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He was one of a number of German film directors to take part in the expressionist movement that took root in German cinema during the 1920s, and he directed a number of movies that were influential and remain wildely seen among film scholars today. Much of Murnau's output from the silent era has been lost, and only a few of his films survive today; film scholars acknowledge them as masterpieces.
Murnau's most famous film is Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula that caused Stoker's estate to sue for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered destroyed, but bootleg prints were stored and preserved over time, so that Nosferatu is widely available in the present era. The film inspired Werner Herzog to remake the film in 1979.
Nearly as important as Nosferatu in Murnau's filmography was The Last Laugh (1925), written by Carl Mayer and starring Emil Jannings. Often voted second greatest film of all time by international critics' polls, the film introduced the subjective point of view camera (where the camera "sees" from the eyes of a character and uses visual style to convey a character's psychological state). It also anticipated the cinema verite movement in its subject matter.
Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in 1926Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 See also 1926 in aviation 1926 in film 1926 in literature 1926 in mu, where he joined the Fox StudioTwentieth (20th) Century Fox Film Corporation is one of the Big Ten movie studios, located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, California, just west of Beverly Hills. The studio is a subsidiary of News Corporation, the Australian media conglomerate o and made the 1920s-era fable SunriseSunrise is a 1927 movie about a woman from the city (played by Margaret Livingston), who tempts a married farmer ( George O'Brien) to kill his wife ( Janet Gaynor) and run off with her to the city. Written by Hermann Sudermann (story Die Reise Nach Tilsit - a movie often cited by film scholars as one of the greatest films of all time. It was a success and it received several Oscars at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1927Centuries: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s Years: 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 See also 1927 in aviation 1927 in film 1927 in literature 1927 in mu (though the movie Wings won Best Picture). However, Murnau's next two pictures, Four Devils and City Girl, were modified to adapt to the new era of sound filmA sound film (or talkie is a motion picture with synchronized sound as opposed to a silent movie. Although not the first, the most famous of the early talkies was The Jazz Singer in 1927. In the early years after introduction of sound, sound films were ca (Four Devils has been completely lost), and they were not well received as a result. Their poor reception disillusioned Murnau, and he quit Fox to journey for a while in the South Pacific.
Murnau's travels abroad resulted in the film TabuTabu (also called Tabu, a Story of the South Seas is a 1931 film which tells the story of two lovers in the South Seas, who must escape their village when the girl is chosen as the holy maid to the gods. The actors are billed as Reri, Matahi, Hitu, Jean a, which was censored in America because it showed images of bare-breasted "native" Polynesian women. Tabu would be Murnau's last film, as he died in an automobile accident in 1931.