Month: September 2026

ES LIEGT WAS IN DER LUFT (There’s Something in the Air) is a Swiss German language production from 1950s, it opened in both Germany and Austria early in 1951. Here’s the original release German movie poster:

The writing above the open doors says EXIT, and we are supposed to see people leaving a cinema, still laughing.

This poster was created by Friedrich Kollatz. Not a household name in movie posters, Kollatz was not a traditional poster artist who created realistic portraits of celebrities, but rather an accomplished press illustrator, caricaturist, and illustrator.

His trademark was an extremely simplified, garish comic-book style (often reminiscent of American newspaper strips or humor magazines from the prewar and postwar periods). His typical characters show circular, wide-open mouths while laughing or screaming, chubby, bulbous noses, tiny eye lines, and highly exaggerated proportions. Perfect for conveying the slapstick nature of a ‘Filmschwank’ or ‘comedy film’.

What truly irritates me about this poster is that it transports something SO stereotypical of postwar West Germany: less than six years after the end of the war, Germans are FAT and HAPPY again. And, if we can believe the message this poster is sending, they don’t seem particularly troubled by the fact that they’re showing it.

For all I know, the movie itself is perfectly harmless. But the poster is another matter. There is something almost aggressively carefree about it: the doors of the cinema are opening, and out comes a bunch of prosperous-looking, well-fed Germans laughing their heads off. No guilt, no reflection, no hint that the country had recently emerged from one of the greatest catastrophes in modern history. Just: Mensch, haben wir gelacht! (Man, did we laugh!)

Needless to say, I don’t think there was any bad intention behind the poster. This was not a statement about Germany’s recent past. This was a comedy, and the poster was simply meant to say: look how much fun people are having!

And perhaps that’s exactly what makes it so fascinating in retrospect. This type of comic book style was perfectly typical for the time and in 1951, this image of prosperous, well-fed Germans laughing their heads off most likely seemed completely unremarkable. Today, it looks almost absurdly stereotypical of the early postwar years.

A movie poster is not a historical document, of course. But sometimes, without intending to, it tells us quite a lot about the time in which it was made.

Like the film it advertises, the poster itself is perfectly harmless. It is the historical context, and the almost breathtaking ‘Who, me?‘ attitude that surrounds it, that makes it so fascinating today.

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The Codona family originated in Mexico and became an internationally renowned circus act in the 1920s and 30s. Among numerous other places, they also performed at Berlin’s legendary Wintergarten Varieté.

DIE 3 CODONAS is a 1940 German drama loosely based on actual events. With production costs of RM 1.206 million and a total gross of RM 2.556 million by January 1942, the film was a major commercial success.

The film was re-released by independent distributor Schorchtfilm in 1951. While the movie has survived, it is basically forgotten today. I had never heard of it either, until a recent purchase brought the poster into my collection:

The extraordinary quality of the poster is not entirely surprising once you look at who printed it. Kunst im Druck Obpacher was not a small post-war printer, but an established Munich printing company with a long tradition in high-quality lithography and poster production that went back to the early 1920s. Choosing a printer like this for a film‘s re-release strongly suggests that quality still mattered, even at a time when paper and other resources were scarce. It also shows a remarkable level of both care and craftsmanship. 75 years later, the film is long forgotten, but the poster has lost none of its impact.

This poster is available for purchase. It will be added to my online CATALOG with one of my upcoming updates.

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Like thousands of other small businesses, Galerie filmposter.net has recently stopped accepting online orders with a shipping address in other EU countries. This change follows EU Packing Regulations.

At this point, you can still open an account in my online shop. However, you can’t add a shipping address in another EU country.

There are ways to work around this, like having your order shipped to a private address in Germany or a mail forwarding service. If you are in another EU country, please send me an email. Where there’s a will, there usually is way and I promise you, we will find a solution.

There is new hope, though: The German Federal Government apparently woke up and now advocates relief measures:

https://www.bundesumweltministerium.de/meldung/kritik-an-der-eu-verpackungsverordnung-ppwr-bundesregierung-setzt-sich-fuer-entlastungen-ein

To read the entire text in English (or any other language) you can simply run the URL above through the Google translater (translate.google.com) or any of the other online services.

The basic idea is that small businesses using less than 10 tons of packing materials annually are exempt.

Thus, they would be entirely excluded from the new regulations.

However, this still has to pass the EU commission, and there is no guarantee that it does.

Additionally, the changed regulations will not be effective before the end of the year, at best.

If nothing else, this wake-up call definitely presents A NEW HOPE.

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Every small business owner knows just how important Five Star Google reviews are. Just like everybody else, the Postercowboy loves to receive excellent reviews, but he‘s usually not too fond of writing them. More often than not, those constant (and often repeated) email demands have an air of ‚We already got your money, now we want some of your time as well. For free.‘ Sorry to say, social media marketing experts: No can do.

With old-school marketing expert Tom Sawyer in mind, I figured I had to do better than that. Instead of sending annoying emails I decided to print a flyer instead.

5 CARD STUD is a 1968 western mystery, starring Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum. The movie poster shows both stars in somewhat awkward poses, pointing a gun at each other.

I used that image as a starting point and came up with this:

For those of you who are not into gambling, 5 CARD STUD is a poker variant. My version feels more like the title for a 1970s adult movie.

Of course, 5 STAR STUD is also a not-so-subtle hint that is further explained on the backside:

So far, so good. We uploaded this on the print shop‘s website, double checked about 5 times that we got it all right, and sent it off.

A few days later (online printers can be really, really fast these days) the final product arrived. I unpacked the cards and the front looked great, exactly as planned. Then I turned the card over, and the text was upside down. F**k.

I complained to the printer, and it turned out that for some technical reason they had messed with the backside and turned it around. They also said there would be no point to try again, as the outcome would be exactly the same and canceled my bill.

Needless to say, I was seriously annoyed. But not annoyed enough to discard the misprinted cards immediately. Instead, I started toying with them for a few days and also handed them out to a few visitors at the shop.

This revealed a rather interesting effect: When handling a horizontal postcard, we always flip it over the long side. Same as reading a book. I do it, and apparently everybody else does as well.
In this case, since the cards were misprinted, the text is upside down. Not what you would expect.

The only way to read the text on the back is to turn the card over the short side. Going back and forth this way creates a flipbook effect. And actually is a lot more fun than looking at an ‘ordinary’ postcard.

By creating a technical error, the print shop actually improved my design. Considerably.

Now if you want to toy around with one of these yourself, there is an easy way: Simply place an order on www.filmposter.net and I will make sure to include one in your package!

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