Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (Masters of Cinema) [Blu-ray]
In 1929, F. W. Murnau ( Nosferatu, Faust, Sunrise), one of the greatest of
all film directors, invited leading documentarist Robert Flaherty ( Nanook of
the North, Man of Aran) to collaborate on a film to be be shot on location in
Tahiti, a Polynesian idyll in which Murnau imagined a cast of island actors
would provide a new form of authentic drama and offer rare insight into their ”
primitive ” culture. The result of their collaboration was Tabu, a film that
depicts the details of indigenous island life to tell a mythical tale that is
rich in the universal themes of desire and loss.
Subtitled ” A Story of the South Seas “, Tabu concerns a Tahitian fisherman
(played by an islander, Matahi) and his love for a young woman (played by fellow
islander Reri, who went on to star on Broadway) whose body has been consecrated
to the gods, rendering her tabu as far as mortal men are concerned. The lovers
flee their island and its restrictive traditions, but will their love prevail in
the ” civilised ” world?
This Oscar – winning film (the Academy Award went to cinematographer Floyd
Crosby) is both poetic and simple in tone. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud
to present – completely unc¬ensored and fully restored – this landmark film of
rare exoticism and magical beauty, described by critic Lotte Eisner in 1931 as ”
the apogee of the art of the silent film “, for the first time ever on Blu – ray
in its original aspect ratio.
