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So far the Reelin’ In The Years tour has provided me the perfect opportunity to finally cross some things off of the old cinematic to-do list. I finally covered another Fritz Lang filmm I got to see what the big deal was with Buster Keaton, and now I finally cover the works of Freidrich Wilhelm Murnau. In the days of early cinema there are few directors who are as well-regarded on a critical level as F. W. Murnau, which is certainly saying something considering just about the only surviving films left from that time are from the best of the best, and yet for a long time he existed (much like Buster Keaton) as some vague name that I heard sometimes in passing. In fact, when I first watched Nosferatu years ago, I don’t even know if the fact Murnau directed it even crossed my mind. Not a huge deal, especially for the more casual movie fan as I was at the time, but when the idea of covering all the gaps in the timeline came to me, it only seemed right to finally get him in here. He has a film archive named after him, but I’m pretty sure this is a greater honor.
Released in 1926, Tartuffe or Herr Tartüff, was one of the last films made by Murnau in his native Germany before moving to the United States to work for Fox, the future home of his critically-acclaimed masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. Written by Carl Mayer, based on the play by the French satirist Moliere, it tells the story of a house worker (Rosa Valetti) engaged in that timeless get-rich-quick scheme: slowly poisoning the old codger (Hermann Picha) you’re working for while manipulating him into signing over his fortune to you. When the grandson of the old gentleman discovers that his grandfather has been set against him, even being barred from the house, he decides to use his acting training to adopt the persona of a traveling cinema presenter, which is apparently a thing that existed at the time. The film? Tartuffe, the story of a man named Orgon taken in by a saint named Tartuffe, who isn’t as saintly as he appears to be, and his wife Elmire (a returning Lil Dagover), who’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect her husband. How apropos to the current situation that the people watching the film find themselves in.
There’s something of a tragic irony in a German film that warns against blindly trusting people, especially those in positions of authority, because they might not have your best interests at heart, especially the church in Tartuffe’s case. The metanarrative of watching a film that’s largely about people watching a film is kinda fun, and we even have a moment where the 4th wall is broken and a character addresses the audience. I’ve never seen a silent film do that before, so points to Murnau for that.
Tartuffe is also a neat little showcase for Murnau as a visual storyteller. There’s a real visceral quality here; you see that clanging bell and you can feel it your bones just as the murderous housekeeper did. You see Tartuffe slowly marching around Orgon’s manor, clad all in black, his face contorted in a mask of judgment and disapproval, leering at Elmire’s body, and you can feel the bile rise in your throat. There’s a certain presence to the characters here, this exaggeration that feels right in line with Nosferatu’s emaciated vampire, and yet at the same has none of the trappings of the German Expressionist style that film was made under. Honestly my major criticism with the movie is that Murnau does too well at conveying the context of the scenes visually that the dialogue cards sometimes feel excessive and disruptive to the flow of the scenes. Which I can’t tell is a pro or a con for Murnau, considering he’s adapting a play here, and you’d think the dialogue would be pretty important.
Nothing to say about the choice of score this time around, it does its job. The picture might be a bit fuzzier compared to what we’ve seen before as well, which is either due to the realities of film preservation or perhaps this was an earlier release by Kino Lorber before they really started digging into those high-quality restorations. Anyway, Tartuffe gets the recommendation. I feel like I’m giving Murnau a bit of a short thrift here, but it almost feels like trying to review a fable or a fairy tale. Like it works, it captures the spirit of Moliere’s satire in an elegantly simple way, and then it leaves without a fuss. As a proper introduction to the works of Murnau Tartuffe has gotten me very interested in exploring the rest of his filmography, those that have been recovered at least, and I think after watching it you’ll feel the same.
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