This song of the Man and his Wife is of no place and every place ✵ Sunrise - VISIONARIES ✵ 1902–1931 - The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

RG

RG

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Silent drama

DIRECTOR

F. W. Murnau

WRITERS

Carl Mayer (screenplay); Hermann Sudermann (short story)

STARS

George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, Bodil Rosing

BEFORE

1922 Murnau’s Nosferatu helps to define the horror genre in a nightmarish version of Dracula.

AFTER

1927 Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s science-fiction classic, also features the spectacle of the modern city.

1930 Murnau’s City Girl tells the story of a flapper falling in love with a farm boy and being rejected by his family.

In 1927, one movie changed the course of cinema history: The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, was the first ever feature-length “talkie.” But another song was playing in picture palaces that year, and it was a silent movie. In Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, German director F. W. Murnau attempted to distill a universal human experience into 90 wordless minutes of beautiful monochrome imagery, accompanied only by music and sound effects.

At a lakeside village, two clandestine lovers meet under the moonlight. The man (George O’Brien) is an honest country fellow who has been seduced by the vampish woman from the city (Margaret Livingston). She urges him to sell his farm and come with her to pursue a life of excitement in the city. The man is married, however, to his sweet young wife (Janet Gaynor). When he asks the woman: “And my wife?” a sly look comes into his lover’s eyes. “Couldn’t she get drowned?” is the chilling title card.

The rural setting, creeping fog, and shifting, spidery shadows of this scene recall Murnau’s other great masterpiece, the archetypal vampire movie Nosferatu. Sunrise looks set to deliver an equally sensationalist story of sex, death, violence, and betrayal. But will the man commit murder? With her black bob, sleek satin dress, and smoldering cigarette, the woman from the city embodies the amorality of the metropolis, while the man is a symbol of rustic innocence. The viewer assumes that Sunrise will be a chronicle of corruption; at one point the woman appears devil-like on the man’s shoulder, urging him to sin. The man invites his wife to take a boat ride, but when the moment comes to drown her, he can’t go through with it.

The man hesitates, the wife escapes, and when he catches up with her, the pair find themselves on a tram bound for the city. Unable to discuss what has happened at the lake for fear of being overheard, they stay on the tram.

RG

Sunrise was one of the first movies with sound effects, but its innovations were largely overlooked.

City awakening

This is where Sunrise surprises us. The metropolis has a magical effect on the man and his wife as they spend the day wandering through its vertiginous throng, thrown together in a touching, accidental second courtship.

Yet there is still much drama ahead, and more unforgettable sights: crowds through which the camera swoops, street carnivals, and strange hallucinogenic patterns in the bright lights. Danger, too, will reappear, the past not so easily escaped. And all of it is made with the kind of ambition—Murnau’s “city” was made up of vast, complex, hugely expensive sets—that has led many to see Sunrise as a pinnacle of the silent movies, a beautiful last waltz.

RG

Unable to go through with the murder, the man follows his wife to a tram, and they both end up heading for the city.

Last sunrise

Sunrise plays like a montage of the silent era’s greatest hits, a flickering carousel of melodrama, suspense, horror, spectacle, slapstick, and tragedy. The US release was given a Movietone soundtrack, which added piglet squeals, traffic horns, and other clunky effects, but the movie doesn’t need these to bring its world to life. “Wherever the sun rises and sets,” says the closing title card, “in the city’s turmoil or under the open sky on the farm, life is much the same; sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet.”

"Murnau’s films are gorgeous, and Sunrise is no exception. Its luscious black-and-white photography and sweeping camera moves haven’t aged."

Pamela Hutchinson
The Guardian

F. W. MURNAU Director

Born in Germany in 1888, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau fought for his country in the horror of World War I before making a horror of his own: Nosferatu, the first movie to be based on Dracula. The Last Laugh proved that Murnau could move his audiences as skillfully as he could terrify them. A highly literate man, Murnau brought Goethe’s Faust to the big screen before moving to Hollywood in 1926. His first US movie was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. He died in a car crash in 1931.

Key movies

1922 Nosferatu

1924 The Last Laugh

1927 Sunrise

What else to watch: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) ✵ Faust (1926) ✵ The Lodger (1927) ✵ Wings (1927) ✵ Street Angel (1928) ✵ Man with a Movie Camera (1929) ✵ City Lights (1931) ✵ A Star Is Born (1937)