There are 20 post-WW2 works on display, from a Belgian poster for Orson Welles' 1952 film Othello to Shepard Fairey's 2005 Walk the Line. Other highlights include the iconic poster for Blow-Up, featuring Vanessa Redgrave, legs splayed on a red background, and Kurosawa's own crayon design for his 1980 epic Kagemusha. Japanese posters for A Man and A Woman and Fellini's 8 1/2 demonstrate innovate integration of calligraphy, and photomontage. More than the others, the Polish designs—handwritten script against a backdrop of snowy mountains for Spellbound; blocky, quasi-abstract figures for Rocco and His Brothers—were linked to the avant-garde.

According to Sam Sarowitz of Soho's Posteritati Gallery, which co-organized the show with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, postwar Hollywood posters often seem bland by comparison. Actors and agents insisted that images of the lead talent be front and center, thereby "diluting the creative aspect of the poster design down to nil," Sarowitz said. "We call it the curse of the floating heads." Artists like Bob Peak and Saul Bass—who's represented here with one work—were the exception. No floating heads for them.