Following the commercial and critical success of The Last Laugh on its US release, German wunderkind F W Murnau was invited to Hollywood and given carte blanche to make whatever film he wanted. The resulting film, Sunrise , subtitled "A song of two humans", combines some of the most sophisticated technique and mise-en-scene ever seen along with a deceptively simple story of love and redemption.
In adapting Hermann Sudermann's novella Die Reise nach Tilsit , Murnau and his regular screenwriter Carl Mayer dropped all references to specific people and places, seeking to transform them into universal archetypes.
The Plot, then – this is an initial caps sort of fable – sees the fatale "Woman from the City" (Margaret Livingston) seduce "The Man" (George O'Brien), a guileless country type and convince him to arrange for his wife, "The Woman"'s (Janet Gaynor's) death in "an accident" crossing the lake – an obvious 'threshold to adventure' zone if one wants to continue to think about the film in formalist terms – that separates town and country.
The Man, however, finds he cannot go through with the scheme and, amidst the marvels of "The City", rediscover the greatest miracle of all – love.
Thus reconciled, he and his wife return home, just as a ferocious storm blows up and overturns their boat. He makes it to shore, but where is his wife? Has an amoral nature committed the crime "The Man" could not?
Ironically, the film-makers attempt to give the Sunrise a timeless, mythic quality only serves to highlight the sense of time and place in some places, a comedy drunk scene reminding one of the fact that prohibition was in force in the US at the time and a "peasant dance" recalling the very absence of the peasantry from the new world as compared to the old and dragging us back into the realm of mundane.
The moralities of the piece are, however, surprisingly complicated – especially when we consider that everything is conveyed without speech and with Mayer's characteristically stripped down intertitles. While the creators abide by rather than deconstruct the binary oppositions around which their film revolves – good and evil, male and female, rural and urban, the madonna and the whore etc – the eschatology of the film unusually avoids directly and unambiguously punishing either "The Man" or "The Woman from the City". She is even permitted to quietly slink away after her plan has failed – presumably to the target the next sucker to present himself. It's a remarkable fate, especially when compared with the character's spiritual descendents in the 1940s film noir, and makes one wonder if, just perhaps, she isn't so much a woman as a supernatural manifestation, a notion that isn't entirely impossible given the strong religious symbolism present elsewhere…
Whether or not the contemporary audience gets Surnrise as a story or in terms of acting, there should be no question about the direction and cinematography. Film-makers today could still learn from the way Murnau tells his story via the camera, while the sheer beauty and technical accomplishment of the piece – stand out moments include the dolly shots as The Man goes to his illicit tryst with The Woman from the City and the multiple exposure process shots as her ghostly form tries to seduce away his doubts – apparent to even the empTV generation.
Perhaps not truly timeless, then, but as close as not to matter.
Eureka Video's Region 2 DVD set of Sunrise comes on two discs, the first featuring the film itself with a choice of three audio tracks, the second an extensive array of supplemental materials.
Given its vintage, that the original print is no longer extant and the restoration work undertaken, Sunrise probably looks as good here as it has done for close on 70 years. The film is framed in its original 1.20:1 aspect ratio and, while necessarily bearing the marks of age, places no barriers to one's appreciation of the cinematography and design.
The new alternate score and original Movietone music and ambience track provide a nice contrast, the latter giving the authentic experience and the former something for those who cannot bear its snap, crackle and pop.
The commentary track from John Bailey is knowledgeable but necessarily somewhat dry if one is not interested in the technical details of Schufftan process shots and the like. Aspiring cineastes will lap it up however.
The extras kick off with two essays. The first, by Janet Bergstrom, runs 40 minutes and examines The Four Devils , using stills, productions photographs and other documents to reconstruct the now lost film, a melodrama set in the world of the circus that, in sharp contrast to its predecessor, saw considerable studio interference. The second, by R Dixon Smith, runs ten minutes and looks once more at Sunrise, arguing that the film can best be understood as a German-American production that stands as a highpoint of the late silent film whose sophistication and complexities were to soon become a lost art in the early talkies.
The essays are followed by a selection of outtakes – deleted scenes in a 80-year-old film must be something of a first – with optional commentary and text, which I was unfortunately unable to access on my DVD player for some reason, and the original theatrical trailer for Sunrise, a fascinating example of film advertising discourse circa 1927.
Notes on the film's restoration – also explaining the Movietone sound-on-film process – a gallery of half-a-dozen stills and annotated and illustrated screenplays for both Sunrise and The Four Devils in computer-readable DVD-ROM format round off the disc.
All told, an impressive DVD package.
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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