Der Student von Prag

A large lithographed stone-printed placard, roughly 139.5 by 92 centimetres, issued in Germany for the 1913 Deutsche Bioscop production directed by Stellan Rye. This is the poster for the film usually credited with inventing the German fantastic cinema — the first sustained attempt to make the doppelgänger a properly cinematic idea rather than a literary one. Everything the following decade would build on the uncanny double begins here. The figure is set against flat, undecorated ground with almost no scenic information. The placard trusts a single standing body to carry the whole idea of the film. Before the shadows had a style, they had a man and an empty wall.

Maker

Zajac

Date

1913

Medium of the original

One-sheet poster

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00714