Artist: JOSEF FENNEKER (1895-1956)
Size: 37 3/8 x 56 in./94.8 x 142.2 cm
Condition: B-/ Slight tears and stains at folds and edges.
Printer: Dinse & Eckert, Berlin
Reference:
Key Words: Film; Weimar; Artist: Fenneker

Marmorhaus / Toten Tanz. 1919.
Fenneker creates the perfect fusion of grace and beauty, the grotesque and the macabre, for "The Dance of Death," a 1919 German film not to be confused with the similarly-titled Pola Negri film (following lot). As Coilhouse Magazine wrote in 2010, "it is not difficult to imagine oneself mesmerized, whipped into a maelstrom of sympathetic mania when confronted with such imagery [by Fenneker]." The film itself, now lost, was written by Fritz Lang (uncredited in this poster). Sascha Gura stars as The Beautiful Dancer, who is manipulated by an evil cripple to lure men to their deaths. She falls in love with one of her intended victims, a murderer himself, who then must escape a bizarre labyrinth underneath the home of the evil, crippled Daedalus. It was screened at Marmorhaus, or "The Marble House," a historic cinema in Berlin's Charlottenburg auf Kerfürstendamm district.