1988 0-7734-2014-2 This study maintains that Murnau, and by extension the long-rake, deep-focus, moving camera approach to filmmaking he initiated, have their artistic foundations in the theater, precisely in the romantic theatrical movement of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The study begins with Wagner, the undisputed leader of romanticism at the time both as artist and aesthetician, and also examines George II, Adolphe Appia, Max Reinhardt, and ends with F.W. Murnau.