Vintage 1972 On M'Appelle Verita Belgian Movie Poster 🖼️ Mark Damon Comedy Spaghetti Western, Mijn Naam is Verita

🤠 A Belgian Poster for a Comic Spaghetti Western

This one is pure fun before you know a thing about it. Four scruffy Western conmen crowd the sheet, painted in warm comic-book colour: one shouldering a fearsome rapid-fire gun, one in a battered stovepipe hat buried in a little red book, one squinting hopefully at a hand of cards, and one grinning in a red shirt and a Scottish kilt — with a long-suffering donkey poking its head up in the middle of them. Across the top, over the star name MARK DAMON, is the title ON M'APPELLE VERITA; along the bottom, the Flemish twin MIJN NAAM IS VERITA. Along the very top, in small type, runs the provenance line: Cosmopolis-Films. This is an original Belgian movie poster for the 1972 comedy spaghetti western.

Everything here is read off the paper in the photographs and confirmed against the film's record. The supporting cast is printed below — Pat Nigro · Enzo Fiermonte · William Bogart — with the director credit "Régie: Luigi Perelli," and the format lines "Scope" and "Technicolor," plus a small printer's imprint tucked along the base.

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🏜️ The Film: Lo chiamavano Verità, 1972

The film behind the poster is Lo chiamavano Verità — "They Called Him Veritas" — a 1972 comedy spaghetti western and the directing debut of Luigi Perelli, who would go on years later to direct the celebrated Italian TV crime saga La Piovra. Its star is the American actor Mark Damon, in the title role of Verità. The story is a light-hearted romp: four vagabond conmen try to strike it rich without doing an honest day's work, guided by a book called "How to Make Money in the West," and stay one step ahead of the law through a string of cheerful swindles. It arrived at the tail end of the great spaghetti-western boom, when the genre had turned to comedy in the wildly popular Trinity mould, and this poster's grinning quartet captures that mood exactly.

It is worth saying plainly, because the old listing muddled it: the correct title is On m'appelle Verità ("They Call Me Verità"), printed right there on the sheet, and the film is a comedy, not a straight shoot-'em-up. The artwork tells you as much at a glance.

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🔍 What the Poster Actually Shows

The design is a single warm painted group on a cream ground, and every figure is a joke in itself. From the left: a lean gunman hoisting a multi-barrelled rapid-fire gun; a con man in a tall battered hat, absorbed in his little red how-to book; a third peering over with a fistful of playing cards; and a fourth, broad and grinning, in a red shirt and a full Scottish kilt, tipping his bowler. Down among their legs, a patient donkey looks straight out at you. The whole thing is loose, comic and affectionate, framed by the red display title above and the white Flemish title on a blue band below. It is a poster that promises a good time, and it delivers that promise on a wall.

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🌍 Why a Belgian Poster Is Its Own Thing

Belgian film posters are collected for reasons this sheet makes clear. Belgium printed its own artwork rather than importing the Italian campaign, so this comic-quartet design is unique to Belgium. It prints both a French and a Flemish title on the one sheet — On m'appelle Verità and Mijn naam is Verita — the bilingual habit found nowhere else. And it uses a compact, framable affiche format. Original art, dual-language design, a size made for a wall: all three, on a genuinely charming western comedy sheet.

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📜 Where It Comes From: the Cosmopolis Films Archive

This poster's provenance is printed on the paper itself: Cosmopolis-Films, along the top edge. Cosmopolis Films was a Belgian film distributor, now long gone. This sheet was preserved from that company's own archive, and it has been kept together with the rest of that collection in one place since 2007 — gathered and saved before that slice of Belgian cinema history could be broken up and scattered. What you are looking at is distributor archive stock, held back rather than sold, which is exactly why a 1972 poster can still look the way this one does.

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👁️ Never Sold to the Public

A cinema poster was never a retail product. It was trade material — printed for theatres, displayed for a week or two, then thrown away when the next film arrived. Hardly any were ever offered to the public, and the great majority were destroyed after their brief working life. Clean, unused examples survive almost entirely because a distributor held stock back, which is what an archive like this is. For a poster in this state, a preserved distributor collection is effectively the only source.

