Decision to Leave is a 2022 neo-noir from the master Park Chan-Wook, telling the Vertigo-esque story of a detective caught in the web of a femme fatale played by Tang Wei suspected of murdering her husband. In this delirious cat-and-mouse chase of a movie, countless homages to Hitchcock and other familiar beats of the noir genre are made, making this a fitting movie to end my poster series covering Hollywood's Golden Age on.
In wanting to make this distinct from the other pieces, as well as my similarly themed "Trap!!" poster already fulfilling the 'thriller' genre of this series, I decided to focus the attention of the illustration on Tang Wei. Researching this era of posters, I was recommended the excellent book "Reel Art: Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen" by Stephen Rebello and Richard Allen. In it, the patterns and trends of posters of that time were difficult to miss; leading ladies were foregrounded. So that's what I did.
I wanted Tang Wei's face to almost be confrontational to the viewer in the same way that Lauren Bacall's gaze would be the main draw of many a poster. I also included little motifs of mountains and the ocean as a nod to the movie's heavy themes of land and sea. In my thumbnail ideation process, the imagery of that symbolism was something I would return to again and again, but I soon realized that I was stumbling towards a one-to-one recreation of the film's existing poster. I'm proud of my deviation in focus, while still staying true to the themes of the movie.
