Sunrise (film)

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Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (aka Sunrise) is a 1927 American film directed by F.W. Murnau. This film is one of the first with a soundtrack of music and sound effects recorded in then-new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story Die Reise Nach Tilsit by Hermann Sudermann.

Plot

Sunrise tells a fable of a married farmer, The Man (George O'Brien) who gives up dinner with The Wife (Janet Gaynor) to continue an affair with The Woman From The City (Margaret Livingston). The Woman convinces The Man that he should drown The Wife and move with her to The City. They decide he should take her out on a boat trip, commit the crime, and say it was an accident. The Wife agrees to go on the trip, yearning for any bit of time and affection from her husband, but soon grows suspicious of his behavior.

Style

Sunrise was made by F.W. Murnau, a German director who was one of the leading figures in German Expressionism, a style that uses distorted art design for symbolic effect. Murnau was invited by 20th Century Fox to make an Expressionist film in Hollywood, and most of the crew were his German colleagues. ^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} The resulting film features enormous stylized sets that create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world.

Awards

The movie was the only film to win the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production (in 1929, for films made in 1927 or 1928) when it was a variation of Best Picture. Gaynor won the Academy Award for Best Actress. It placed in the top 10 on the Sight and Sound Critic poll in 2002, and featured on American Film Institute's 100 Passions. The film has also been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Trivia

• Murnau apparently had George O'Brien wear boots specially weighted with lead in certain scenes to lend him an air of oppression and despair.

• When asked years later about winning the first Academy Award for Best Actress, Janet Gayor said that if she'd been aware of how important the award was to become, she would've appreciated the moment more, rather than simply ogling Douglas Fairbanks.

• Much of the exterior shooting was done at Lake Arrowhead in California.

• Murnau makes extensive use of forced perspective throughout the film. Of special note is a shot of the City where you see normal-sized in the foreground and midgets in the background along with much smaller sets.

• Janet Gaynor went on to star in Murnau's film Four Devils, probably one of the most notable lost films.

• 20th Century Fox released this movie as a special, limited edition DVD, available only by mailing in proofs-of-purchase for other DVD titles in their "Studio Classics" line. Copies can frequently be found on Ebay.

External links

• [Roger Ebert's Great Movie Essay on Sunrise]
• [Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans] at the [Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films] list

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Der Knabe in Blau (1919) • Der Januskopf (1920) • Abend - Nacht - Morgen (1920) • Satanas (1920) • Sehnsucht (1920) • Der Gang in die Nacht (1920) • Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin (1920) • Schloß Vogelöd (1921) • Marizza (1922) • Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) • Phantom (1922) • Der Brennende Acker (1922) • Die Austreibung (1923) • Der Letzte Mann (1924) • Die Finanzen des Großherzogs (1924) • Herr Tartüff (1926) • Faust (1926) • Sunrise (1927) • Four Devils (1928) • City Girl (1930) • Tabu (1931)

 

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