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OPEN CLASSIC CINEMA · 839

Tartuffe

192665 minGermany
Drama

Synopsis

A young actor suspects that his grandfather's housekeeper is manipulating the old man to obtain his inheritance. Disguising himself as a traveling film exhibitor, he arranges a screening of Tartuffe. The story of a pious fraud entering another household becomes a way to reveal the deception taking place in the room where the audience is watching.

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Video edition
Wikimedia Commons
Original language
No spoken dialogue. Intertitles: German.
This copy runs
65:04
Subtitles
No subtitle track in this language

No spoken dialogue. Intertitles: German. No subtitle track in this language.

Languages and subtitles

No subtitle track in this language

Wikimedia Commons · F. W. Murnau · Public domain

Cast

DirectorsF. W. Murnau

Inspirations

Murnau and Carl Mayer condense Molière's play and place it inside a modern framing story. Cinema itself becomes the instrument used to expose hypocrisy, connecting the spectators' situation with the drama on their screen.

Sources and availability

General references identify the work and its copy. A reference beside an editorial section is linked to the claims checked in that section.

Wikipedia — film referenceWikidata — film identity and credits

Work catalogued as public domain in the United States.

The public-domain references concern the original films in the United States. Rights can differ for other countries, editions, restorations, music or translations. Sources are listed on each film page.

Availability checked on September 12, 2026.

Photograph credit

Photographs cropped, resized and optimized as WebP, displayed in monochrome.

  • Rosa Valetti — Unknown author Unknown author; Via [1] · Public domain
  • Werner Krauss — George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress); This image is available from the United States Library of Congress 's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ggbain.37082 . This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing . · Public domain
  • Lil Dagover — Alexander Binder; Ross-Karte Nr. 265/5 · Public domain
  • Lucie Höflich — Unknown Unknown; This image was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) as part of a cooperation project . The German Federal Archive guarantees an authentic representation only using the originals (negative and/or positive), resp. the digitalization of the originals as provided by the Digital Image Archive . · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
  • Emil Jannings — Unknown author · Public domain

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