Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , of its true name Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe , but usually called F.W. Murnau , is a German realizer , born the December 28th 1888 with Bielefeld (Germany) and deceased the March 11th 1931 with Santa Barbara (California) in a road accident. It is one of the Masters of the cinema German expressionnist.

Biography

It is born in a family from the German lower middle class. It begins studies of philology to Berlin and history of art with Heidelberg, before turning to the theater. During the Great War, it is mobilized and is useful in aviation. It is devoted to the cinema the shortly after the defeat of 1918.

It starts by signing sentimental or fantastic works which fall under the tradition of the German romanticism. He affirms himself very quickly like a realizer of great talent by a sharp and tormented style which evokes the pictorial and poetic expressionnism. This style bursts in its first masterpiece, inspired of the Dracula of Bram Stoker, Nosferatu the vampire , left in 1922.

It connects strong films, between realism and fantastic, and carries out major works like the Last of the men (1924), with Emil Jannings, and Faust, a German legend (1926), which imposes it on the sides Fritz Lang and Georg Wilhelm Pabst like one of the great figures of the German cinema.

Its work is noticed in the United States, where it goes, invited by the studios of Fox, and where it carries out the Dawn (1927), which is generally regarded its masterpiece and as one of largest films of the history of the cinema.

Decided to make career in the United States, it carries out there other films in a rather realistic style until its last, of Symbolist spirit, turned to Polynesia, Tabou (1931), which perhaps announced a turning in its work.

It finds death in a road accident one week before the first of Tabou .

Catalog of films

Rewards

See too

  • Mini-site of the BiFi devoted to Murnau
  • Murnau Card of the Film club of Caen
  • Biography of Murnau

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