Abysmal creatures

Bezdna (Abyss).

A couple of film posters from a time when poster artists weren't prevented from treating their subject in a symbolic manner. Both these designs are the work of one M. Kalmanson (and I'm assuming here that the scant information is accurate), and both are for Russian films produced in 1917. Beautiful Century alerted me to the work above which Japonisme had spotted a couple of years ago when gathering the more familiar images of women menaced by those pesky cephalopods. Searching around produced the poster below which confirms that the artist had tentacles on the brain that year, creating a picture that looks like a collaboration between Edmund Dulac and HG Wells. There's little information anywhere about the films themselves but that's not too surprising when so much of the silent era has been lost forever. As with The Isle of Lost Ships, it's a good bet that the cinematic reality was a lot less interesting than the promise of the poster design.

Poison of the Big City. (Maybe… I can't find this title confirmed in separate sources.)

Previously on { feuilleton }

• Fascinating tentacula

• Jewelled butterflies and cephalopods

• The art of Rune Olsen

• Octopulps

• The art of NoBeast

• Coming soon: Sea Monsters and Cannibals!