1888-1931
Excerpt from an online Murnau bio
"Nothing appeals, of course, like a breath of scandal - especially hollywood scandal - and rumours about the exact circumstances of the fatal car-crash on March 22, 1931, on the road from Los Angeles to Carmel, did not hesitate to paint the most lurid picture of orgiastic goings-on en route. In fact, all that seems to have happened was that F.W. Murnau, travelling in a chauffeur driven Packard, eventually gave in to the pleadings of his young Filipino valet that he be allowed to take the wheel. Driving too fast and swerving to avoid a truck. The valet drove the car off the road. Most of its occupants were virtually unhurt, but Murnau suffered a fractured skull and died in hospital shortly afterwards. That as it appears is the unexciting truth, but oddly enough the web of fantasy woven around the event has ensured that Murnau is known to many people who can never have seen any of his films. "
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.
Murnau's most famous film is
Nosferatu, a 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker's
Dracula which caused Stoker's widow to sue 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 Bram Stoker's novel where it is used by the Romanian townsfolk to refer to Dracula and presumably, other undead. "Nosferatu" is similar sounding to the Greek "nosophoros", roughly translating to "plague-bearer", which may be a possible root of it.
Nearly as important as
Nosferatu in Murnau's filmography was
The Last Laugh ("Der Letzte Mann", German "The Last Man") (1925), 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. An important innovation was also utilized in this film called the "Unchained Camera Technique", an intense 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. This carefully composed and innovative feature contains many memorable images and startling special effects, with careful attention paid to contrasts of light and dark. Particularly striking is the sequence in which the giant, horned and black winged figure of Mephisto (Jannings) hovers over a town sowing the seeds of plague. The acting by Ekman (who miraculously transforms, in the course of the film, from a bearded old man to a handsome youth) and the sinister, scowling, demonic Jannings is first rate and the virtually unknown actress Camilla Horn gives a memorable performance as the tragic figure of Gretchen.
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. On the DVD version of the film one can see Murnau in a couple of the outtake shots.
Murnau's next two pictures, 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. 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 United States. 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 11 March 1931.[2] The car was driven by Murnau's fourteen-year old Filipino valet Garcia Stevenson, who was also killed in the accident. 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." Among this gossip was the assertion that Murnau was performing fellatio on Stevenson when the car leaped off the road. 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.
A fictionalized account of the making of the film
Nosferatu was
Shadow of the Vampire by director E. Elias Merhige. 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 (Max Schreck (Willem Dafoe) to play Orlok.
The Garbo bio I'm reading piqued my interest in Murnau. I'd seen part of Nosferatu years ago, and I'd heard a little of the Angeristic gossip about how he'd died. It's repeated in the Garbo bio as fact that Murnau was going down on the Filipino valet when the crash happened. Wether or not it was true, (and apparently it wasn't) it did keep all but eleven people from going to his funeral. Janet Gaynor was one of the last stars to work with him, and she demurred. Garbo did go, and apparently commisioned a death mask of the director, which sat on her desk for years.
Watch a clip from Nosferatu