MURNAU, F.W.

born Dec. 28, 1889, Bielefeld, Ger. died March 11, 1931, Hollywood pseudonym of Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe German motion-picture director who revolutionized the art of cinematic expression by using the camera subjectively to interpret the emotional state of a character. He was educated at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, where he was greatly influenced by the theatrical innovations of Max Reinhardt, the famous German stage director. During World War I service, Murnau assisted in the making of propaganda films. After the war he made a number of films, including Der Januskopf (1920; Janus Faced, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, based on the story by Robert Louis Stevenson); Schloss Vogeld (1921; Vogelod Castle, The Haunted Castle); and Der brennender Acker (1922; The Burning Acre), in which he employed close-ups to further the action. All contained the beginnings of an Expressionist style and his initial experimentation with the camera. Murnau's first important picture was Nosferatu (1922), an early film treatment of the vampire legend that incorporated technical effects such as negative images, showing white trees against a black sky. Der letzte Mann (1924; The Last Laugh), a collaboration between Murnau and the creative scriptwriter Carl Mayer, established his reputation as one of the foremost German directors. The film traces the vicissitudes of an aging doorman who is emotionally shattered after his hotel fires him but who is fortuitously rewarded in the end. Der letzte Mann's mobile camera style and interpretive use of the camera to record the emotions of the aging doorman made an international impact on the cinema. The camera moved through city streets, crowded tenements, and hotel corridors, playing an integral role in the film by recording people and incidents through a limited point of view. Murnau's next two films, Tartff (1925) and Faust (1926), were followed by the Hollywood-made films Sunrise (1927), Four Devils (1928), and City Girl (1930). His final film was Tabu (1931), an idyllic study of the South Seas, codirected with Robert Flaherty, the pioneer documentary filmmaker.