Year: 1927
Director: F.W Murnau
Country: US
Language; N/A
F.W Murnau originated from the expressionist Weimar cinema of 1920’s Germany. Murnau’s early films, like Nosferatu (1922), are seen today as being aesthetically, “almost exclusively” expressionistic. Murnau surpassed the cinema of pure expressionism to that of the Kammerspeilfilme (essentially a mix of realism and expressionism) To “enhance the prestige” of the Fox studio F.W. Murnau was brought to Hollywood by William Fox and given total access to the Fox studio. This meeting of German and Hollywood mentality produced one of the greatest silent pictures of all time; Sunrise.
In this fable-morality subtitled "A Song of Two Humans", the "evil" temptress is a city woman who bewitches farmer Anses and tries to convince him to murder his neglected wife.
With Sunrise Murnau takes us from an evocative set shrouded in fog and mud to a wild expressionist city rocking with tuba-honking bands and frenzied dancers. We journey through an emotional arc that starts with a Hitchcock-like attempted murder to an an unlikely melodramatic renewal of a couple's love. Many genres, including romantic comedy and film noir, are hit here and yet, despite the perilous blending, Sunrise comes out a Cinematic masterpiece.
Sunrise is a beautiful, atmospheric, lyrical and poetic work of art that won the Best Unique and Artistic Picture award at the first ever Academy Awards in 1927. Exquisitely visualized and sensually photographed, breakthrough camera tracking movements fluidly and sophisticatedly move through space creating an illusion of depth and vastness. With sophisticated use of light and shadows, we get a great understanding of tone despite very little use of title cards.
Murnau's picture deserves being called a "masterpiece" as there are very few pictures- in the history of cinema- that can match it in quality. I would certainly say that Sunrise is in my "Top Ten" of films ever made. It is a "must see" for anybody that has ever seen a movie.
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