F. W. Murnau

[F. W. Murnau]. Lotte H. Eisner. F. W. Murnau. [Paris]: Le terrain vague, 1964. First edition. Octavo (8.625 x 6.375 inches; 220 x 160 mm.). 255, [1, contents continued] pages (note: first two pages blank). Numerous photographic reproductions on 28 double-sided plates inserted throughout. Publisher's binding in the original illustrated wrappers; page edges untrimmed; no endpapers. Wrappers lightly rubbed; somewhat soiled on the rear wrapper and along the fore-edge of the front wrapper; backstrip with some very minor spotty discoloration, the A in Murnau rubbed with a short dark blemish, a couple light creases and a small chip at the base of the spine; edges and joints a little worn. Three strips of discoloration from old tape mends (not sure why they were necessary) with offsetting on the preliminary blank; a few leaves roughly opened. Very good. Text in French.

Winner of the 1965 prix littéraire du Syndicat français de la critique de cinéma (best cinema book, mercifully renamed to the prix Armand-Tallier in 1977). Lotte Eisner immigrated to France in 1933 and established herself as a leading critic; she served as Chief Curator for the Cinémathèque française starting in 1945.

Eisner was the friend Werner Herzog walked from Munich to Paris to visit in order to prevent her death. His journey was chronicled in Von Gehem im Eis (Of Walkin in Ice, translation published in 2015 by University of Minnesota Press). "At the end of November 1974, a friend from Paris called and told me that Lotte Eisner was seriously ill and would probably die. I said that this much not be, not at this time, German cinema could not do without her now, we would not permit her death."

She was Germany's most prominent film brain, writing here about its most accomplished filmmaker.

Viejo 19.13. (#10063).