Hail Mary (Original poster for the 1985 film)

New York: New Yorker Films / JLG Films, 1986. Original US one sheet poster advertising the 1986 US re-release of Godard's "Hail Mary" (1985) in a double bill with Anne-Marie Neville's "The Book of Mary."

Both films were France-Switzerland co-productions under Godard's "JLG Films" moniker, and Neville's film was released in France a year after Godard's. Both debuted in the US in 1986, where Godard's film was a magnet for controversy, condemned by Pope John Paul II, and drawing out the usual fundamentalist protesters at cinema houses. Conversely, "Time Out" magazine praised the film, and John Waters called it one of the great art film of the (truncated) 1980s, in an essay ultimately collected in his 1987 collection, "Crackpot."

In the perspective of time, an example of a film so drenched in (perhaps intentional) controversy that it has taken decades for a proper evaluation to be made.

27 x 41 inches. Three horizontal folds, else Near Fine. (Inventory #: 127378)