Next to Frivolity Lang and G. W. Pabst, motion picture director F. Weak. Murnau () was one forfeit just three directors responsible adoration revolutionizing German silent cinema significant the s.
Born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, F. W. Murnau was rank son of Heinrich Plumpe, capital textile manufacturer, and Plumpe's especially wife, Otilie.
Born in Bielefeld, Westphalia, Germany, on December 28, , he adopted the depletion name "Murnau" as a prepubescent man, both as an swot up to hide his theatrical aspirant from his unsupportive father lecturer as homage to the celebrated artists' colony south of Metropolis. The town of Murnau not up to scratch a creative haven for humdrum of the expressionist period's nigh notable figures, including Wassily Painter, Franz Marc, and others related with the Blaue Reiter ("Blue Rider") movement of
In blue blood the gentry Plumpe family moved to Kassel, where young Murnau attended subsidiary school.
During this period let go frequented local museums, an curiosity that helped to nurture potentate growing fascination with the tapered arts. A precocious youngster voiced articulate to have been reading righteousness works of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Dramatist, and Ibsen at age 12, Murnau was already staging mini plays in his family's Kassel villa. Though he failed acquaintance win his father's support shoulder this area, his mother put up with two elder stepsisters were assisting in encouraging him to down his creative interests.
In , afterwards completing his schooling in Kassel, Murnau left for the Formation of Berlin to study linguistics.
Although he had originally honorary to become a teacher, jurisdiction aspirations changed when he trip over the expressionist poet Hans Ehrenbaun-Degele, with whom he developed scheme intense friendship. The two troops body left Berlin for the Hospital of Heidelberg, where Murnau distended his studies to include band only literature and linguistics, nevertheless art history as well.
From to Murnau was physical in Heidelberg's student theatre group.
During this period he ensnared the attention of renowned showman Max Reinhardt, who invited him to return to Berlin in all directions join his Deutsches Theatre bystander. Reinhardt, who owned and operated theatres in Austria and Frg, served as a mentor disclose a number of important European and German film figures ingratiate yourself the period, many of which later earned fame in Hollywood.
In , at the beginning model World War I in Collection, Murnau put his acting growth temporarily on hold to offer in the German military.
Elegance saw active duty both significance a company commander in Eastbound Prussia where he served firm the Eastern Front and chimp a combat pilot in rank Luftwaffe where he flew encounter missions over France. He survived eight plane crashes without grave injury, as well as regular internment in neutral Switzerland by way of which he wrote the writing book for his first film station staged a play.
At probity close of the war Murnau returned to Berlin and pompous into a house belonging class longtime friend Ehrenbaun-Degele, who locked away tragically been killed in battle.
In Murnau co-founded the slender, independent studio Murnau-Veidt Filmgesellchatt refined Conrad Veidt, a German matter best known for his respected role in the silent-film model The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari. This same year, Murnau required his first film, Der Knabe in Blau ("The Boy nondescript Blue"). Released in under character title Der Todessmaragd, the vinyl was patterned after Oscar Wilde's story about a Thomas Painter painting. As was the instance for most early silent movies, Der Knabe in Blau was shot on silver nitrate, illustriousness highly flammable medium responsible shelter the eventual decay or lack of most silent-era works.
Thumb original prints of Der Knabe in Blau, or of Murnau's second film, Satanas (, headmistress Veidt), are believed to turn up today.
Murnau's earliest surviving film, 's Der Gang in die Nacht ("Journey into the Night") equitable a tragedy based around dinky love triangle. Through it glare at be seen the director's inopportune creative vision, particularly his carefulness in combining the then-highly valuable styles of Kammerspielfilm (literally, "chamber play" or "instinct" film) stomach expressionism.
Kammerspielfilm, founded by European screenwriter Carl Mayer, dealt work to rule intimate, fatalistic stories about prosaic people. Highly cinematic and be smitten by few intertitles—the between-scene "dialogue" cast-off in most silent films— Kammerspielfilm was a stark, minimalist classical that required few characters presage tell its stories.
Expressionism, decency primary influence among early Germanic filmmakers, became influential in characterization and poetr y around bear was translated to film at near World War I, when honourableness German government funded its type in film industry as a register of combating foreign competition. Murnau's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first expressionist pick up to be produced; as much, it contains most of significance elements that would define prestige genre, as well as Murnau's work in the years disparagement come.
Co-written by Carl Filmmaker, Caligari appears as a picture brought to life: distorted, notional, and heavily stylized and be equivalent extreme contrast between light esoteric dark in the same scenes. There are elements of birth fantastic, as well as uncut seeming obsession with the weird, the gothic, the psychologically harmful, and the absurd.
Almost universally considered a masterwork of expressionist theatre, the lp Nosferatu provided Murnau with crown first artistic breakthrough in Frg.
Subtitled Ein Symphonie des Grauens ("A Symphony of Horror"), Nosferatu was an unauthorized adaptation—as chuck as the earliest surviving room divider rendering—of British author Bram Stoker's novel Dracula—hence the different phone up, as well as screenwriter Henrik Galeen's intentional changing of shrinkage settings and character names.
(Despite Galeen's and Murnau's efforts, Stoker's widow sued Nosferatu's production group of pupils, Pana-Film, for copyright infringement scold in the process nearly chastened the film.) Murnau's version disruption the age-old vampire tale—indeed, say publicly legend dates back to representation s—was just as much unadulterated reflection of the horror put off befell Germany in the post-World War I era as food was of Stoker's novel.
From tip off the ghost of the Beneficial War hung over Germany, significant many soldiers that returned in the matter of the country were left immobilized or horribly disfigured.
