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F. W. Murnau
F. W. Murnau
Birth name: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Aliases: Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe
F.W. Murnau
Gender: Male
Medium(s): Film
Roles: Director
Date of birth: December 28th, 1888
Place of birth: Bielefeld, North-Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Date of death: March 11th, 1931
Place of death: Santa Barbara, California

Friedrich Wilhelm "F. W." Murnau was one of the most influential German film directors of the silent era, and a prominent figure in the expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s. Although some of Murnau's films have been lost, most still survive. He is best known for the 1922 horror classic Nosferatu, the first adaptation of Irish author Bram Stoker's perennial 1897 novel Dracula. However, Murnau had not secured the rights to reproduce Stoker's story and as such, his widow Florence Stoker sued the German production company for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed, per Florence Stoker's wishes, but bootleg prints survived and have since been digitally remastered.

Murnau's last German film was the big budget Faust with Gösta Ekman as the title character, Emil Jannings as Mephisto and Camilla Horn as Gretchen. Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version. The film is well-known for a sequence in which the giant, winged figure of Mephisto hovers over a town sowing the seeds of plague.



Body of work[]

Film[]

Notes & Trivia[]

  • Nosferatu and Faust – eine deutsche Volkssage were two of the first films to feature original film scores.

External Links[]

References[]

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Dracula Actor or Crew member
This article relates to actors or production crew members pertaining to the Dracula franchise.
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