Germany · Film
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas
F.W. Murnau · 1931
Though shot in Bora Bora, Murnau's silent fable of forbidden love and sacred prohibition maps a westerner's vision of an island cosmology that punishes those who cannot recognize the kingly authority of taboo. Its ravishing pictorialism mirrors Laye's South, where the seeker mistakes beauty for permission until the sacred reasserts itself.