1917 story in "Litauische Geschichten"
by Hermann Sudermann
Starring:
George O'Brien
Janet Gaynor
Margaret Livingston
Bodil Rosing
J. Farrell MacDonald
Ralph Sipperly
Photography:
Black and white
Distributed By:
Fox Film Corporation
Release Date:
1927
Runtime:
94 minutes
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (also known as Sunrise) is a 1927 American silent romantic comedy-drama directed by German director F. W. Murnau.
Why It Rocks
It was the first Fox feature to be released with a Movietone soundtrack. Hugo Riesenfeld's score mirrored the plot's Sturm and Drang, and at times pretended to synchronize with action on the screen.
The film script's based on Herman Sudermann's short story "Die Riese nach Tilsit" and was transformed into the equivalent of a blank-verse title poem on film that transformed Sudermann's characters into moral archetypes. The plot – a romantic triangle that develops after a "city woman" seduces a married farmer – is simple on a narrative level but filled with psychological nuance.
With a nearly unlimited budget, set designer Rochus Gliese's sketches were turned into remarkable sets characterized by foreshortening and sharp angles. In collaboration with Rosher and Struss, Murnau develops a style that relies on long takes, flowing camera movements that fluidly and sophisticatedly move through space, and emphatic acting.
For one scene, cameraman Charles Rosher hung tracks from the ceilings, placed the camera on a suspended platform, and had associate Karl Struss operate it upside-down while the platform revolved around the action below.
In another scene, the husband and wife take a trolley from the country to the city. Murnau had a mile of railway track laid near Lake Arrowhead to film the sequence, ending as the trolley enters a city set that reputedly cost $200,000.
Peak acting from George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor who display the highest levels of dramatic silent film acting, using their eyes and and body movements to express nuances of thought and emotion.
Murnau's compassion for the central couple seems ever-expanding: their every emotion seems to trigger some new stylistic innovation.
The movie's first major passage—depicting the Woman from the City's attempt to seduce the farmer away from his wife —mixes naturalism and expressionism to bring the characters' inner lives vibrantly to life.
The scene comes in full center during collage of superimposed images—several of them intentionally distended—that illustrates the woman's lure of coming to the city. It is a thrilling effect, primarily because it requires the viewer's imagination to complete it: as one's eyes dart around the frame, trying to take it all in, the scene can luxurious or terrifying.
The orchestration of detail is one of the film's many allusions to symphonic music, the most obvious being its three-movement structure. The second movement may be the film's major standout. It takes place in a beautiful city, a setting brought into being by the couple's re-avowal of their love. Murnau's effects invite the viewer to share in the characters' joy, reflecting their spontaneity and their astonishment
The film's blend of realism and fantasy gives it a mysterious, dreamlike quality, reflecting the experience of husband and wife as they fall in love to an almost ethereal level. The above-mentioned "style" isn't just self-indulgence, it actually serves the story. The incredible visuals are tied to the narrative, to Murnau's view of his characters, and how he wanted moviegoers to interpret the plot.
There’s brief comic relief involving a drunken pig to let both the characters and the audience "take a breath" before a harrow storm sequence.
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