Sunrise
Sunrise
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Synopsis

The long-overdue DVD release of F.W. Murnau's silent classic, his first Hollywood film (though scripted with Carl Mayer in Germany). A near perfect film that concerns the marriage of a peasant couple whose honeymoon in the big city is detoured by a sultry seductress.

F.W. Murnau--USA--1927--97 mins.

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  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
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   | GuillermoRoman#1

A classic by one of the best directors that ever lived. I specially liked the first part of the movie, darker and more mesmerizing than the second. The images of the farmer and the lover in the forest stroke me a beautiful and poetic.

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  • Currently 5/5 Stars.
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   | Lewis#4

Has a story this simple ever been given such a loving and visually ravishing treatment? Carl Mayer's screenplay is essentially a hymn to conjugal love. This love, between "The Man" (George O'Brien) and "The Wife (the adorable Janet Gaynor), a village couple, is threatened by that monster from rural America's anxiety closet, "The Woman from the City" (a cigarette-smoking, negligee-wearing Margaret Livingston). That threat is overcome early on, and the episodic, dramatically inert middle section of the film is devoted to the nameless couple's trip to the nameless city where they rediscover their love. Drama returns in the last third. "Sunrise" is the American debut film of the great F. W. Murnau, lured from Germany by William Fox. Clearly it was a prestige, no-expense-spared project, with lavishly designed sets, complicated camera set-ups, and a lush musical score. (Shot as a silent film, the score and sound effects [but no dialog] were added as a Movietone sound track.) Touches of melodrama and incongruous slapstick notwithstanding, this film is an indisputable masterpiece. Murnau's wonderfully expressive camera--Charles Rosher and Karl Struss share the cinematography credit--glides and soars, peers down from above and up from below, creates compositions of exquisite beauty, and reveals so much about character and motivation that the minimal intertitles seem almost superfluous. Every shot is intelligent and calculated; nothing is perfunctory. And then there is the great and gifted Janet Gaynor. Has anyone ever combined tears with smiles so effortlessly? On the basis of this film, "7th Heaven," and "Street Angel," all released in 1927, Gaynor became the first actress to win an academy award, and she richly deserved it. Among the delicious extra features in this Eureka two-DVD set is the brilliant commentary by cinematographer John Bailey.

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