Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

Last updated

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by F. W. Murnau
Screenplay by Carl Mayer
Based on"The Excursion to Tilsit"
1917 story in "Litauische Geschichten"
by Hermann Sudermann
Produced by William Fox
Starring
Cinematography
Edited by Harold Schuster
Music by Hugo Riesenfeld
Production
company
Distributed byFox Film Corporation
Release date
  • November 4, 1927 (1927-11-04)
[1]
Running time
95 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSound (Synchronized)
(English Intertitles)
Box office$818,000 (U.S. and Canada rentals) [2]
Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans (full film)
Janet Gaynor, winner of first Best Actress Academy Award Janet Gaynor - Sunrise (1927).jpg
Janet Gaynor, winner of first Best Actress Academy Award

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (also known as Sunrise) is a 1927 American synchronized sound romantic drama directed by German director F. W. Murnau (in his American film debut) and starring George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, and Margaret Livingston. The film's plot follows a married farmer (O'Brien) who falls for a woman vacationing from the city (Livingston), who tries to convince him to murder his wife (Gaynor) in order to be with her. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Movietone sound-on-film process. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "The Excursion to Tilsit", from the 1917 collection with the same title by Hermann Sudermann. [3] [4]

Contents

Murnau chose to use the then new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, making Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects soundtrack. The film incorporated Charles Gounod's 1872 composition Funeral March of a Marionette , which inspired its use as the theme for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965). Frédéric Chopin's A minor prelude also features prominently in orchestral arrangement.

Sunrise won the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Picture at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film (the award was also for her performances in 1927's 7th Heaven and 1928's Street Angel ). [5] The film's legacy has endured, and it is now widely considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made. Many have called it the greatest film of the silent era. In 1989, Sunrise was one of the first 25 films selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [6] [7] The Academy Film Archive preserved Sunrise in 2004. [8] The 2007 update of the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films ranked it number 82, [9] and the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll named it the fifth-best film in the history of motion pictures, while directors named it 22nd. [10]

Although the original 35mm negative of the original American version of Sunrise was destroyed in the 1937 Fox vault fire, a new negative was created from a surviving print. [11]

Plot

A vacationing woman from the city lingers in a lakeside town for weeks. After dark, she goes to a farmhouse where the Man and the Wife live with their child. She whistles from the fence outside. The Man is torn, but finally departs, leaving his wife with the memories of better times when they were deeply in love.

The man and woman meet in the moonlight and kiss passionately. She wants him to sell his farm—which has not done well recently—to join her in the city. When she suggests that he solve the problem of his wife by drowning her, he throttles her violently, but even that dissolves in a passionate embrace. The Woman gathers bundles of reeds so that when the boat is overturned, the Man can stay afloat.

The Wife suspects nothing when her husband suggests going on an outing, but when they set off across the lake, she soon grows suspicious. He prepares to throw her overboard, but when she pleads for his mercy, he realizes he cannot do it. He rows frantically for shore, and when the boat reaches land, the Wife flees.

She boards a trolley, and he follows, begging her not to be afraid of him. The trolley brings them to the city. Her fear and disappointment are overwhelming. He plies her with flowers and bread and finally she stops crying and accepts his gifts. Emerging back on the street, they are touched to see a bride enter a church for her processional, and follow her inside to watch the wedding. The Man breaks down and asks her to forgive him. After a tearful reconciliation, they continue their adventure in the city, having their photograph taken together and visiting a funfair. As darkness falls, they board the trolley for home.

Soon they are drifting back across the lake under the moonlight. A sudden storm causes their boat to begin sinking. The Man remembers the two bundles of reeds he placed in the boat earlier and ties the bundles around the Wife. The boat capsizes, and the Man awakes on a rocky shore. He gathers the townspeople to search the lake, but all they find is a broken bundle of reeds floating in the water.

Convinced the Wife has drowned, the grief-stricken Man stumbles home. The Woman from the City goes to his house, assuming their plan has succeeded. The Man begins to choke her. Then the Maid calls to him that his wife is alive, so he releases the Woman and runs to the Wife, who survived by clinging to one last bundle of reeds.

