Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
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F. W. Murnau. |
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (
December 28,
1888 –
March 11,
1931) was one of the most influential directors of the
silent film era.
He was one of a number of German film directors to take part in the
expressionist movement that took root in German cinema during the
1920s, and he directed a number of
movies that were influential and remain widely seen among film scholars today. Some of Murnau's output from the silent era has been
lost, although many of his films still survive; film scholars widely acknowledge them as masterpieces.
He was born as
Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in
Bielefeld, Germany. He attended the
University of Heidelberg and studied
art history. He took the name "Murnau" from a town in Germany. He was a combat pilot during
World War I and directed his first film
Der Knabe in Blau ('The Child in Blue') in 1919.
Murnau's most famous film is
Nosferatu, a 1922 adaptation of
Bram Stoker's
Dracula that caused Stoker's estate to sue for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered destroyed, but bootleg prints were stored and preserved over time, so that
Nosferatu is widely available in the present era.
Werner Herzog remade the film in
1979.
Nosferatu, subtextually, depicted demoralized Germany post World War I. The vampire, played by German stage actor
Max Schreck, resembled a rat which was known to carry the plague. The origins of the word are unclear, but "Nosferatu" is similar sounding to the Greek "nosophoros", roughly translating to "plague-bearer".
Nearly as important as
Nosferatu in Murnau's filmography was
The Last Laugh ("Der Letzte Mann") (1925), written by Carl Mayer and starring
Emil Jannings. Often voted second greatest film of all time by international critics' polls, the film introduced the subjective point of view camera, where the camera "sees" from the eyes of a character and uses visual style to convey a character's psychological state. It also anticipated the
cinéma vérité movement in its subject matter.
Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in
1926, where he joined the
Fox Studio and made
Sunrise (1927), a movie often cited by film scholars as one of the greatest films of all time. Filmed in the Fox
Movietone sound-on-film system (music and sound effects only),
Sunrise was a financial success and it received several
Oscars at the very first
Academy Awards ceremony in
1928. It lost the award for Best Picture to the movie
Wings. On the
DVD version of the film you can see Murnau in a couple of the outtake shots.
Murnau's next two pictures,
Four Devils (1928) and
City Girl (1930), were modified to adapt to the new era of
sound film and were not well received. No copy of
Four Devils now exists. Their poor reception disillusioned Murnau, and he quit Fox to journey for a while in the South Pacific.
Together with documentary pioneer
Robert Flaherty Murnau travelled abroad to Bora Bora to realize the film
Tabu in 1931. But Flaherty left after artistic disputes with Murnau who had to finish the movie on his own. Because of images of bare-breasted "native" Polynesian women the movie was censored in the US. The film was originally shot as half talkie, half silent, before being fully restored as a silent film - Murnau's preferred medium.
Murnau did not live to see the premiere of his last film; he died in an automobile accident in
Santa Barbara, California on March 11,
1931. The car was driven by Murnau's fourteen-year old Filipino valet Garcia Stevenson. Murnau was entombed in Berlin.
Robert Flaherty,
Emil Jannings and
Greta Garbo attended the funeral, and
Fritz Lang delivered the funeral speech.
A fictionalized account of the making of the film
Nosferatu was
Shadow of the Vampire by director
E. Elias Merhige.
Der Knabe in Blau (
The Blue Boy, released 28th June 1919)
Santanas (released around 30th January 1920 but made in 1919)
Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin (
The Hunchback and the Dancer, released 8th July 1920)
Der Januskopf (
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde /
The Head of Janus, released 17th September 1920)
Abend - Nacht - Morgen (
Evening - Night- Morning, released October 1920)
Sehnsucht (
Desire: The Tragedy of a Dancer, released 18th October 1920)
Der Gang in die Nacht (
Journey Into the Night, released 13th December 1920)
Schloß Vogelöd (
The Haunted Castle, released April 1921)
Marizza (released 20th January 1922 but filmed in 1921)
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (
Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror, released 5th March 1922)
Der Brennende Acker (
The Burning Soil, released 16th March 1922)
Phantom (released 29th October 1922)
Die Austreibung (
The Expulsion, released 23rd October 1923)
Die Finanzen des Großherzogs (
The Grand Duke's Finances, released 7th January 1924)
Der Letzte Mann (
The Last Laugh, released 23rd December 1924)
Herr Tartüff (
Tartuffe, released 25th January 1926)
Faust (released 14th October 1926)
Sunrise (released 23rd September 1927, won a special Oscar for "Unique Artistic Presentation" at the first
Academy Awards)
Four Devils (released 3rd October 1928, is generally regarded as one of his best works and is a highly sought-after
lost film)
City Girl / Our Daily Bread (released 19th May 1930)
Tabu (released 18th March 1931)
* http://internettrash.com/users/murnau/murneng.htm
*
F.W. Murnau at filmportal.de
