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La Vallee (released in the U.S. as "Barbet Schroeder's The Valley Obscured by Clouds"), the 1972 Barbet Schroeder French jungle adventure melodrama ("A film you can feel"; "a sensual path to the unknown"; about a woman searching for exotic feathers in upland New Guinea but who finds much more in the Mapunga tribe, hippies, mind expanding drugs, and 'The Valley Obscured by Clouds'; "with music by Pink Floyd") starring Bulle Ogier, Michael Gothard, Jean-Pierre Kalfon, Valerie Lagrange, Jerome Beauvarlet, Monique Giraudy, and The Mapunga Tribe and its Chiefs
NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography.

Artist: Philip Castle

Important Added Info: Note that this item contains some nudity, so we have placed a white bar over those areas for those who are bothered by such images. Of course, the actual item does not have the white bars. Note that this is an advance 30x40 (note the "Opens May 17" at the bottom of the poster). Note finally that this poster is extremely similar to the British quad poster created for this movie in 1972 by the movie's marketing director (and present-day poster collector!) Mike Kaplan. As Kaplan explained to me, the movie opened in England, and he had this British quad designed. It was highly praised, and he hit on the novel idea of creating a "U.S. British quad" for the U.S. release, including making it horizontal and 30" x 40"! The only real change in some posters was that he added information for the specific theater in New York City where the movie was opening, the "Cinema III". As was typical at that time in New York City, Kaplan had several thousand of these posters printed, even though it only played at a single theater. Why print thousands, if it only played at one theater, and the information about the theater would make the poster useless for other showings? Because Kaplan did as so many producers did at the time, which was the hire people in New York City who would have teenagers post the posters on walls all over New York City in the days prior to its opening! Even though this practice, called "wildposting", was illegal, nobody did much of anything about it, and it was an effective and cheap (relative to newspaper or TV ads) way to get word out about a new movie. There is a very interesting footnote to this story. Kaplan tells me that he was cheated by the man who was supposed to have the thousands of posters posted all over New York City. He noted several days before the premiere that he wasn't seeing the posters, and he complained to the man he hired, and the man claimed that they were all posted. Kaplan thought it likely that only a small percentage had really been posted, but of course he had no way of proving it, and he couldn't do anything about it, since he was hiring someone to do something that was technically illegal! Years later, in the late 1980s, I was approached by a man near New York City who had many examples of this poster (most in wonderful condition with only slight signs of aging), and he sold them to me. Now that I know the full story from Mike Kaplan, it is clear that he was right, and that many of his posters were never posted on walls, but rather stored away, and years later sold to collectors!

Note that this item (and others we are auctioning in this set of auctions) come to us from the estate of Lee Sanders. Mr. Sanders was a nationally recognized projectionist, film poster collector, and union activist who passed away last year, and the net proceeds from the sale of his varied and eclectic collection will be donated to promote film studies at the Besant School of Happy Valley in Ojai, Ca.

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