Italian poster for the film “Daleká cesta” (1949)
Extent and Medium
Overall: Height: 27.500 inches (69.85 cm) | Width: 13.000 inches (33.02 cm)
Creator(s)
- Ken Sutak (Compiler)
- Ceskoslovenský Státní Film (Production Company)
- Globe Films International (Distributor)
Biographical History
The Cinema Judaica Collection consists of more than 1,200 objects relating to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical subjects, from 1923 to 2000, from the United States, Europe, Israel, Canada, Mexico, and Argentina. The collection was amassed by film memorabilia collector Ken Sutak, to document Holocaust-and Jewish-themed movies of the World War II era and the postwar years. The collection includes posters, lobby and photo cards, scene stills, pressbooks, trade ads, programs, magazines, books, VHS tapes, DVDS, and 78 rpm records. Sutak organized these materials into two groups, “Cinema Judaica: The War Years, 1939–1949” and “Cinema Judaica: The Epic Cycle, 1950–1972” and, in conjunction with the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum (now the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York), organized exhibitions on these two themes in 2007 and 2008. Sutak subsequently authored companion books with the same titles.
Archival History
The poster was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2018 by Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur.
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Ken Sutak and Sherri Venokur
Scope and Content
Italian Locandina poster for the Czechoslovakian film, “Daleká cesta” (“Distant Journey”), released in Italy as “Alles Kaputt” (“All is Broken") in 1961. Locandina posters were similar to American insert posters, which were a popular size of film posters, often framed and used in special, small displays within a theater lobby. “Daleká cesta” follows a Jewish doctor in Prague who marries a Christian colleague, but is forced to quit her hospital job after the Germans invade the region. Her parents are forced to relocate to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Eventually, she and her husband are sent to separate camps, and she begins working as a camp doctor in Theresienstadt. The film incorporates German propaganda and documentary newsreel footage that marks the passage of time throughout the narrative. The film received approval from the Film Censorship Bureau and premiered in communist Czechoslovakia in March 1949, but the Minister of Information severely restricted publicity and distribution for it, due largely to the director’s style of aggressive expressionism. Alfred Radok, the director, was half-Jewish, and escaped from a detention camp near the end of the war, and his father and grandfather both died in Theresienstadt. This object is one of more than 1,200 objects in the Cinema Judaica Collection of materials related to films about World War II and the Holocaust as well as Jewish, Israeli, and biblical themes.
Conditions Governing Access
No restrictions on access
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Restrictions on use. Copyright status is unknown.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Poster printed on rectangular, cream-colored paper. At the top is a line of small black text. Below, is a colorful, abstract illustration of a group of people behind a wire fence. A single man is standing at the front, grabbing the black wire with hands painted in white and green. Directly behind him is another man with dark hair, and a woman with red hair. A third row of two men and a woman, all painted in various shades of green and yellow, with large, white eyes and prominent, black irises. In the background are several silhouettes of people overlaying a yellow-and-orange sky. Below the illustration are film credits in blue. To the right is an image of a black-and-white scene still, showing a woman in her camisole, with straps that have fallen off her shoulders, a sword held to her throat. The Italian film title is printed in brown, and additional film credits are printed in black and blue at the bottom of the poster. In the bottom right corner is a distributor logo printed in black. There is a horizontal crease across the center, and an inch-long section of paper is missing at the right end of the crease. There are smaller tears all around the edges and creases at the corners. There is staining, likely from a liquid, at the top and bottom edges. On the back, there is faint ink transfer from another image. Depicted: unidentified
People
- Krejča, Otomar, 1921-2009.
- Radok, Alfred.
- Waleská, Blanka, 1910-1986.
Corporate Bodies
Subjects
- Jewish women in motion pictures.
- Imprisonment in motion pictures.
- Czechoslovakia.
- Foreign language films.
- History in motion pictures.
- Terezín (Ústecký kraj, Czech Republic)
- Italy.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in motion pictures.
- Holocaust survivors in motion pictures.
Genre
- Posters
- Object
- Posters.