Hamlet
Franz A. Peffer, 1920
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 10 x 8 in, 116 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyA German placard of about 1920 for the Art-Film production of Hamlet, designed by Franz A. Peffer and printed by the Berlin house Meissner & Buch. The surviving sheet is held by the Museum of Modern Art, which supplies the dating. This Hamlet is Weimar cinema at its most audacious — a version built on the theory that the prince was secretly a princess. The film treats the tragedy as a gothic identity puzzle, which places it squarely alongside the doubles and masks of the German fantastic. The sheet is horizontal where film placards of the period are usually upright, and the composition uses that width as space rather than filling it. A tragedy sold as a secret.
- Maker
- Franz A. Peffer
- Date
- 1920
- Medium of the original
- One-sheet poster
- Original held by
- Wikimedia Commons
- Credit
- Wikimedia Commons · via Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Cleared for print
- Catalogue number
- PA-00721
Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.
| Size | Why |
|---|---|
| 10 x 8 in | 116 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 12 x 8 in | 106 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 14 x 11 in | 85 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 12 in | 78 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 18 x 12 in | 71 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 20 x 16 in | 58 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 16 in | 53 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 18 in | 52 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 20 in | 42 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 24 in | 39 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 36 x 24 in | 35 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 40 x 30 in | 31 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 48 x 36 in | 26 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 60 x 40 in | 21 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 1,280 x 936 px, srgb
- Tone
- Darks 21, lights 174 of 255; 0% clipped light, 0% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 15.64
- Notes
- Neutrals lean warm (yellow): the paper and varnish of the original, kept as scanned
The Picture Palace
German Expressionism: shadow printed to the stone.
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