F. W. Murnau

Murnau directed in Germany from 1919; most of his earliest films are lost. Nosferatu, in 1922, was an unauthorised adaptation of Dracula and the subject of a lawsuit that ended in an order to destroy the prints. The Last Laugh, in 1924, used almost no intertitles, carrying the story instead through camera movement.

He moved to the United States in 1926 and made Sunrise for Fox, which took three awards at the first Academy ceremony. The two Hollywood films that followed were subject to studio interference. He died in a car accident in California in 1931, aged forty-two, shortly after completing Tabu with Robert Flaherty.