Silent film historian Anthony Slide (Nitrate Won't Wait, Silent Players) hails the work of Les Hammer in F.W. Murnau: For the Record - the book that shatters the myth surrounding the accidental death of the silent film director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau in 1931. In his book, the author refutes the twice-told tale of sex and death in Kenneth Anger's notorious expose 'Hollywood Babylon', reveals the identity of the valet who was involved in the fatal accident and restores the illustrious name and reputation of the man whom director Werner Herzog praises as "the greatest filmmaker in Germany" - Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Heidelberg (Anglistisches Seminar), course: Cinema and Society, Kino und Gesellschaft, language: English, abstract: 1 Introduction In adapting Stoker’s Dracula, Murnau has made quite a few changes to the original plot. Some of them were made due to economic and practical reasons, such as moving the setting and locations to Germany, some of them in order to avoid charges of copyright infringement, such as changing the characters’ names, as Murnau was not authorised to make an adaptation. However, Murnau doesn’t simply copy Dracula. Stoker’s novel about the intrusion of an alien evil into English society is transformed into a story mirroring the fears that prevailed in Germany in the late 1910’s. Screenwriter Henrik Galeen and di¬rector Murnau were obviously influenced by the impressions that both World War I and the influenza pandemic had left. The war had left large areas in Central Europe in ruins and had triggered many political changes. Often, the new-founded Weimar Republic was seen as weak and incapable of acting. Moreover, the outbreak of the Spanish Flu in 1918 proved no less devastating, ranking “with the plague of Justinian and the Black Death as one of the three most destructive human epidemics.”(1) Assisted by large troop movements and disastrous hygienic con¬ditions after the armistice, the disease spread across the globe within less than three months. Physicians and scientist were helpless. There was no immunization available: the influenza virus could not be isolated and positively identified as the pathogene until 1932. In fact, even today there are no means of preventing another influenza epidemic(2) . Murnau begins with a caption that presents the movie as a record of an epidemic: “Aufzeichnung über das große Sterben in Wisborg.” The vampire is not the party animal that Lugosi impersonated; instead, Murnau draws on a tradition that associates vampires with unexpected or inexplicable death. His creature feeds on a society which is defenseless against him, either because its members are too weakened or too terrified to take action. Thus, though set almost one hundred years in the past, Nosferatu presents an actualisation of Dracula. [...] ______ (1) Potter, C.W. “A history of influenza”. Journal of Applied Microbiology 31. 2001: 575. (2) cf. ibid., 572.

DIVA collection of essays illustrating new methods and theories of film history./div

Given Herzog’s own pronouncement that ‘film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates,’ it is not surprising that his work has aroused ambivalent and contradictory responses. Visually and philosophically ambitious and at the same time provocatively eccentric, Herzog’s films have been greeted equally by extreme adulation and extreme condemnation. Even as Herzog’s rebellious images have gained him a reputation as a master of the German New Wave, he has been attacked for indulging in a romantic naiveté and wilful self-absorption. To his hardest critics, Herzog’s films appear as little more than Hollywood fantasies disguised as high seriousness. This book is an attempt to illuminate these contradictions. It gathers essays that focus from a variety of angles on Herzog and his work. The contributors move beyond the myths of Herzog to investigate the merits of his work and its place in film history. A challenging range of films is covered, from Fata Morgana and Aguirre, the Wrath of God to more recent features such as Nosferatu and Where the Green Ants Dream, offering the reader ways of understanding why, whatever the controversies surrounding Herzog and his films, he remains a major and popular international filmmaker. Orignally published in 1986.

Biography of filmmaker who produced "Nanook of the North" among other films.