On March 11, 1931, legendary filmmaker F.W. Murnau took a trip up the California coast in hired Rolls Royce. He had spent the previous year working on Tabu, a film set on the Polynesian islands featuring natives in both the cast and crew. A week later, the movie would open as both a critical and commercial success.
Sadly, Murnau never lived to experience the public reception of his film. An automobile crash took his life on that fateful journey out of Los Angeles in March. And the world lost one of film's first true visionaries at the age of 42.
If D.W. Griffith invented the language of film, Murnau became its first poet, shaping that language to build worlds and seize our imagination in ways no filmmaker had done before. He is perhaps most associated with 1922's Nosferatu, a gothic retelling of Bram Stoker's Dracula. The film manages to be both epic in its scope and intimate in drawing its characters. The shadows themselves become menacing figures and there's no suggestion that Count Orlok's vampire is anything but a grotesque monster.
Of course in Murnau's hands (with a great assist from Jannings in the lead role) The Last Laugh becomes more than its humble story. We feel the glitz, glamor and pride of our doorman in every early moment. And when his idyllic existence is stripped from him, the hotel transforms into a terrifying exterior with desolate halls. Using everything from lighting to complex (for their time) tracking shots, The Last Laugh is a wonder to behold and shows Murnau in full control of the medium.
Faust, Murnau's last effort filmed in his native Germany before moving to Hollywood, follows the efforts of the devil to win a bet with God by corrupting the title character. The elderly Faust is tempted with the knowledge to cure a plague in his town, then with youth. Faust becomes arrogant and prideful, but manages to find redemption through love.
While not as good as The Last Laugh or Nosferatu, Faust gives us one of the great images in cinema as Mephisto, the devil's agent on earth, towers over Faust's town spreading his demonic wings and the plague. Jannings is once again back as Mephisto and is perfect as the sly demon. Murnau's trademark use of light and shadow is again on full display here. If the film has a failing, it is in the handling of the central love story. The second act drags a bit after the suspenseful opening and before the dramatic climax.
The film doesn't have the signature images that marked The Last Laugh, Nosferatu or even Faust, but every frame of Sunrise serves and enforces the story, the lighting seems to change with the characters' moods. When the couple lose themselves in a romantic moment and walk into traffic, you feel both the danger as the traffic flies by them (and us) and the inevitability that nothing can touch them. Not on this day.
While Sunrise may be about as perfect as silent cinema gets, it was not well-received in its time. The combination of poor box office and the move to the talkies led to significant studio interference on his next two films, 4 Devils and City Girl. Fox Films demanded a happier ending for the former. For the latter, they took Murnau's silent, let another director reshoot scenes and release it as a talkie.
Frustrated, Murnau started work on Tabu, ultimately financing the film himself. It became his first American hit, but he did not live long enough to reap the spoils of his effort.
When I think about what Murnau might have done in the 1930s and beyond it breaks my heart. He never got to make his talkie or work with some of the great actors of the era. Fritz Lang, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock all got their start in the silent era and their masterpieces came much later. Imagine what Murnau might have done.
Sadly, any promise of further Murnau masterpieces must remain a dream. The director created not just some of the best films of the silent era, but some of the greatest of any era. If you have not seen The Last Laugh or Sunrise or Nosferatu, do yourself a favor and check them out.
And wonder what might have been.
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