Month: October 2026

As you all know by now, the Postercowboy is looking back at more than 40 years as a collector and 30+ years as a movie poster dealer.

I have said this before, and I will say it again: for me, one of the most wonderful things about this hobby is that I still find absolutely outstanding posters I have never seen before.

Here’s another recent addition to the filmposter.net collection:

This poster is for the 1914 Polish movie Niewolnica zmysłów, which literally translates as ‘Slave of the Senses’.

The movie was released in Germany as DER TANZ DES TODES (The Dance of Death). The poster was printed for the original release in German in 1921.

The film was directed by Ryszard Ordynski and Jan Pawlowski. More importantly, it was Pola Negri’s movie debut.

Pola Negri was an early Superstar of Silent Cinema. When she came to Berlin in 1917, German film companies announced her as a ‘New Discovery’, willfully ignoring that she had already been a fully established star in Poland at that point.

The vast majority of Polish silent movies are lost, from Pola Negri only Bestia from 1917 has survived.

Combined with the initial Saturn Film (and later, the UFA) marketing campaign, this had led to the wide belief that she only played minor roles in Poland. Which is simply not true, she was fully established before she came to Germany.

German critics were not impressed by her early movies, and critized both the ‘bumpy’ technical execution and the poor scripts. That said, they were immediately impressed by Pola Negri’s performance.

Until then, German audiences had been accustomed to the rather understated, theatrical style of Danish stars (such as Asta Nielsen) or the sweet demeanor of German ingenues.

Pola Negri broke away from this completely: reviewers raved about her ‘elementary passion,’ her almost animalistic, feline grace, and her ability to switch from fragile innocence to murderous seduction within a matter of seconds.

For a couple of years after the end of World War I in 1918, the German movie industry could operate without censorship. Apparently, things got out of hand (or at least the powers-that-be thought they did) and the Reichslichtspielgesetz re-introduced movie censorship in 1920. (Not to be confused with the Reichsfilmgesetz the Nazis implemented in 1934.)

To celebrate the film’s official release in May 1921, Lloyd commissioned artist and graphic designer Kurt Opitz. His design relates to Pola Negri’s ‘Apache Dance’, a key scene in the film.

The poster is also an expressionistic masterpiece.

Beyond its extreme rarity, it captivates through the masterly graphic sophistication of its design: very much in the spirit of early Weimar cinema, Opitz employs a subtle visual ambiguity.

A dramatic key element of the composition reveals itself only upon intense, educated inspection, disclosing the psychological depth of this magnificent work.

Most importantly, it looks absolutely amazing.

The poster is extremely rare, with less than a handful of copies known to exist.

It survived in wonderful condition, with only minimal paper loss in the bottom left border and a few unobtrusive tears. There is no restoration that I can see.

Due to the printing process, the white outer margins on both the right side and the bottom are narrower than on one other surviving copy I have seen; this is a result of the manual workshop trimming at the printing house back in the day. It is not a post-sale trim, but an original production variant that visually gives the bold motif even more space and dynamism.

This beauty will go up on my website with one of my future updates, but is already available for direct sale. Price on request.

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