Tabu

Tabu

A sensual island masterpiece, Tabu began as the collaboration between two talented Hollywood outsiders — accomplished documentarian Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North), who had recently been fired from his first attempt at fiction filmmaking, and German expatriate Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, whose American debut, Sunrise, was an artistic triumph that had failed miserably at the box office. The pair set out for the South Seas in 1929 and, working from an original story by Flaherty, hashed out a tragic screen tale of youthful love destroyed by societal conventions. Tabu relates the elemental story of a young island fisherman (the exceptionally virile Matahi) whose nascent romance with the beautiful Reri (Anna Chevalier) is dashed when a visiting tribal chief decrees her a holy maid whom it is taboo for any man to touch. Despite the directors’ shared romanticism and affinity for lyrical beauty, their collaboration fell apart once it moved to the directing stage. Flaherty found himself confounded by Murnau’s imperious approach and eventually abdicated control of the film. As a result, the sun-drenched Tabu gradually drifted into darker thematic waters, leading to a fateful finale so perfectly composed and rhythmically edited that it still has the power to make modern audiences swoon. The film’s sumptuous black-and-white cinematography earned cameraman Floyd Crosby an Oscar. And although Tabu wasn’t released until 1931 — four years after The Jazz Singer — it is a resolutely silent film, with images so distilled that not a single title card is necessary to convey dialogue. Sadly, Murnau would never again climb to such artistic heights; he was killed in an automobile accident only a few short weeks before the premiere of this cinematic jewel. — D.G. (written for Barnes & Noble.com)