For Lotte H. Eisner, F. W. Murnau was ‘the greates[t film director the Germans have ever known […] He created the most overwhelming, the most stunning images on the German screen.’1¹ If we look back carefully at The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt and at Murnau, we can see that Eisner presents the director’s achievements in an entirely different way in each book.2² Unlike the four chapters devoted to Murnau’s films in The Haunted Screen, Eisner structures her monograph on the director as a defence against charges that he did not deserve credit for the artistic and technical qualities so much admired in his films. How did this challenge arise so persuasively that Eisner felt compelled to mount a strong argument against it?

中文翻译：

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为 FW Murnau 辩护

对于 Lotte H. Eisner 来说，FW Murnau 是“德国人所知道的最伟大的电影导演 [...] 他创造了德国银幕上最令人印象深刻、最令人惊叹的画面。” ^{1 1}如果我们仔细回顾一下The Haunted银幕：德国电影中的表现主义和马克斯莱因哈特的影响以及在穆尔瑙，我们可以看到艾斯纳在每本书中都以完全不同的方式呈现导演的成就。2 ²与《闹鬼的银幕》中专门介绍穆尔瑙电影的四章不同, 艾斯纳将她关于这位导演的专着编排为对指控的辩护，即他在电影中备受推崇的艺术和技术品质不值得称赞。这个挑战是如何引起如此有说服力的，以至于艾斯纳觉得有必要提出强有力的论据来反对它？