13 - Willy Wood () – The Death of the Pirates.
See original version (French)

Estimate €600 - €800

Description

Willy Wood () – The Death of the Pirates. 1918. 78 x 55.5 cm. Original poster, lithographic print, mounted on canvas. Grade A. This extremely rare poster bears witness to an era when serialised stories were published in the press and subsequently adapted into films, shown on a weekly or monthly basis. It is, quite simply, the forerunner of our modern-day TV series. On this macabre poster, one can make out the skull of a corpse emerging from a diver’s suit. We are therefore dealing more with the world of scuba diving than with piracy as we typically imagine it. And with good reason: the poster needs to be put into context. We are in the period immediately following the First World War, and films depicting the fight against the enemy were still commonplace. So by ‘pirates’, we should rather imagine ‘saboteurs’, and German submarines were, in fact, referred to as pirates. The image nonetheless evokes a world of imagination that Jules Verne himself would not have disowned. It would appear that this ‘ciné-roman’ – a spy story set between France and Germany by the author René Morot – was published in the socialist newspaper *France Libre* under the title ‘La mort des sous-marins’ (The Death of the Submarines). This explains its limited circulation and, consequently, the rarity of this poster. The cast of this now-lost film, directed by Henri Voirins and distributed by Gaumont cinemas, included Berthe Jalabert and Lucien Walter.

See original version (French)

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About the sale Shocking posters! Poster sale no. 18.

Auction location

Auction time 11/05/2026 at 4:00 PM

Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House

13 - Willy Wood () – The Death of the Pirates. See original version (French)

13 - Willy Wood () – The Death of the Pirates.
See original version (French)