METROPOLIS (1927) First Czech ed. photoplay book

Prague: Ustredni delnicke knihkupectvi a nakladatelstvi, 1927. Vintage original 9 x 6″ (23 x 10 cm.) first Czechoslovakian edition photoplay book with all 64 UFA images from the film, 239 pp. Contemporary half cloth binding with marbled paper-covered boards. Original front wrapper, very slightly trimmed to conform to the original text block, bound in. Pages and wrapper very good+ (faint tide mark to the fore edge of the first several leaves), boards very good with some bowing.

First Czech edition of Thea Harbou’s novel, published the same year as the release of the Fritz Lang film for which she wrote the screenplay. Importantly, this edition is the only one to contain all 64 images of the UFA still photographs released for the film in 1927 (for which a collection of the actual vintage photographs would be essentially impossible).

The film’s iconic images of an imagined dystopian future inspired many illustrations and designs, the jacket for this edition being an exceptional example by the Czech illustrator Emanuel Frinta (1896-1970). Shown is the novel’s “automatic head” split with a human female’s visage against a futuristic architecture and transportation scheme, including trains on highly elevated tracks, highways on bridges and airplanes flying past enormous skyscrapers.

Out of stock