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🖼️ Condition, Read from the Photographs

Described honestly from the same images: a single sheet of original vintage lithographed poster paper, about 22 x 14 inches (roughly 56 x 35 cm). The printing is warm and clean — the painted figures bright and characterful, the titles crisp — with little to slight handling wear and some light edge discolouration that stays at the margins and does not touch the picture. It is offered exactly as pictured, with nothing added, trimmed or retouched, and the photographs are the definitive record of the exact copy on offer. As a flat paper sheet it frames without bulk.

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🎁 Ways to Live With It

• 🤠 Frame it as-is — the grinning comic quartet is a natural for a games room, a bar or a den.
• 🏜️ Hang it with other western or spaghetti-western posters; the humour makes it an instant favourite.
• ⭐ Give it to a fan of Mark Damon or of the Trinity-era comedy western — a rarely-seen, cheerful sheet.
• 🎨 Enjoy it as design: warm, affectionate seventies commercial illustration in a framable format.
• 🗾 Let the Cosmopolis provenance carry the story — an original distributor-archive poster, not a reprint.

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❓ Questions Worth Answering

Is this original or a reproduction?

An original vintage Belgian lithographed poster, preserved from the Cosmopolis Films distributor archive — not a reprint. The paper, printing, Cosmopolis imprint and Belgian bilingual titling are consistent with a period affiche.

What film is it for?

Lo chiamavano Verità (On m'appelle Verità, 1972), a comedy spaghetti western directed by Luigi Perelli and starring Mark Damon.

Why are there two titles on it?

Because it is Belgian — French (On m'appelle Verità) and Flemish (Mijn naam is Verita) on one sheet.

How big is it?

About 22 x 14 inches (roughly 56 x 35 cm), the compact Belgian affiche format that frames easily.

What condition is it in?

Warm, clean printing with little to slight wear and light edge discolouration off the image. Offered exactly as pictured.

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🐴 The Comedy-Western Moment

This poster catches a very particular moment in film history. By 1972 the spaghetti western — the tough, operatic Italian gunslinger films that had made Clint Eastwood a star — was past its violent prime, and the genre had swerved hard into broad comedy, led by the enormously popular Trinity films with their bar-room brawls, beans and grinning heroes. Lo chiamavano Verità belongs squarely to that cheerful late wave, and the poster's four squabbling conmen and their long-suffering donkey tell you the tone at a single glance — this is a film that wants you to laugh, not to flinch. There is real interest in the names, too. The director, Luigi Perelli, was making his feature debut here, and would go on years later to direct the acclaimed Italian television crime saga La Piovra ("The Octopus"), one of the most celebrated European TV dramas of its era. And the star, Mark Damon, was an American actor who had begun in Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe films of the early 1960s before a long run in European genre cinema — and who would later build a major second career as a film producer and financier in Hollywood. All of that history sits, lightly and invisibly, behind one very funny picture of four men and a donkey.

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🖼️ A Note on Framing and Care

Practically speaking, this is one of the easiest things to live with. As a flat, unbacked sheet it drops straight into a frame, and its compact size fits standard, off-the-shelf frames rather than the costly custom work that larger posters demand. For the long term, glazing with UV-filtering glass keeps the colours safe from sunlight, an acid-free window mat holds the paper off the glass, and simply keeping it out of direct sun and away from damp is all the care it needs. Nothing has been backed, trimmed or restored, so every future conservation choice stays open to you — and none is required, because it already presents beautifully exactly as it is.

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✨ Why It Matters

Not every great poster is dramatic — some just make you smile, and this cheerful comic quartet is one of them, a genuinely charming survivor from the tail end of the spaghetti-western era. And it survives not by chance but by care: it carries the Cosmopolis imprint on its own face, and that whole archive has stayed together in a single collection since 2007. The entire surviving supply of a sheet like this sits in one place; the copies with a guaranteed future are the ones collectors take home and frame. Hang this one and you are keeping a genuine piece of film history that would otherwise have vanished with the week it advertised.