The Man kneels by the Wife's bed as she slowly opens her eyes. The Man and the Wife kiss, while the Woman from the city's carriage rolls down the hill toward the lake, and the film dissolves to the sunrise.

Cast

Style

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans trailer

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 William Fox to make an Expressionist film in Hollywood.

The resulting film features enormous stylized sets that create an exaggerated and fairy-tale world; the city street set alone reportedly cost over US$200,000 to build and was re-used in many subsequent Fox productions, including John Ford's Four Sons (1928). [12] Much of the exterior shooting was done at Lake Arrowhead, California.

Full of cinematic innovations, the groundbreaking cinematography (by Charles Rosher and Karl Struss) features particularly praised tracking shots. Titles appear sparingly, with long sequences of pure action and the bulk of the story told in Murnau's signature style. The extensive use of forced perspective is striking, particularly in a shot of the city with normal-sized people and sets in the foreground and smaller figures in the background by much smaller sets.

The characters go unnamed, lending them a universality conducive to symbolism. [13] Veit Harlan compared his German remake Die Reise nach Tilsit (1939); pointing to the symbolism and soft focus of the original, he claimed that Sunrise was a poem, whereas his realistic Die Reise nach Tilsit was a film. [14]

Release

Sunrise premiered on September 23, 1927. It was accompanied by the first ever talking newsreels, which attracted much of the initial interest in the film. [15]

Reception and legacy

The film received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator holds an approval rating of 'fresh' 98%, based on 65 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Boasting masterful cinematography to match its well-acted, wonderfully romantic storyline, Sunrise is perhaps the final—and arguably definitive—statement of the silent era." [16]

Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times hailed Sunrise as "A Film Masterpiece". [3] A reviewer for Time , however, called its story "meagre" while writing that the film overall "manages to remain picturesquely soporific for a long evening". [4] Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is now widely considered by film critics and historians to be one of the greatest films ever made.

Awards and nominations

Academy Award wins (1929) [17]

Academy Award nominations (1929)

Other distinctions

Home media

20th Century Fox originally released Sunrise on DVD in Region 1, but only as a special limited edition available only by mailing in proofs-of-purchase for other DVD titles in their "20th Century Fox Studio Classics" line, or as part of the box set Studio Classics: The 'Best Picture' Collection. The DVD includes commentary, a copy of the film's trailer, details about Murnau's lost film Four Devils , outtakes, and many more features.

In late 2008, Fox released the "Murnau, Borzage and Fox Box Set" in some markets. Both Movietone and European silent versions of Sunrise are included. A documentary of the three individuals is also part of the collection.

Sunrise has also been released on DVD in the UK as part of the Masters of Cinema series. In September 2009, Masters of Cinema released a 2-disc DVD reissue, containing both the Movietone version and the shorter Czech print found on the 2008 "Murnau, Borzage and Fox" DVD, as well as the extra features found on the previous Masters of Cinema DVD release and the Fox Studio Classics release. The film was released simultaneously on Blu-ray Disc, [19] with both versions of the feature rendered in 1080p High-definition video, and both the stereo and the mono soundtracks rendered in Dolby TrueHD lossless audio. This UK release was the first occasion of a silent film being released on Blu-ray. The Blu-ray disk is apparently not region-encoded, and thus should be viewable on any Blu-ray disk player. [20]

In January 2014, the film was released in the US on a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack by 20th Century Fox.

The film's copyright was renewed in 1954. [21] Sunrise entered the public domain on January 1, 2023. [22]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janet Gaynor</span> American actress, oil painter (1906–1984)

Janet Gaynor was an American film, stage and television actress as well as an accomplished oil painter.

<i>7th Heaven</i> (1927 film) 1927 film by Frank Borzage

7th Heaven is a 1927 American synchronized sound romantic drama directed by Frank Borzage, and starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Movietone sound system. The film is based upon the 1922 play Seventh Heaven, by Austin Strong and was adapted for the screen by Benjamin Glazer. 7th Heaven was initially released as a standard silent film in May 1927. On September 10, 1927, Fox Film Corporation re-released the film with a synchronized Movietone soundtrack with a musical score and sound effects.

