Death of Jean-Étienne Siry, draftsman of the Tontons flingueurs poster
Advertising designer and director, the film poster inspired by Georges Lautner, Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, has disappeared at the age of 79 years.
Le Figaro
By Bertrand Guyard
December 10, 2019
The designer of the original posters Fanfaron of Dino Risi and Tontons flingueurs of Georges Lautner has just left us at the age of 79, it has been learned through AFP .
Born in 1940, Jean-Étienne Siry quickly moved towards an artistic formation. After high school, he began to perfect his mastery of drawing by joining the workshop of Paul Colin, an illustrator renowned for having immortalized the historical Revue Nègre led by Josephine Baker.
The student wants to go beyond the master and very quickly Jean-Étienne Siry must leave the workshop to stand on his own. He rings at the door of the film company Pathé and, miraculously, he signs the poster of a film, now venerated by the admirers of Darry Cowl, Robinson et le triporteur. He was then only eighteen years old.
This imaginative designer found his way: he will be a film poster and his tireless propagandist. Very quickly, he wrote and conceptualized the advertising models of Jean-Pierre Melville's films (Le Doulos), Agnès Varda (Cléo from 5 to 7) and Claude Chabrol (Landru).
In 1963, Georges Lautner and Gaumont entrusted him with the responsibility of designing the poster for a certain Terminus des pretentieux , which will soon be renamed ... Les Tontons flingueurs.
Now recognized as the poster "that we tear oneself away", the line of Jean-Étienne Siry immortalizes the crème de la crème of French and Italian cinema of the 60s and 70s. Friend of Brigitte Bardot, at the request of her husband at the time, the actor Jacques Charrier, he will draw the announcement of birth of Nicolas Charrier, the only child of BB
As for the other star couple of the time yé-yé, Sylvie Vartan and Johnny Hallyday, he will not hesitate, for them, to design their greeting cards for the end of the year.
The notoriety of the posterist soon exceeds the borders of the Hexagon. He works for the gratin of international cinema: La poursuite impitoyable (Arthur Penn), What's new, Pussycat (Clive Donner). For Dino Risi, he will imagine, among other things, the posters of Fanfaron and L'inassouvie.
In 1979, he finally realized his dream by directing the filming of d’Un escargot dans la tête, a film he conceived from A to Z. This fantastic story about incommunicability received the favor of critics but, because it is in his image, very original, this feature film does not meet his audience. He will remain as the most accomplished expression of his talent.
As a homage, in 1980, Le Figaro received the beautiful profession of faith of a poster artist who became an inspired filmmaker: "Having a camera for a brush and a team as a color tube is as exciting as it is difficult. "
SIRY, Jean-Étienne
Born: 3/5/1940, Paris, Île-de-France, France
Died: 12/10/2019, France
Jean-Étienne Siry’s western – poster design:
Cat Ballou - 1965