‘Destiny’ (Fritz Lang) <br> by Peter Diamond

The next instalment in Peter Diamond's Fritz Lang poster series is ‘Der müde Tod’, or Weary Death, better known in the anglosphere by its given name ‘Destiny’. This poster comes in two versions: a lush, decadent 10-colour regular with gold metallic detailing from an edition of 70; and a more austere, and very limited edition with German titles from a run of just 30 copies.

Both editions will go on sale this Friday 24 January at 5pm UK time exclusively from our shop. You can see both posters after a few words from the artist:

First and foremost this movie (and my design) is about the portrayal of Death as a servant, weighed down by the burden of his duty to God (the original title Der Müde Tod translates literally to Weary Death). In his bargain with a young woman begging for the return of her dead fiancé he’s breaking the rules of Heaven, and the Langian masterstroke of the film comes late in the story with Lil Dagover’s dark turn as she desperately seeks a living soul to trade in for her lover’s.

That bargain, and that character relationship, is really whole of the story, even though it’s ostensibly a framing device for the 3 period pieces that make up most of the film. So although we could have included a lot more characters in this design, in the end they’d just be window dressing for this central relationship. The one extra bit we did include is the long scroll, the animated ‘magic letter’ which was one of Lang’s early feats of cinematic vision that cemented his reputation as a genius.

I’m grateful to James Park for giving me a chance to put this design out into the world, and to White Duck for making it look better than I dared hope. The gold metallic detailing in the background, the breakdown of the blue tones and shaded blacks into a fine mist, and the perfect colour matching all bring these posters to a higher level than they can ever reach on your screen. This is one you need to see and hold for yourself!

We reached pretty deep into the Fritz Lang vault for this one, and that’s the best thing about Black Dragon. There are no guarantees in this business, especially when you’re dealing with a film as obscure as this, but BDP takes this kind of risk on a regular basis and their audience has rewarded them so far, to their mutual credit. We’ve got our next Lang in the works already, one rather better known than this, and I hope all of you who’ve been following this series so far will continue to stay tuned. - Peter Diamond