Brian Bysouth – Secret Witness (Testemunha Secreta) Video Cover Original Art, 1988

Year: 1988

Movie: Secret Witness (Testemunha Secreta)

Director: Eric Laneuville

Artist: Brian Bysouth

Medium: Gouache on illustration board

Size: 22 × 31.9 inches (56 × 81 cm)

Original painted cover artwork by Brian Bysouth for Secret Witness, the 1988 mystery thriller starring a young Joaquin Phoenix, then still credited as Leaf Phoenix. The movie was released in Brazil under the title Testemunha Secreta.

Bysouth's atmospheric composition places Phoenix's character Drew Blackburn prominently against a dark nighttime landscape, with the brightly illuminated window providing the focal point for the movie's central theme of witnessing a crime. The torn-paper device across the lower portion of the painting was incorporated into the original design, leaving space for the title and additional packaging typography.

Phoenix plays a 12-year-old boy who, while spying on neighboring houses with his friend Jennie, witnesses events that draw the pair into the investigation of a murder. Although not Phoenix's first screen role, Secret Witness is a notably early starring role, predating Parenthood (1989) and by more than a decade his Academy Award-nominated performance in Gladiator (2000).

Artist: Brian Bysouth

Brian Bysouth is one of Britain's foremost movie poster and advertising illustrators. His career encompasses original artwork for major movies including The Living Daylights, A View to a Kill, For Your Eyes Only, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Big Trouble in Little China, Highlander, The Emerald Forest, Supergirl, The Bounty, Dragonslayer, The Riddle of the Sands, Force 10 from Navarone and The Island at the Top of the World. His extensive body of work places him among the most recognizable British commercial illustrators of the late twentieth century.