I finally managed to get hold of one of my unicorns: The Italian quattro-fogli (140x200cm) from one of my favorite film noir, Abraham Polonsky's FORCE OF EVIL (1948).
I have been in love with this poster ever since I first saw a picture of it in an article on the movie somewhere on the web years ago. I searched everywhere for it and it turned out none of the major auction sites had ever had it up for sale. Chisholm in New York had one that they sold about five years ago for $2000. Then I found a linen-backed copy at Posteritati in New York. Unfortunately their asking price was $1200 - somewhat over my budget as I am an adult student at the moment and I would also have to add shipping to Denmark (expensive for a linen-backed poster) and 25% import taxes to the asking price. I also heard about an Italian dealer who possibly had a copy in stock. I wrote him and he confirmed, but he wanted €750 for the poster, roughly the same as the poster from Posteritati at that time.
In the summer of 2009, Posteritati then had a 25% sale, the Dollar was cheap and I had some extra cash to spare, so I was seriously considering taking the plunge and ordering it. However, I decided to wait till after our annual family vacation, and of course, by the time I returned to Denmark someone else had bought the thing. That was definitely a low point in my time as a poster collector.
Since then I have been waiting for it to pop up again somewhere. Last week I took a chance and searched out that Italian dealer again (who now apparently is an ex-dealer as his website has not been up in 2-3 years). He wrote me back a couple of days ago and confirmed that he still has it and the asking price was now only €450 which included UPS delivery to Denmark. That offer was too good to refuse, so now it's currently in transit to my place. Years of longing are about to be fulfilled.
Another dealer's picture of the poster as it looks when backed:
Some pictures of the poster I am getting:
As you can see, the two parts are in pretty good shape for their age. There a two small holes in cross folds in the upper part, one with a tiny bit of paper-loss (see close-up). Fortunately the paper-loss is in the black area and I seem to recall from talking with restorers before that this should be quite easy to repair?