Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)

You won't be disappointed!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

A Disappointing Continuation

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

A stunning docudrama takes the beautiful landscapes of Bora Bora and turns it into a visual paradise to drool over. Absolutely stunning and sumptuous in every way, this shows the every day play and work of the happy go lucky south sea natives and the growing love between a young man and girl, threatened to be separated forever when it is commanded by the order of the local chief that she be made the honorary virgin of the volcano, untouched by man. Any attempts to take away the virgin or deflower her is a curse for all, but young love, even among the superstitious allows no such circumstance to be separated, putting the two on the run for their lives.Ending up on a nearby port, the two lovers do their best to hide from those looking for them, even having fun in a modern native dance, nothing like they've ever seen before. But the dangers are constantly looming, every glance at them is a risk of being caught, and that keeps this flowing with excitement at breakneck speed. The attractive, barely covered cast does a great job without dialog, the only narration being a series of letters to indicate the passage of time and to reveal the most important if details. This is F.W. Murnau's masterpiece, filled with reminders of the dangers these free loving people faced, through nature, through superstition, through chance. The Kino DVD features an extremely memorable musical score that really helps the emotions of the film tell the story until its completion.

"Tabu" is a visually arresting black-and-white silent...and that's a good thing because there's not much else going on here to occupy your mind. Heavy-handed "plot" about a doomed beauty on primitive Bora Bora who flees her island home and family with her lover, unable to escape her unlucky fate, is cast with real islanders so you cannot fault the authenticity; however, there's nobody in the film who leaves an impression. The movie began life as a documentary, but director F.W. Murnau pushed for a fictional storyline to propel the visuals, and this may have been a mistake. As it unfolds, one can see shot after shot of beautiful images that would look wonderful in a coffee-table book for the tiki lounge set, but the dated dramatics muddy things up. Floyd Crosby won a well-deserved Oscar for his cinematography. **1/2 from ****

This is a great film, one that actually benefits from being silent. The south-seas love story could seem incredibly hackneyed, but the sensitive silent presentation makes it all seem believable. Flaherty's painstaking ethnographic research pays off, establishing that we are getting a genuine look at Polynesian village life. The roles are played by actual villagers under their own names.This was originally going to be a documentary like Nanook of the North, but Murnau got so fascinated by Polynesian legends told by the locals that he decided to incorporate them into the story. This also meant that he had to invest his own money in the film, as Hollywood would have none of it. Nowadays we think anything so beautiful couldn't be genuine, but Murnau and Flaherty seem to have constructed an accurate document.The tragic love story has its parallel in real life, as Murnau was killed in a car-crash days after the film's completion.The MTV generation is better able to appreciate silent films than the 60's crowd, so I recommend to viewers interested in something different.

For discerning fans of classic filmmaking, the surviving work of director F.W. Murnau remains some of the most significant and stunning of the silent era. Filmed entirely in Tahiti, `Tabu' would prove to be Murnau's last film (he died in a tragic car accident on March 11, 1931, just weeks before the film's premiere) and most unusual - he actually collaborated with director Robert Flaherty (`Nanook of the North') in this tale of two doomed lovers that unintentionally transports `Romeo and Juliet' into the South Pacific. Unlike his landmark expressionist titles such as `Nosferatu' and `Faust,' Murnau's `Tabu' is set mostly outdoors and features dazzling images of beautiful young native men and women at home in their Polynesian paradise in the first part of the film, with haunting images used to chronicle tragedy and paradise lost in the second half of the 81 minute classic.Although no members of the cast were professional actors, the performances by Matahi (as a young pearl fisherman) and Reri (as the `tabu' island girl) are moving. More than 70 years after its release, `Tabu' remains essential viewing, and UCLA's restoration of this classic has been a highlight of the schedule of new DVD releases in 2002. In fact, the film's luxurious black-and-white cinematography garnered cameraman Floyd Crosby an Oscar. DVD extras include audio commentary by UCLA Film Professor Janet Bergstrom; outtake footage; theatrical trailer; still gallery; short film titled `Reri in New York.'