F.W. Murnau, His Films, and Their Influence on German Expressionism

F.W. Murnau had a diverse and artistic upbringing, and led an international lifestyle as an adult. His experiences, interests, and education naturally had a profound effect on the way he viewed the world and expressed himself artistically. Writing for Cahiers du Cinema, Edgar G. Ulmer noted Murnau’s cosmopolitan outlook and knowledge of French and praised him as a uniquely cultured filmmaker.1

In her extensive biography of Murnau, Lotte Eisner includes a number of interviews with his family members and friends, which shed some light on his early life and some of the influences that show up prominently in his work.2 Murnau’s brother, Robert Plumpe Murnau describes his passion for reading, saying that, “As soon as he could read he fell on every book that came his way, whether it was a novel or a classical drama.”3

Although he studied art history and literature at University, Murnau was also passionate about the theatre, and even constructed his own theatre as a boy to stage plays with his brothers.

His love for the stage led him to join a new theatre school founded by Max Reinhardt. Though Reinhardt was primarily a theatre director, his innovative ideas about lighting, set design, and continuity had a huge impact on Murnau’s films. His production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream stunned audiences by the unexpected “naturalism” of its forest setting and the use of a revolving stage to maintain a sense of continuity between scenes. The “veritable trees” standing on a stage that was “covered not with a painted ground-cloth, but with what seemed palpable grass, in which the feet sunk among the flowers” created a powerful illusion of reality in a play conventionally associated with fantasy and artifice.4

Reinhardt’s revolving stage allowed his actors and sets to smoothly transition between scenes without interruption, in much the same way that long takes and a moving camera would do in Murnau’s films. Lighting played a dominant role in his work, allowing him to “achieve that highest form of expression…the cooperation of all factors toward a common goal” through “the synthesis and analysis of all form through light” – another valuable lesson imbibed by his pupil.5

According to Margret Dietrich, his staging created “theatrical symphonies in which words and music, lighting and painting effects, and the art of acting were fused in an intoxicating whole which swept all along with it by the strength of its gripping qualities and its atmosphere” 6 These qualities evidently inspired the young Murnau as he strove to create a similar type of “symphonic” unity in his films, controlling every step of the process from screenplay, to art direction, to editing. It is notable that the full title of Nosferatu is Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Murnau himself asserted that cinema had to be a “theatre for the eye” and that the relationship between characters, objects, and camera must be “an element in the symphony of the film.”7 In his article in Weimar Cinema Thomas Elsaesser even suggests that the character of Nosferatu himself was “something of a spoof” and an “insider joke about Reinhardt”, a powerful and charismatic figure who encouraged “antics…eccentricity and extravagance” in his circle of acquaintances and owned a private castle in Austria.8

Jo Leslie Collier traces Murnau’s theatrical influences as far back as the operas of Richard Wagner. She takes into account the social, political, and historical changes that took place in Germany between the lifetimes of Wagner and Murnau admitting that “a radically altered world called for a radically altered art”. At the same time, she finds that it is “rather remarkable to what degree the tenets of romanticism are to be found in the films of Murnau.”9 She feels that both Murnau’s aesthetic and his narrative choices were formed by a similar sensibility to that reflected in the works of Wagner. She goes on to claim that not only are general Romantic ideals and precepts traceable in his work, but that almost any Murnau film can be narratively and symbolically linked to a specific opera by Wagner.

A curious and adventurous individual, Murnau traveled extensively, learning from other cultures and interacting with the international film community. These experiences enhanced his films both aesthetically and technically. In an interview with Lotte Eisner, Ulmer talks about Murnau’s visit to Sweden and his introduction to local techniques and innovations, such as the metal camera. He goes on to note that when Murnau filmed the phantom forest sequence in Nosferatu, he was inspired by the creative usage of negative film in the 1921 Swedish horror film The Phantom Carriage.10

Murnau’s body of work combines a large and varied base of knowledge and inspiration, a constant search for innovation, and a unique artistic sense. Ulmer describes him as “a great purist” who always had a clear idea of his film even before shooting began. Constantly striving for perfection, he would demand reshoots of scenes that didn’t match his vision, always asserting that “Good is not enough”.11 Frank Hansen adds that Murnau was involved in every stage of the filmmaking process.

“He used to live each part, experiment with every possibility of the plot, draw up a mental picture of the sets, and perfect each detail of the whole with the greatest care, always asking himself what was the best way of presenting it by means of the camera lens.”12

It is hardly surprising, with his deep knowledge of literature, art, and theatre, that he was qualified to participate in every aspect of the filmmaking process far beyond the role of director, actually annotating all of his screenplays, giving “precise instructions concerning costumes and props, discussing the score with his composer, and providing notes on camera movement and framing.13 His diverse choice of subjects for his films and his ability to easily improvise new plot developments and interpretations are a direct result of his love for reading. Although he did not actually write his screenplays himself, he was evidently drawn primarily to projects taken from literary material. After all, Nosferatu is a reinterpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Tartuffe is a play by Molière, Faust is based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s theatrical interpretation of a German legend, Phantom is based on a novel by nobel prize winner Gerhart Hauptmann, and Der Januskopf is one of the earliest film adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Murnau’s appreciation for art history shines through vividly in his compositions, the interplay of light and shadow, his understanding of form and line, his involvement in the process of set and costume design, and even his ideas about the role of the camera. He saw cinema as a true art form, and the camera as an artist’s tool. In his own words, he believed the camera was “…the director’s sketching pencil. It should be as mobile as possible to catch every passing mood, and it is important that the mechanics of the cinema should not be interposed between the spectator and the picture.”14 In an article discussing the presence of the camera as a “character” in cinema, Ulmer jokes that Murnau “had a camera instead of a head”, and praises his almost innate understanding of filming techniques: “what was marvelous about Murnau was that he was always trying to do something new…he knew all the secrets of optics..15 Murnau’s obsession with effective camera techniques stemmed from his unerring faith in the power of the image. He placed great emphasis on visuals in his films, and firmly believed that the cinematic medium was uniquely qualified to communicate “by means of images alone; the ideal film does not need titles.”16 His films are living proof of that statement.

