F. W. Murnau

Silent cinema arguing that the camera can narrate alone. Murnau moved the camera when almost nobody did, built forced-perspective sets, and told stories with so few intertitles that the image had to carry everything.

Signature

• The unchained camera — mobile where contemporaries were static.
• Expressionist sets, forced perspective and painted depth.
• Near-total avoidance of intertitles.
• Light and shadow as moral register.