Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (Masters of Cinema)

Star Review

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas has been described as a travelogue and even as a documentary(!): in fact, F.W. Murnau’s final film is a fairy tale. It tells a story as simple (and thus as universal) as its director’s earlier masterpiece, Sunrise.

A boy and a girl from an island paradise fall in love. But she is claimed by a chief and declared ‘tabu’ – forbidden. Unable to let her go, the boy rescues his beloved and together they flee paradise and enter the world. But they have broken tabu. Fate will not forget them so easily.

In outline, this might sound familiar. Many filmmakers have been drawn to the tropics and the people that live there. The films that result are usually patronising comparisons between the supposedly natural life of the natives and the empty existence of westerners; the sort of flick that always puts ‘civilisation’ in inverted commas, as though subsistence living and early death were but a small price to pay for being in harmony with the mother earth.

But Murnau avoids these spurious oppositions. Certainly, paradise is heavenly – a bit like Centre Parcs, but with coconuts – yet its iron laws drive the couple away. And although civilisation can be crass and (yes) ‘civilised’, there is also respect for the native lifestyle and awareness of its ways.

It’s as haunting and beautiful as anything its director made. Although the story (lovers divided by cruel destiny) might have been set anywhere in the world, Murnau is utterly sensitive to his environment. There’s none of the exaggerated exotic window dressing or condescending characterisation of a travelogue; rather, it’s a story told with great power and supreme grace.

It’s appropriate that the label that has worked hardest to do Murnau’s work justice on DVD is called Masters of Cinema, for that is most assuredly what Murnau was. This restored print allows us to get the full measure of his achievement and his remarkable visual sense. It’s to be hoped that Masters of Cinema will treat us to all Murnau’s remaining films: going by this disc, they’d do ‘em proud.

James Oliver on 30th October 2007

View all 34 of James Oliver’s reviews

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Film Description

In 1929, FW Murnau invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty to collaborate on a film to be be shot on location in Tahiti, a Polynesian idyll in which Murnau imagined a cast of island actors would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their culture. The result of their collaboration was Tabu, a film that depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is rich in the universal themes of desire and loss.

Subtitled 'A Story of the South Seas', Tabu concerns a Tahitian fisherman (played by an islander, Matahi) and his love for a young woman, Reri, whose body has been consecrated to the gods, rendering her tabu to mortal men. The lovers flee their island and its restrictive traditions, but will their love prevail in the 'civilised' world?

This Oscar-winning film is both poetic and simple in tone, and is a landmark film of rare exoticism and magical beauty. In 1931, critic Lotte Eisner described it as 'the apogee of the art of the silent film'. Murnau didn't live to see its release, dying in a car crash before the premiere.

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DVD Extras

• New Murnau-Stiftung/Luciano Berriatúa 75th anniversary restoration of the pre-Paramount, longer Murnau-approved version of the film, with uncensored scenes and titlecards for the first time
• Full-length commentary track by R. Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens
• 15-minute German documentary about Tabu by Luciano Berriatúa
• 80-Page book with articles by Scott Eyman, Richard Griffiths, and David Flaherty
• an interview with the film’s cinematographer Floyd Crosby
• and the original story treatments written by Murnau and Flaherty for Tabu and its aborted predecessor Turia.

Film Details

Technical Details