The Big Sleep/ Il Grande S🍨onno (1946), first Italian release poster (1947)

Artist: Luigi Martinati (1893-1984)

Unframed: 55 x 39 1/4 in. (140 x 100.2 cm)

This poster was designed by Luigi Martinati, who had a prolific career as a film poster designer. In the mid 1940s he joined forces with two other giants of Italian film poster design, Anselmo Bal🃏lester and Alfredo Capitani, to form a company devoted exclusively to the production of film posters. From 1945 until 1958 he worked almost exclusively for Warner Bros. and occasionally for Columbia and Universal Studios. This piece is typical of Martinati’s personal style, as it features large portrait images that dominate the poster. 

This beautiful Italian po🎶ste✱r is one of the rarest Bogart posters.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall☂ met and fell in love on the set of To Have and Have Not two years earlier. They starred agaiꦕn together in this film, which was also directed by Howard Hawks. The film was an adaptation of the 1939 novel of the same name by Raymond Chandler. Bogart plays the part of private detective Philip Marlowe, who is helped with his investigations by Vivian Rutledge (played by Lauren Bacall).