F. W. Murnau: Voyages into the Imaginary

January 8–February 27, 2022

This series, featuring the lyrical cinema of one of the most admired and influential directors of the silent era, F. W. Murnau, showcases restored versions of his extant work with live piano accompaniment.

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  • Faust

  • Sunrise

  • Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

  • The Last Laugh

  • Phantom

  • The Haunted Castle

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • Tabu: A Story of the South Seas

    • Sunday, February 27 3 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    United States, 1931

    Digital Restoration

    F. W. Murnau joined forces with documentarist Robert J. Flaherty, and they fashioned an emotionally rich story of the flowering romance between a young man and woman, filmed on location in Tahiti.

    Bruce Loeb on Piano

  • City Girl

    • Friday, February 25 7 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    United States, 1930

    Until the late 1960s, City Girl was considered lost; when it was found, film scholars were amazed to discover F. W. Murnau’s complete silent version,“a dazzling work which adds much to Murnau’s already monumental reputation” (Richard Koszarski, Film Comment).

    Bruce Loeb on Piano

  • Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

    • Saturday, January 8 7 PM
    • Friday, February 18 7 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    United States, 1927

    F. W. Murnau handpicked Janet Gaynor to star in his first Hollywood feature, a masterpiece of silent cinema widely considered among the greatest films ever made, which tells an elemental tale with virtuosic visual invention. 

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano January 8; Bruce Loeb on Piano February 18

  • Faust

    • Sunday, February 13 5 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1926

    Digital Restoration

    F. W. Murnau’s version of the Faust legend is a masterwork of chiaroscuro lighting, and it helped redefine what black-and-white cinematography could accomplish. Emil Jannings stars as a subtly mischievous Mephistopheles.

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • Tartuffe

    • Saturday, February 5 5:15 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1925

    Digital Restoration

    F. W. Murnau revisited Moliére’s fable of religious hypocrisy, in which a woman (Lil Dagover) tries to convince her husband (Werner Krauss) that their morally superior guest, Tartuffe (Emil Jannings), is in fact a lecherous, imbibing hypocrite.

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • The Finances of the Grand Duke

    • Saturday, February 5 3:30 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1924

    Digital Restoration

    F. W. Murnau’s venture into the world of comic irony was greeted with delight by contemporary critics. Working from a screenplay by Thea von Harbou, he crafted a playful espionage thriller reminiscent of Ernst Lubitsch. 

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • The Last Laugh

    • Saturday, January 29 5 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1924

    Digital Restoration

    A proud hotel doorman falls from grace in F. W. Murnau’s classic of German Expressionism, whose roving camerawork and hallucinatory imagery “changed the way that movies were made” (Dave Kehr).

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • Phantom

    • Friday, January 28 7 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1922

    Digital Restoration

    Long believed lost, Phantom, made after Nosferatu and before The Last Laugh, is considered a key work in F. W. Murnau’s development, with its variety of montage and trick effects that conjure a nightmarish world.

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

    • Saturday, January 22 7 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1922

    Digital Restoration

    Still among the most unnerving and poetic of horror films, investing the natural world with eerie incandescence, Nosferatu stars Max Schreck as an unforgettable vampire—a living death, a walking ruin.

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • The Burning Earth

    • Sunday, January 16 2 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1922

    35mm Archival Print

    “Murnau proved a master both at interior design . . . and at stunning exterior shooting. The fire at the oil-well, ‘the burning earth’ surrounded by snow, is an unforgettable image of hell on earth” (TIFF Cinematheque).

    Bruce Loeb on Piano

  • The Haunted Castle

    • Saturday, January 15 7 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1921

    Digital Restoration

    Before plumbing the depths of horror and despair with films like Faust, F. W. Murnau tested the waters with this moody drama of a stormbound manor and the grim mystery that lurks within.

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • Journey into the Night

    • Wednesday, January 12 7 PM
    F. W. Murnau
    Germany, 1921

    Digital Restoration

    This reconstruction of the earliest surviving F. W. Murnau film represents a major rediscovery of a work that, even upon its release, was hailed as a milestone in the art of cinema.

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano