressive spirit of Victorian England, and an image of the cloaked John Merrick, played by John Hurt, stands mysteriously in the middle.
As Lynch switched to using colour film, his posters became more vibrant. The director’s ill-recieved epic science-fiction film Dune marked a transitionary period in his career where Lynch gained mainstream recognition and was given big-budget opportunities. Despite Lynch entering into new, potential blockbuster territory with Dune, he retained his unusual cinematic approach, which didn’t translate well and resulted in a box-office flop. Compared to other sci-fi posters, Lynch’s is relatively sparse, failing to reveal any prominent faces that star in the movie as typical posters from the genre usually do.
Lynch’s most beautiful poster, however, is arguably Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Released in 1992 as a prequel to the cult television series, Fire Walk With Me follows Laura Palmer as she lives the last seven days of her life. Although the series had a campy, kitsch tone, the prequel film is much darker and one of Lynch’s most emotionally-charged pieces. The original poster incorporates the classic chevron floor that carpets the Red Room behind a broken, blazing locket with the face of Laura Palmer inside. With the tagline, “In a town like Twin Peaks, no one is innocent”, this is easily one of Lynch’s most compelling posters.
Lynch’s later films, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, and most recently, Inland Empire, explore themes of identity. Thus Lynch’s posters reflect this by showing close-ups of the character’s faces, often fragmenting them to reflect the films’ themes of broken identity and confusion. However, an alternative theatrical release poster of Inland Empire shows an even more obscured image of Laura Dern’s face in black-and-white, letting the tagline ‘A Woman in Trouble’ dominate. By taking a line that sounds straight out of a Hollywood noir, Lynch tricks audiences into expecting a damsel in distress – what they get is something much more twisted and terrifying.
With the release of every great Lynch film, there comes a great poster, enticing audiences with ominous taglines and vibrant and evocative designs. The importance of a good poster is vital to selling a movie to audiences, and Lynch has most definitely mastered the art of creating ones that capture the essence of his beautifully surreal world whilst giving little away.
Check out some of Lynch’s most memorable posters below.