<i>Tabu: A Story of the South Seas</i> 1931 film

Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, sometimes simply called Tabu, is a 1931 American synchronized sound film directed by F. W. Murnau. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Western Electric Sound System sound-on-film process. A docufiction, it is split into two chapters: The first, called "Paradise", depicts the lives of two lovers on a South Seas island until they are forced to escape the island when the girl is chosen as a holy maid to the gods. The second chapter, "Paradise Lost", depicts the couple's life on a colonised island and how they adapt to and are exploited by Western civilisation. The title comes from the Polynesian concept of tapu, from which is derived the English word "taboo".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">F. W. Murnau</span> German film director (1888–1931)

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was a German film director, producer and screenwriter. He is regarded as one of cinema's most influential filmmakers for his work in the silent era.

<i>Street Angel</i> (1928 film) 1928 film by Frank Borzage

Street Angel is a 1928 American synchronized sound drama film. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-film movietone process. The film was directed by Frank Borzage, adapted by Harry H. Caldwell (titles), Katherine Hilliker (titles), Philip Klein, Marion Orth and Henry Roberts Symonds from the play Lady Cristilinda by Monckton Hoffe. As one of the early, transitional sound film releases, it did not include recorded dialogue, but used intertitles along with recorded sound effects and musical selections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Fox (producer)</span> Hungarian-American film producer (1879–1952)

Wilhelm Fried Fuchs, commonly and better known as William Fox, was a Hungarian-American film industry executive who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s. Although he lost control of his film businesses in 1930, his name was used by 20th Century Fox and continues to be used in the trademarks of the present-day Fox Corporation, including the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox News, Fox Sports and Foxtel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George O'Brien (actor)</span> American actor (1899–1985)

George O'Brien was an American actor, popular during the silent film era and into the sound film era of the 1930s. He is best known today as the lead actor in F. W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and subsequent appearances in a number of Westerns in the 1930s and 1940s.

<i>Cavalcade</i> (1933 film) 1933 film

Cavalcade is a 1933 American epic pre-Code drama film directed by Frank Lloyd. The screenplay by Reginald Berkeley and Sonya Levien is based on the 1931 play of the same title by Noël Coward. The film stars Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook.

<i>Mother Machree</i> 1928 film by John Ford

Mother Machree is a 1928 American synchronized sound drama film directed by John Ford that is based on the 1924 work The Story of Mother Machree by Rida Johnson Young about a poor Irish immigrant in America. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score, singing and sound effects using the sound-on-film movietone process. Rida Johnson Young had invented Mother Machree in the stage show Barry of Ballymoore in 1910. John Wayne has a minor role in the film.

<i>Lucky Star</i> (1929 film) 1929 film by Frank Borzage

Lucky Star is a 1929 sound part-talkie American romantic drama film starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, and directed by Frank Borzage. In addition to sequences with audible dialogue or talking sequences, the film features a synchronized musical score and sound effects along with English intertitles. The soundtrack was recorded using the Movietone sound-on-film system. The plot involves the impact of World War I upon a farm girl (Gaynor) and a returning soldier (Farrell).

<i>Delicious</i> (1931 film) 1931 film

Delicious (1931) is an American pre-Code Gershwin musical romantic comedy film starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, directed by David Butler, with color sequences in Multicolor.

<i>Merely Mary Ann</i> 1931 film

Merely Mary Ann a 1931 American pre-Code romantic comedy drama film starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. Gaynor and Farrell made almost a dozen films together, including Frank Borzage's classics 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), and Lucky Star (1929); Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for the first two and F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. The film, involving an orphan (Gaynor) and a flat-broke composer (Farrell), was written by Jules Furthman based upon Israel Zangwill's play of the same name and directed by Henry King.

<i>The Man Who Came Back</i> (1931 film) 1931 film

The Man Who Came Back is a 1931 American Pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Raoul Walsh, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. The movie was adapted to screen by Edwin J. Burke from the play by Jules Eckert Goodman.

<i>High Society Blues</i> 1930 film

High Society Blues is a 1930 American pre-Code film starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. The movie was written by Howard J. Green from the story by Dana Burnett, and directed by David Butler.

<i>The First Year</i> (1932 film) 1932 film

The First Year is a 1932 American pre-Code film based on a 1920 play of the same name that originally ran on Broadway at the Little Theatre. The play was written by Frank Craven and produced by John Golden. It closed in 1922 after 760 performances.

