F. W. Murnau

F. W. Murnau (1888-1931), German film director. Murnau was born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in Bielefeld, Germany, on December 28, 1888. After studying philology in Berlin and art history and literature in Heidelberg, F. W. Murnau joined the theatre company of Max Reinhardt in 1908. His military service during World War I ended in 1917 with his internment in Switzerland.

After F. W. Murnau's return to Germany, he began his career as a film director in 1919 with the film Der Knabe in Blau (The Boy in Blue). Most of his German silent films are now lost, but among those remaining are Nosferatu—Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922; Nosferatu the Vampire), based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, and three films starring the Austrian actor Emil Jannings: Der Letzte Mann (1924; The Last Laugh), Tartüff (1926; Tartuffe), and Faust (1926).

F. W. Murnau worked in the United States from 1926 onward. He directed three films, including Sunrise (1927), which received a unique Academy Award (Oscar) for its “artistic quality of production”, before travelling to Tahiti with the documentary film-maker Robert Flaherty in 1929. Murnau's last film, Tabu, which used some of the Tahiti footage, was released shortly after his death, in a car crash in California on March 11, 1931.