Dir. F.W. Murnau
The film is split into two chapters. The first, called “Paradise”, depicts the lives of two lovers on a South Seas island where nature and their community are in harmony, until they are forced to escape the island when the girl is chosen as a holy maid to the gods. The second chapter, “Paradise Lost”, depicts the couple’s life on a colonised island and how they adapt to and are exploited by Western civilisation. Murnau didn’t live to see the film’s premiere, the failure at the box-office or its subsequent acclaim as he died in hospital after a car accident a week before its first showing in New York City. Buy