<i>4 Devils</i> 1928 film by F. W. Murnau

4 Devils is a lost 1928 American synchronized sound drama film directed by German director F. W. Murnau and starring Janet Gaynor. While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-film movietone process.

<i>South Pacific</i> (1958 film) 1958 film by Joshua Logan

South Pacific is a 1958 American romantic musical film based on the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific, which in turn is loosely based on James A. Michener's 1947 short-story collection Tales of the South Pacific. The film, directed by Joshua Logan, stars Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr and Ray Walston in the leading roles with Juanita Hall as Bloody Mary, the part that she had played in the original stage production. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, winning the Academy Award for Best Sound for Fred Hynes. It is set in 1943, during World War II, on an island in the South Pacific.

<i>Tess of the Storm Country</i> (1932 film) 1932 film

Tess of the Storm Country is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by directed by Alfred Santell and starring Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, and Dudley Digges. It was released by Fox Film Corporation. It is based on the novel of the same name by Grace Miller White and its adaptation for the stage by Rupert Hughes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hugo Riesenfeld</span> Austrian-American composer

Hugo Riesenfeld was an Austrian-American composer. As a film director, he began to write his own orchestral compositions for silent films in 1917, and co-created modern production techniques where film scoring serves an integral part of the action. Riesenfeld composed about 100 film scores in his career.

<i>She Devil</i> (1957 film) 1957 film by Kurt Neumann

She Devil is a 1957 American widescreen science fiction horror film, shot in RegalScope, from Regal Films, that was produced, written, and directed by Kurt Neumann. The film stars Mari Blanchard, Jack Kelly, and Albert Dekker and was theatrically released by 20th Century-Fox on a double bill with Regal's Kronos.

References

  1. ↑ "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
  2. ↑ Eyman, Scott (1997). The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930. Simon & Schuster. ISBN   0-684-81162-6. Sunrise ended up amassing domestic rentals of $818,000.
  3. 1 2 "The Screen", Mordaunt Hall, The New York Times , September 24, 1927.
  4. 1 2 "New Pictures: Oct. 3, 1927", Time , October 3, 1927
  5. ↑ Bird, David (September 15, 1984). "Janet Gaynor Is Dead At 77; First 'Best Actress' Winner". nytimes.com. Retrieved March 30, 2015.
  6. ↑ Eagan, Daniel. America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. New York: Continuum, 2010, pp. 131–133 ISBN   978-0-8264-2977-3
  7. ↑ "ENTERTAINMENT: Film Registry Picks First 25 Movies". Los Angeles Times . Washington, D.C. September 19, 1989. Retrieved April 22, 2020.
  8. ↑ "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.
  9. ↑ "100 Years...100 Movies" (PDF). American Film Institute. Retrieved September 18, 2009.
  10. ↑ "Critics' top 100". bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on August 19, 2012. Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  11. ↑ "Silent Is Golden", DVD Journal. Retrieved September 16, 2009
  12. ↑ Gallagher, Tag John Ford: The Man and his Films (University of California Press, 1986), p. 55 ISBN   0-520-05097-5
  13. ↑ Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies p. 46 ISBN   0-03-007606-4
  14. ↑ Cinzia Romani, Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich (Gremese, 2001), p. 86 ISBN   0-9627613-1-1
  15. ↑ Harwell Celenza, Anna (2017). Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra. Cambridge University Press. p. 100.
  16. ↑ "Sunrise". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
  17. ↑ "NY Times: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times . 2009. Archived from the original on September 4, 2009. Retrieved December 7, 2008.
  18. ↑ Academy Awards, USA 1929 at IMDb
  19. ↑ Sunrise at the Masters of Cinema catalogue
  20. ↑ Galloway, Chris (February 26, 2010). "Sunrise [Blu-ray] (1927)". CriterionForum.org.
  21. ↑ "Catalog of Copyright Entries 1954 Motion Pictures and Filmstrips Jan-Dec 3D Ser Vol 8 PTS 12-13". U.S. Govt. Print. Off. 1954.
  22. ↑ Jenkins, Jennifer. "Public Domain Day 2023". Duke University School of Law.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.