Display it again, Sam … for just £280,000

 A rare movie poster for Casablanca is up for auction with a price tag of £280,000.

The 55in by 78in poster was one of about 2,000 printed to be put up outside Italian movie theatres in 1946. Although the classic movie was made four years earlier, fascist Italy rejected the Americanproduced film at the time.

But after the war, Italy began screening it and Luigi Martinati, who in the mid-forties specialised in cinema posters often featuring armed men and beautiful women, was commissioned by Warner Bros to come up with a new design.

The poster, said to be superior to the ones produced by American artists at the time, is being sold by Heritage, a US auctioneer, in Dallas today for an unnamed European collector.