Murnau’s theatrical acting and directing experience endowed him with an insider’s touch when dealing with issues of performance. Eschewing the artificial conventions developed in early silent films, and the exaggerated, stylized acting associated with the Expressionist movement, he encouraged a more naturalistic acting style. Having worked and studied under Reinhardt, he was undoubtedly familiar with Stanislavsky’s concept of psychologically based method acting, and he did not hesitate to adapt Stanislavsky’s system for the silent cinema. He devoted a great deal of time and effort to the analysis and discussion of a character’s emotions and motivation with his actors, restraining their impulses when necessary to maintain balance and make a scene convincing and emotionally moving. He tried to get his actors “to forget the bad habit of ‘giving a performance’” and learn to create and develop their characters.17 Eisner mentions an argument Murnau had with Emil Jannings while filming The Last Laugh. Jannings insisted on a more exaggerated interpretation of a dramatic scene, while Murnau called for more subtlety. After shooting the scene in both versions, Jannings admitted that Murnau’s version was much more effective. Frank Hansen agrees that Murnau had a gift for getting his actors to convey “a profound inner life” and “could get the best out of them, even those who were mannered or over-stylized. He created characters who came to life and were not mere stereotypes.”18

Focusing more on the narrative and symbolic rather than visual aspects of Murnau’s films, Collier interprets this fondness for method acting and the “privileged place afforded to emotions” as a concern with the individual rather than the social group. By endowing his characters with personal emotions and urges, Murnau frequently places them outside the acceptable bounds of their respective communities. She also cites Murnau’s special emphasis on “Nature (and definitely with a capital ‘N’)” as well as his “fondness for Nature’s own – the earthy peasant and the noble savage”. While praising his emotional depth, however, she also criticizes him for his idealized, asexual image of women. She describes Murnau’s female protagonists as “asexual madonnas” destined to be sacrificed to the needs of their childish, ineffective male counterparts. In fact she uses this view as one of the bases for her comparison between Murnau and Wagner, claiming that “the dominant recurring theme in the works of both Wagner and Murnau is the redemption of the male by the loving sacrifice of the female.”19

In the preface to the English-language edition of Lotte Eisner’s biography of Murnau, she laments the fact that, out of the twenty-one films that she includes in his filmography, nine are missing entirely.20 In addition to this, some of the remaining films are incomplete, or rare and inaccessible. A single, incomplete copy of Gang in die Nacht is available in the Cinemathèque Française, only as a 35mm print, while Der Januskopf, is now little more than an annotated screenplay and a stack of stills. This sad fact naturally complicates any research on Murnau’s body of work.

The analysis that follows is based on three of Murnau’s best-known and most accessible films: Nosferatu (Eine Symphonie des Grauens), Faust, and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans . These three films have the benefit of being complete and obtainable in a convenient and restored format, allowing for a fuller experience and analysis without the difficulties of dealing with faulty prints, distortion, graininess, and missing scenes. They are also a representative cross-section of Murnau’s career, ranging from Nosferatu (1922) to Faust (1926) and Sunrise (1927), giving a sense of his work as a developing artist and as a mature filmmaker who had enough experience and skill to achieve the effects he wanted.

Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

Nosferatu, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker, is perhaps one of the best-known films of Murnau’s career. In her book on The Literary Monster on Film, Abigail Burnham Bloom states that “Nosferatu haunts the imagination of the viewer today in large part because of Shreck’s performance and the unusual images created by the cinematography.”21 Ado Kyrou takes the discussion of Shreck’s performance even further, noting that “the identity of the extraordinary actor whom brilliant make-up renders absolutely unrecognizable” is unknown, and gives several “guesses” ranging from Murnau himself to an actual vampire. 22 Whoever the mysterious Max Shreck really was, there is no doubt that both the decision to cast him, and the direction of his performance were determined by Murau himself. His appreciation for subtlety and method acting shines through even when his actor is concealed by layers of complex makeup that leaves him barely human. However exaggerated his pointy ears and rodent-like teeth may be, Nosferatu never seems to cross over into comedy or grotesqueness.

Bloom discusses the way films based on Stoker’s Dracula use the opportunity to create a unique physical image and show the vampire, a foreign disturbance of traditional Victorian society, as physically distinct from the rest of the characters, and cites Murnau’s version as “one of the strangest-looking ever filmed”. She associates the fear of Dracula’s corrupting “foreigness” and “otherness” with German Socialism, anti-Semitism, racism, and pan-Germanism post WW I.23

His “looks exemplify his unnatural state much in the same way that Frankenstein’s Creature’s exterior did as well”.24 Interestingly, a closer look at the film makes the definition of the character as nothing more than a symbol of German paranoia and the comparison to Frankenstein’s creature seem a bit oversimplified and superficial. There is no doubt that Nosferatu (Dracula) looks “unnatural” and stands out from the other characters. However, his body language is surprisingly subdued and at the same time eloquent.