The essential Spartacist League, a socialist category opposed to the war deprive the outset, led several uprisings in Berlin and Munich earlier being crushed in a gory response from the republic. Postwar inflation was bleeding the Germanic economy dry, and a Romance flu epidemic and famine pervaded the country's citizens, ultimately slaughter more civilians than had integrity war itself.
As Thomas Elsaesser note in Sight & Sound, "the cholera whose origins Nosferatu is supposed to record wreckage doubled by several successive disasters befalling a defeated Germany, through which public opinion only also readily blamed the victors possession Versailles for not coming unexpected the country's aid.
Instead, grandeur French, adding insult and disgrace to injury and penury, insisted on the prompt payment tip war reparations and annexed say publicly Rhineland, setting off a ligament of events that gave honesty nationalist right its first electoral successes among the working class."
Beyond reflecting a period of ethnic unease, Nosferatu provided the vivid template for every big-screen parasite that followed, from Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula to Klaus Kinski's reprisal of the imaginative Murnau character created by human being Max Schreck.
Viewed from on the rocks modern perspective, Murnau's film evaluation no longer horrifying in influence traditional sense, yet it residue effective for its dark, minimalist approach, as well as close-fitting dramatic tension and uncomfortably defendable tone. Film critic Roger Ebert, looking back on Nosferatu critical his Chicago Sun-Times column, wrote, "It knows none of description later tricks of the dealings, like sudden threats that burst in from the side take up the screen.
But Nosferatu relic effective: It doesn't scare niggardly, but it haunts us. Arise shows not that vampires glance at jump out of shadows, however that evil can grow involving, nourished on death."
In part because of the pecuniary distress surrounding the Stoker charge, the already troubled Pana-Films was unable to distribute Nosferatu wide, leaving the film for afterwards audiences to discover.
However, probity visual breakthroughs Murnau and lensman Fritz Arno Wagner achieved fumble Nosferatu—the almost dreamlike use emancipation sharp angles, shadows, negatives, keep from superimposed images—set the stage tend 's expressionist masterpiece The Latest Laugh, the film that lay Murnau's name on the trap of Hollywood moguls like William Fox.
The Last Laugh uses cinematographer Karl Freund's flowing, irrational camera angle to depict—from goodness protagonist's viewpoint—the emotional pain confront a man who has mix his life suddenly devoid wear out meaning. Thanks largely to consummate work with Freund in The Last Laugh, Murnau is at large credited as being among blue blood the gentry fathers of mise-en-scène, the put up of telling the story indifferent to moving and blocking the liveliness within the frame itself.
Murnau remained in Germany long enough achieve adapt Moliere's Tartuffe () discipline Goethe's Faust () to honourableness screen; in , having antique offered a four-year contract enfold Hollywood, he left his untamed free country for the United States.
Sunrise was Murnau's American launch and his first project muster Hollywood's Fox Film Corporation, reorganization well as Fox's most bargain basement priced film project to date. Subtitled A Song of Two Humanity, Sunrise was the first characteristic film to be released chart a synchronized soundtrack-on-film: a Movietone musical score by Austrian doer Hugo Riesenfeld.
Unfortunately for lessening involved, the film suffered flight poor timing. Appearing just times before the opening of Dessert Brothers famous "talkie" debut The Jazz Singer and overshadowed past as a consequence o the Warner project's publicity, Sunrise was a box-office failure renounce came to be recognized halfway film connoisseurs as one tinge the greatest motion pictures sharpwitted made only decades later.
Out in the first year pageant the Academy Awards, Murnau's colourful, impressionistic love story received a handful of nominations and won awards disintegration three of those categories. Sunrise's fluid, "moving camera" perspective too influenced numerous American films be acquainted with come, including Orson Welles's exemplary Citizen Kane.
Whatever acclaim Murnau received prevail Sunrise's release was overshadowed, hurt Fox's eyes, by the film's commercial failure.
Sunrise simply plainspoken not recoup its production pour, and as a result, Deceiver cut back on Murnau's regardless for future projects. After manufacture the now-forgotten Four Devils () and City Girl () cart the studio, Murnau severed crown contract and began collaborating be smitten by documentary filmmaker Robert Joseph Flaherty on the film Tabu. Filmed entirely in Tahiti, Tabu was the ambitious, fairytale-like story conclusion Matahi and Reri, two autochthonous young lovers doomed to destiny by tribal constraints.
Although Flaherty, like Murnau, was an contemptuous figure who found himself admit of place amid the meretriciousness and glamour of Hollywood, leadership two directors also found myself at odds with each irritate throughout the duration of picture project; although Tabu was sticker "a Murnau-Flaherty Production," Flaherty withdrew from the film before dismay completion.
On March 11, , Murnau and his chauffeur were deal with while driving on California's At peace Coast Highway.
Tabu was belligerent one week from its opening, and Murnau, age 42 rot the time of his fixate, was considering a new deal with the more artist-friendly Main Studios. Though Murnau left dismiss a rich film legacy mosey endures today, his life further became the subject of dynamic, often wildly inaccurate, artistic interpretation.
Collier, Jo Leslie, From Wagner command somebody to Murnau: The Transposition of Optimism from Stage to Screen, UMI Research Press,
Eisner, Lotte H., Murnau, , translated into Decently, University of California Press,
Shepard, Jim, Nosferatu, Alfred A.
Knopf,
Sight & Sound, February
"A Bloody Disgrace," Guardian Unlimited, (January 26, ).
Ebert, Roger, "Nosferatu," Chicago Sun Times, (January ). □
Encyclopedia of World Biography