Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) - film review

The island of Bora Bora is a South Pacific paradise, where the local population live an idyllic and peaceful existence in a landscape of untainted beauty.  One day, the tribal elders assemble to select a young woman who must turn her back on earthly interests and devote herself to their gods.  Reri is chosen because, of all the women on the island, she is the most beautiful.  But Reri is in love with, and loved by, a young man named Matahi.  According to tribal custom, any man who dares to look on the maid of the gods with amorous intent must die.  Unable to face being separated from his beloved, Matahi abducts Reri and the two flee to a French colony where Matahi finds work as a pearl fisher.  Their newfound happiness proves to be short lived...

By 1929, with three major Hollywood productions under his belt, F. W. Murnau was pretty well disillusioned with the American film industry.  On his two previous films - 4 Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930) - he had fallen out with the studio executives and lost artistic control.  The opportunities for making the kind of film he wanted to make had simply failed to materialise.  Tabu arose out of this frustration to break out of the constraints of Hollywood, but it was also the result of an unlikely alliance with the great documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty.  The only thing that Murnau and Flaherty had in common was a desire to make a film in Tahiti, but this was enough for them to commit themselves to an ambitious and fraught production that almost bankrupted both of them.

Murnau and Flaherty had initially agreed to direct the film together.  They collaborated on the screenplay, but when it came to shooting the film the two men could not agree on anything, and Flaherty was relegated to secondary duties, such as developing the film.  This was partly because they couldn’t stand the sight of each other, but it was also the result of a lack of manpower.  When the company that had agreed to finance the film failed to send the cheques, Murnau had no option but to fund most of the film himself, so he dispensed with most of the production crew (replacing them with natives, whom he trained) to cut the costs.  Although Murnau was able to complete the film and managed to persuade Paramount to distribute it, it proved not to be a commercial success.  But this was not the biggest blow to afflict the German filmmaker.  A week before the film’s premiere (on 18th March 1931), Murnau died in hospital from injuries sustained in an automobile accident - leading some to speculate that he had been the victim of a Polynesian curse.  Tabu is significant in that it is both Murnau’s last film and also one of the last films of the silent era.  

Tabu is in many ways Murnau’s most interesting film, and possibly his greatest.  It fits with what has gone before, both in its subject matter (likeable characters struggling against insuperable forces) and in its startling visual impact.  Of Murnau’s previous films, the one it most resembles is Sunrise (1927), but whereas that film is clearly a product of the silent era (the studio constraints are very visible, in spite of the film’s exceptional artistic quality), Tabu has a timeless feel to it and transcends the era in which it was made.  This is partly because it is concerned with universal themes, but also because it was shot entirely in a natural environment (with a non-professional cast), something which gives the film the kind of reality that was exceptionally rare at the time it was made. (Tellingly, this realism was too much for the Hollwood censors, who insisted that several cuts be made for the American release.)  The first half of the film practically serves as a documentary, recording a way of life and a culture that have probably long since disappeared.  Even when the melodrama starts to take over, the film still retains its naturalistic edge, and the sheer beauty of the cinematography (which incidentally won the film an Oscar) becomes so intoxicating that you scarcely notice the plot contrivances.

Tabu is so different from Murnau’s previous American films, and these in turn marked such a dramatic shift from his German era output, that it is hard to know just where Murnau’s cinema would have taken him had he lived beyond his 42nd birthday.  Sound would probably have made very little difference, since Murnau had used inter-titles sparingly on his silent films and had become a master at constructing a narrative and engaging his audience’s emotions through the image alone.  Murnau would probably have gone on to make increasingly personal films that allowed him to extend the boundaries of the cinematographic art - always supposing he could find someone to back him.  It is hard to imagine him staying in Hollywood as a hired hand churning out formulaic pap for the studio moguls.   What is most striking about Tabu is how unsettlingly modern it feels.  The digitally re-mastered print that is currently available is almost pristine in its quality and makes it difficult to date the film.  Whereas all of Murnau’s previous films clearly belong to the silent era, Tabu stands apart as something quite different, and pretty well unique.  Maybe, in time, it will come to be judged as one of the greatest of all silent films.  It is certainly the most enchanting and most beautifully shot of Murnau’s films - a more than adequate parting shot from one of the undisputed masters of cinema.

© James Travers 2011

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