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Biography of F. W. MurnauName: F. W. MurnauBirth Date: December 28, 1888 Death Date: March 11, 1931 Place of Birth: Bielefeld, Germany Nationality: German Gender: Male Occupations: director F. W. Murnau Next to Fritz Lang and G. W. Pabst, motion picture director F. W. Murnau (1888-1931) was one of just three directors responsible for revolutionizing German silent cinema during the 1920s.Born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, F. W. Murnau was the son of Heinrich Plumpe, a textile manufacturer, and Plumpe's second wife, Otilie. Born in Bielefeld, Westphalia, Germany, on December 28, 1888, he adopted the stage name "Murnau" as a young man, both as an attempt to hide his theatrical ambitions from his unsupportive father and as homage to the famed artists' colony south of Munich. The town of Murnau provided a creative haven for some of the expressionist period's most notable figures, including Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and others associated with the Blaue Reiter ("Blue Rider") movement of 1911-1914.In 1892 the Plumpe family moved to Kassel, where young Murnau attended secondary school. During this period he frequented local museums, an activity that helped to nurture …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…the project; although Tabu was labeled "a Murnau-Flaherty Production," Flaherty withdrew from the film before its completion.On March 11, 1931, Murnau and his chauffeur were killed while driving on California's Pacific Coast Highway. Tabu was just one week from its premiere, and Murnau, age 42 at the time of his death, was considering a new contract with the more artist-friendly Paramount Studios. Though Murnau left behind a rich film legacy that endures today, his life also became the subject of intense, often wildly inaccurate, artistic interpretation. Further Reading Collier, Jo Leslie, From Wagner to Murnau: The Transposition of Romanticism from Stage to Screen, UMI Research Press, 1988.Eisner, Lotte H., Murnau, 1964, translated into English, University of California Press, 1973.Shepard, Jim, Nosferatu, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.Sight & Sound, February 2001."A Bloody Disgrace," Guardian Unlimited, http://film.guardian.co.uk/ (January 26, 2001).Ebert, Roger, "Nosferatu," Chicago Sun Times, http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/ (January 1999). |