F W Murnau

F. W. Murnau birth name was Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe. He took up the name Murnau after a town near Lake Staffel. He was born in Bielefeld, Province of Westphalia but moved to Kassel when he was seven years old. He had two brothers and two stepsisters as his mother, Otilie, was the second wife of Heinrich Plumpe. As a child, he organized small plays at his home and he was well-versed with the books of Shakespeare, Ibsen, etc. Murnau joined the University of Berlin to study philology. He went to Heidelberg to study art history and literature. While performing in a function there, he got noticed by the director Max Reinhardt who asked him to join his acting school. He served on the eastern front during WWI.

Two years later, he joined the German air force in France. After his, he went to Switzerland to intern and won for having the best concept of production. After WWI, he started his own film studio while collaborating with Conrad Veidt Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was a very popular German >> Read More... , an actor. He released his first film in 1919 which was a feature film called The Boy Click to look into! >> Read More... in Blue. It was said to be inspired by a painting by Thomas Gainsborough. His productions commonly touched the topic of dual personalities. In 1922, he released his most popular movie called Nosferatu. It was an adaptation of Dracula by Bram Stoker. Although his movie was praised for expressions and artistic work, all the prints of the movie were asked to be destroyed after Stoker’s widow won the lawsuit against Murnau for copyright infringement. In 1942, he released another famous movie called The Last Laugh which conveyed the social injustice done to the working class.

The movie starred Emil Jannings with whom he did another movie in 1926 called Faust. It was a big budget movie and was the second feature film after Nosferatu to have original scores. He moved to Hollywood after the release of Faust in 1926. He joined the Fox Studio in Hollywood and made a movie called Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. The movie considered as one of the best movies of all time. Although the movie did not make a lot of money, it won several Oscar Awards at the first ever ceremony of the Academy Awards in 1929. His next two films with the Fox Studio were not well received by the public which pushed Murnau to leave the Studio and take a trip in the South Pacific for a while.

While traveling to Bora Bora, he began working on a film called Tabu in 1931 with Robert J. Flaherty, who was considered as a documentary pioneer. He had to continue working on the movie alone after Robert left due to artistic issues. It was banned in the United States because it contained visuals of bare-chested women. The film is now restored as a silent film and preserved safely. Before the premier of the movie Tabu, Murnau took a drive on the coast from LA along with a very young 14 years old driver in a hired car. The driver crashed the car and Murnau died in the hospital the next day.