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Sumurun
A hunchbacked player swallows poison for love, and wakes into someone else's harem.
What
A German placard, dated 1921, for Ernst Lubitsch's Sumurun, designed by the Hungarian graphic artist Mihály Bíró — a major figure of Budapest's political poster movement working in Berlin exile.
Why
Sumurun is the great orientalist fantasy of early Weimar, and Bíró's involvement marks how thoroughly Central European graphic talent had converged on the German film industry after 1919. The style of the haunted screen was assembled by émigrés.
Notice
Bíró came from agitational posters, and the figure here is built with the same muscular, monumental contour he used for political work.
“Revolutionary drawing, hired out to a dream of the East.”
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
Provenance
- Film
- Sumurun (1920), dir. Ernst Lubitsch
- Country / studio
- Germany · Union-Film
- Designer
- Mihály Bíró
- Printer / stone
- Gesellschaft für graphische Industrie, Vienna
- Format
- One-sheet (27 × 41 in.)
- Poster published
- Austrian lithographed film placard, 1921
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons
Conservation note
Print produced from an AI-enhanced upscale (≈1.7×) of the surviving archival scan (original 690×1024px). The upscale raises resolution only — the design is unaltered, and the paper’s folds and age are the artifact’s own.
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (poster published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year, never the film’s. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
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From The World Screen
The Double Bill
Two one-sheets, hung as a pair — a double feature for your wall, at a pairing price of $270.00 for the two. Build one from any two one-sheets in the gallery.
Pair it in the gallery →A house of the Provenance family