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By 1931, nearly the entirety of the film industry had not only gained the capabilities to make sound pictures, but appeared to leave silent cinema completely behind. Save for a few iconic artists like Charlie Chaplin, who stuck with silent cinema aesthetics for quite some time after the growth of sound in cinema, the medium had all but shifted into both sound storytelling, and the stationary camera that it would need.

And then there is Tabu. From not only one, but two of those iconic artists mentioned in the paragraph above, this brisk and powerful journey into the South Seas was created by the pair of F.W. Murnau and Nanook of the North director Robert J. Flaherty, and tells a story only these two legendary filmmakers could. Blending both Murnau’s beautiful, expressionistic filmmaking with the cultural focus that made the heart of Flaherty’s work beat, Tabu became a film...

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

Written by (Told by): F.W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty

Directed by F.W. Murnau

USA, 1931

Compared to John Ford’s studio-bound—though still highly appealing—South Seas adventure The Hurricane, recently reviewed here, Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, directed by the great German filmmaker F.W. Murnau, is a patently more realistic and wholly distinctive production. Aside from its genuine French Polynesian locations (Bora Bora and Tahiti), Murnau’s silent 1931 film features a cast consisting almost entirely of actual island inhabitants, rather than Hollywood stars, thus resulting in a generally less strained authenticity. Not necessarily a better film for this reason alone, Tabu, even with its fictional plot, is nevertheless a purer and more revealing historical and scenic document.

Directed by Murnau and “told by” he and renowned documentarian Robert J. Flaherty (of Nanook of the North [1922] fame), Tabu is divided into two chapters.

The Moon, the opposite of the sun, hovers over us by night, the opposite of day. 

In F.W. Murnau’s Tabu (1931), Reri, the sacred maiden of the small island of Bora Bora, writes this to her lover Matahi: 

And indeed, when Matahi chases after her, the moon spreads its path on the sea.

He runs and swims after her, moving faster than a normal human being, defying the laws of gravity. 

Miraculously, he catches up to the boat. 

Thus, he must die, sinking back into a void…

…while ghost ships linger on in the distance…

…carrying another hopeless romantic, and a moving corpse—A second Nosferatu.

The moon is absent in Murnau’s earlier film, made nearly ten years before Tabu, but it is in the one he made nearly five years after Nosferatu, when George O’Brien leaves his wife for a midnight rendezvous with another woman. 

And indeed,...

(Fw Murnau, 1931, Eureka!, PG)

One of the last classic silent movies, this supreme example of poetic cinema brought together the German expressionist Murnau with the American mining engineer turned ethnographic documentary film-maker Robert J Flaherty. Both were in their 40s, leaders in their field, yet discontented with Hollywood, which had brought Murnau to California where he'd just made three big, unprofitable films, one of them the universally acclaimed Sunrise. With studio money they escaped to spend a year around Tahiti making their "Story of the South Seas", recruiting non-professional talent to appear in a tale of the doomed romance between a handsome pearl fisherman, Matahi, and his exotic lover, Reri. Their idyllic romance is interrupted by her nomination as an untouchable priestess, and they flee to a neighbouring island that's been contaminated by civilisation and where they're pursued by a tribal shaman.

The film credits Murnau as director, Murnau and Flaherty as "told by" authors,...

★★★★☆ Produced towards the end of the silent era, F.W. Murnau's Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) was to be the legendary German director final film. A lyrical tragedy that imbues elements of factual and narrative filmmaking, Murnau's exotic adventure is a poetic Polynesian love story that effortless articulates its tale like an affectionately composed photo album. A tale of prohibited love across the south seas, Murnau's story concerns a young girl, Reri (Anne Chevalier), who's selected to be her tribe's sacred maiden and consecrated to the gods - making it 'taboo' for her to marry or for any man to lay eyes upon her.

This comes as devastating news to Matahi, Reri's young sweetheart, who must sit and watch as his beloved is whisked away to a neighbouring island. Fuelled by his intense emotions, he sails under the veiled glare of the moon to kidnap her. His...