Tartuffe (Masters of Cinema) DVD | Movie Mail UK

Star Review

Between The Last Laugh and Faust, F W Murnau made this free adaptation of Moliere’s play about the hypocrite Tartuffe, stripping it to its essentials and presenting it as a film of a play within a film. Including elements of both farce and satire it’s further proof of just what an adaptable director Murnau was. We are fortunate to see the film at all. No original German negative of the film has survived and the print used is taken from the best of the four surviving copies – that of the American export version, which unfortunately was cut by the American censors, for whom the portrayal of the hypocrite Tartuffe was just too, well… hypocritical. Gone are the religious symbols that were part of Murnau’s anti-clerical design, gone too is a scene (fortunately preserved in another print and shown in the extras) in which Jannings’ portrayal of Tartuffe turns nasty and which is at odds with the caricature of Tartuffe he presents at other times – though at least this vicious aspect comes through in the bedroom scene in the surviving print. Jannings as usual relishes his part, leering and groping whenever he is safe to let his mask of myopic piety down, and at times Murnau films him as a vampiric shadow that stalks the house. Add the meticulous set design, good use of false perspective and cinematography from Karl Freund and you have a film which presents the themes and preoccupations of Murnau’s other works in a refreshingly different light.

Graeme Hobbs on 10th December 2004

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