F. W. Murnau

F. W. Murnau
Born	Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe December 28, 1888(1888-12-28) Bielefeld, Germany
Died	March 11, 1931 (aged 42) Santa Barbara, California, USA
Years active	1919–1931

Friedrich Wilhelm "F.W." Murnau (28 December 1888 – 11 March 1931) was one of the most influential German film directors of the silent era. A figure in the expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s, some of Murnau's films from the silent era have been lost, but most still survive.

Life and career

Birth and early years

He was born as Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in Bielefeld, Province of Westphalia. He attended the University of Heidelberg and studied art history. He took the name "Murnau" from the town in Germany named Murnau am Staffelsee. He was a combat pilot during World War I and directed his first film Der Knabe in Blau ('The Boy in Blue') in 1919.

German Films

Murnau's most famous film is Nosferatu, a 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula for which Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but bootleg prints survived. 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 from Stoker's novel, where it is used by the Romanian townsfolk to refer to Count Dracula and presumably, other undead.

Nearly as important as Nosferatu in Murnau's filmography was The Last Laugh ("Der Letzte Mann", German "The Last Man") (1924), written by Carl Mayer (a very prominent figure of the Kammerspiel film movement) and starring Emil Jannings. 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. The film also utilized the "Unchained Camera Technique", a mix of tracking shots, pans, tilts, and zooms. Also, unlike the majority of Murnau's other works, The Last Laugh is technically considered a Kammerspiel film rather than expressionist. Unlike expressionist films, Kammerspiel films are categorized by their chamber play influence, involving a lack of intricate set designs and story lines / themes regarding social injustice towards the working classes.

Murnau's last German film was the big budget Faust (1926) with Gösta Ekman as the title character, Emil Jannings as Mephisto and Camilla Horn as Gretchen. Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version. The film is well-known for a sequence in which the giant, winged figure of Mephisto hovers over a town sowing the seeds of plague.

Hollywood

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.^[1] Filmed in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system (music and sound effects only), Sunrise was not a financial success, but received several Oscars at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. In winning the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production it shared what is now the Best Picture award with the movie Wings.

Murnau's next two films, the now lost Four Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930), were modified to adapt to the new era of sound film and were not well received. Their poor receptions 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. Flaherty left after artistic disputes with Murnau who had to finish the movie on his own. The movie was censored in the United States for images of bare-breasted Polynesian women. The film was originally shot as half-talkie, half-silent, before being fully restored as a silent film — Murnau's preferred medium.

Death

Grave and bust, by Karl Ludwig Manzel, in the Stahnsdorf Southwestern Cemetery

Murnau did not live to see the premiere of his last film. He died in an automobile accident in Santa Barbara, California on 11 March 1931.^[2] The car was driven by Murnau's 14-year old Filipino valet Garcia Stevenson, who was also killed in the accident. As Murnau was gay, his death was attended by rumors of his personal life. Among this gossip was the assertion that Murnau was performing fellatio on Stevenson when the car leaped off the road.Kenneth Anger in his book Hollywood Babylon writes that "Few around the Fox lot had not heard that Murnau favored gays when it came to casting. Murnau's death in 1931 inspired a flood tide of speculation."

Murnau was entombed on Southwest Cemetery (Südwest-Kirchhof Stahnsdorf) in Stahnsdorf near Berlin. Only 11 people attended the funeral. Among them were Robert Flaherty, Emil Jannings, Greta Garbo and Fritz Lang, who delivered the funeral speech. Garbo also commissioned a death mask of Murnau, which she kept on her desk during her years in Hollywood.

Legacy

In 2000, director E. Elias Merhige released Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalization of the making of Nosferatu. Murnau is portrayed by John Malkovich. In the film, Murnau is so dedicated to making the film genuine that he actually hires a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) to play Count Orlok.

The band Murnau takes their name from F.W. Murnau.

Filmography

See also category: Films directed by F. W. Murnau

• Der Knabe in Blau (The Boy in Blue, released 28 June 1919)
• Satanas (released around 30 January 1920 but made in 1919)
• Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin (The Hunchback and the Dancer, released 8 July 1920)
• Der Januskopf (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / The Head of Janus, released 17 September 1920)
• Abend - Nacht - Morgen (Evening - Night - Morning, released October 1920)
• Sehnsucht (Desire: The Tragedy of a Dancer, released 18 October 1920)
• Der Gang in die Nacht (Journey Into the Night, released 13 December 1920)
• Schloß Vogelöd (The Haunted Castle, released April 1921)
• Marizza (released 20 January 1922 but filmed in 1921)
• Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror, released 5 March 1922)
• Der brennende Acker (The Burning Soil, released 16 March 1922)
• Phantom (released 29 October 1922)
• Die Austreibung (The Expulsion, released 23 October 1923)
• Die Finanzen des Großherzogs (The Grand Duke's Finances, released 7 January 1924)
• Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, released 23 December 1924)
• Herr Tartüff (Tartuffe, released 25 January 1926)
• Faust (released 14 October 1926)
• Sunrise (released 23 September 1927, won a special Oscar for "Unique Artistic Presentation" at the first Academy Awards)
• 4 Devils (released 3 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 19 May 1930)
• Tabu (released 18 March 1931)

References

External links

• Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation, the legal successor to UFA, Bavaria, Terra, Tobis, and Berlin-Film
• F. W. MURNAU at internettrash.com
• F.W. Murnau at Allmovie
• F.W. Murnau at the Internet Movie Database
• F.W. Murnau at filmportal.de