Tartuffe (1925)

Herr Tartüff

Watch the Movie!

The film starred Emil Jannings as Tartuffe, Lil Dagover as Elmire and Werner Krauss as Orgon. Although retaining the basic plot, Murnau and Mayer pared down Molière's play, eliminating most of the secondary characters and concentrating on the triangle of Orgon, Elmire and Tartuffe. They also introduced a framing device, whereby the story of Tartuffe becomes a film-within-a-film, shown by a young actor as a device to warn his grandfather about his unctuous but evil housekeepe.