SPIDER’S STRATAGEM 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci PETER STRAUSFELD QUAD POSTER PROOF

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster Proof (a trial print of the poster before the lettering is added) for the 1976 Bernardo Bertolucci Drama THE SPIDER’S STRATAGEM (LA STRATEGIA DEL RAGNO), based on the story "Tema del traidor y del héroe" by Jorge Luis Borges and starring Alida Valli, Giulio Brogi, Tino Scotti, Pippo Campanini, Franco Giovanelli and Allen Midgett.

Originally produced for Italian television, this film can be regarded as a cinematic tone poem and stars Giulio Brogi as a young Italian who returns to his ancestral home, the place where his anti-fascist father was assassinated, a long-ago incident that still disturbs the populace. Cold-shouldered by everyone in town, the young man tries to find out why everyone is so hostile towards him; after all, was not his father a hero of the people?

The poster art is by Peter Strausfeld. Strausfeld was interned in the Isle of Man at the Onchan Internment Camp during the War where he met the Austrian producer George Hoellering. In 1947 Hoellering opened the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and invited Strausfeld to produce some posters for the cinema which he did in wood and lino-cuts till his death in 1980.

The poster is in very good unfolded (rolled) condition with minor vertical creasing.