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“Murnau brought
off his poetic effects naturally, fluidly, dramatically, and the resonant
images and the moving camera throw the audience into a trance, in which
it experiences the deepest emotions, and often unconscious desires
and fears, with awe and something like gratitude.” Before his death in a car crash at the age of 42, F.W. Murnau (1888-1931) had already — in a career spanning only a little over a decade — dominated the German cinema and conquered Hollywood. Murnau’s moving camera; his sense of fantasy and use of special effects, dreams and hallucinations; his use of the subjective camera; his evocative handling of both studio settings and locations; his ability to tell a story visually, minimizing explanatory titles; and his mastery of light and shadow are some of the distinctive trademarks that put him at the very top of the cinema pantheon, and his worldwide influence has been felt well beyond his own time. This festival includes 35mm prints (most of them archival) of Murnau’s twelve extant features, among them some of the greatest films in movie history. SPECIAL THANKS TO JULIANE WANCKEL AND DR. DIETA SIXT, GOETHE-INSTITUT NEW YORK; SCHAWN BELSTON, 20TH CENTURY FOX; GARY PALMUCCI, KINO INTERNATIONAL; KARIN KOLB, GOETHE-INSTITUT BOSTON; SABRINA KOVATSCH, TRANSIT FILM GMBH (MUNICH); GUDRUN WEISS, FRIEDRICH WILHELM MURNAU-STIFTUNG (WIESBADEN); JUTTA ALBERT, BUNDESARCHIV-FILMARCHIV (BERLIN); DENNIS DOROS & AMY HELLER, MILESTONE FILMS; JANET BERGSTROM, UCLA; JOSEPH YRANSKI, DONNELL MEDIA CENTER; ANNE GOODMAN, CRITERION PICTURES; AND RUSTY CASSELTON. *LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER AT THESE SHOWS. PRESENTED WITH GENEROUS SUPPORT FROM THE IRA M. RESNICK FOUNDATION CLICK HERE FOR SCHEDULE OF ALL FILMS BY DATE & TITLE
SUNRISE “Watching a masterpiece like SUNRISE, you seem
to have entered not only a different era but a different art form – one
in which psychology and symbolism and the most wrenching emotions all
play a much larger role.”
 (1927)
A simple story, subtitled
A Song of Two Humans: the
idyllic marriage of George O’Brien and Janet
Gaynor is threatened when he falls for a vamp from
the city, cigarette-smoking, jazz-loving flapper
Margaret Livingston — so hard that he
contemplates murdering his wife. One of the last
and greatest of silent films as F.W. Murnau and his
screenwriter Carl Mayer — fresh from their German
triumph with The Last Laugh — were given an
almost unlimited budget and artistic freedom for
their first Hollywood picture, creating a nearly title-less
visual poem. From the seduction scene in the
misty, moonlit marshes; to the carnival-like trip to
the city (a gigantic set built in forced perspective;
the interurban rail line stretched for a mile through the woods around Lake
Arrowhead);
to the hair-raising storm on the lake (all studio-shot); this is a work of
photographic
pyrotechnics, from cameras moving on rails set in the roof of the set, to the
lights of
the city shimmering on the waters of the lake at night, even to pictorial evocation
of
sounds and cries, in the last gasp of the silent film. Under Murnau’s
direction, Charles
Rosher and Karl Struss won the very first Oscar for cinematography; while Janet
Gaynor
won Best Actress (for this and two other films); with the film winning a never-repeated
award for “Unique and Artistic Production.” Despite being a monstrous
prestige hit, it
still lost money because of enormous production costs, putting Murnau under
constraints for the rest of his Hollywood career. Hailed by the Cahiers du
Cinéma critics
as the greatest film of all time. Original Movietone musical score.
A CRITERION PICTURES RELEASE OF A 20TH CENTURY FOX FILM
THE HAUNTED CASTLE 
PHANTOM
SUNRISE 
NOSFERATU “Murnau’s first masterpiece... Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) Murnau’s
legendary plagiarism of Dracula — a lawsuit suppressed
its U.S. screenings for decades — carried its own attar
of the crypt, with speeded-up film, reverse negative and
Max Schreck’s rat-like “Drac” amply serving up the
dread. “Derives its horror and sense of mystery from
setting its sinister story in familiar surroundings among
everyday people and THE LAST LAUGH “Removes horror to the realm of social tragedy.” – David Denby, The New Yorker Der letzte Mann (1924) Love
those uniforms! A splendidly
caparisoned Emil Jannings
grandly tosses those
suitcases as the doorman of
a five-star hotel, but when
age starts to slow him down,
the demotion to lab-coated
washroom attendant is just
too much. Pathbreaking use
of the mobile camera — notably in the subjective drunk scene
— and in the absence of titles, with a curiously satisfying
tacked-on happy ending. But, as Universal studio chief Carl
Laemmle prosaically remarked, “Everybody knows a lavatory
attendant makes more money than a doorman.” Shot by Karl
Freund, whose extraordinary career took him from German
Expressionism (Metropolis, etc. etc.) to I Love Lucy!
CITY GIRL TABU: A STORY OF
THE SOUTH SEAS 
FAUST |
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THE BURNING EARTH
Schloß Vogeloed — Die Enthüllung eines Geheimnisses (1921)
With second husband in tow, Baroness Olga Tschechowa arrives for a hunting
party at the eponymous castle, even as guests gossip about the mysterious
death of hubbie #1, his own brother the top suspect — then guess
who shows up? Plus a three-minute fragment from Murnau’s lost film Satanas (1920),
an epic inspired by Intolerance.
