Abstract

The word plays a crucial role in F.W. Murnau’s last film, Tabu: A Story of the Seas (1931). It is the action of the word that expels the protagonists from Paradise and seals their tragic fate. Written or spoken, the word finds expression through multiple media, which means that there is plurality in the way the word is represented during the course of the film. Therefore, the aim of this essay is to analyze what formal strategies Murnau adopts to inscribe the word into the plot, as well as to ascertain what is the possible symbolic meaning of the word in the film.