Tabu

The title card of this film contains the subtitle, "A Story of the South Seas." The opening of the film states: "Only native-born South Sea islanders appear in this picture, with a few half-castes and Chinese." The title of F. W. Murnau and Robert Flaherty's story was "Turia." Murnau and Flaherty reportedly left for Tahiti with Hollywood actress Lotus Long, but when Colorart, the film's financial backer, went bankrupt in the 1929 stockmarket crash, Murnau decided to finance the film himself and use an all-native Polynesian cast. A Motion Picture Herald review says Murnau selected "lovely Polynesian half-breeds delectably beautiful and white enough to appeal to any American audience taste." This film was shot on Bora Bora and Takapota Islands in Tahiti, where Murnau and Flaherty spent eight months in production. The film was shot silent, with music and subtitles added later. According to a contemporary source, Murnau directed Reri and Matahi in French. Jean, who plays the part of the policeman, was the interpreter for the rest of the cast. He later went on to play the Tahitian chief in M-G-M's 1935 film Mutiny on the Bounty. Reri, later known as Anna Chevalier, became a successful dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies and in New York nightclubs. After marrying a nobleman in Poland, and making a picture in Europe, she returned to the islands to live. Floyd Crosby won an Academy Award for Cinematography for this film. Hollywood Reporter credits "Robert Folsey" with photography, although this is probably a mistaken reference for Robert Flaherty, whom some modern sources credit with co-photography. On March 11, 1931, the night he completed work on the assembly of Tabu, Murnau was killed in a car accident near Santa Barbara, CA. Murnau was buried in Berlin.
       Film scholars disagree over Flaherty's contribution to this film. His brother David wrote a modern account of the rift that occurred between Murnau and Flaherty during the film's production. According to David Flaherty, "Murnau made a Murnau picture there." In his biography of Murnau, Seymour Stern said that in 1948 Theodore Huff falsified history by giving a split director credit to Murnau and Flaherty. According to Stern, the original scenario was jointly written by Murnau and Flaherty, but Flaherty's contribution was less than five percent of the total script and was mostly unusable. A modern source states that Paramount was prepared to offer Murnau a ten-year contract in anticipation of the success of Tabu. Another modern source states that, according to Upton Sinclair, Murnau spent $135,000 making the film, in accordance with his contract with Paramount, which specified that if he made the initial outlay of cash, he would receive fifty percent of the film's net box-office profits. The source also indicates that the film's musical score cost $9,000, and the film ran fourteen weeks at the Central Park Theatre in New York. In 1952, Variety reported that re-issue rights for this film were acquired by Manor Films. The film's copyright was renewed July 31, 1959 by Samuel G. Brown, the legal owner of the posthumous work of Murnau. Brown shared ownership of Tabu with his brother Rowland, an American director.