The Oscar Project

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

Tuesday, 22 May 2012 by owlish

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

A Fox Film Corporation Film. Distributed by  Fox Film Corporation.

Largely thought to be the greatest silent film ever made, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a masterwork of cinema. It relies almost entirely on the visual and uses this to produce a beautiful work of expressionism. Ultimately a story of redemption, the film focuses on a country man who, after becoming infatuated with a woman from the city, intends to murder his wife. The husband, played by George O’Brien, realises his error, but only after the first attempt on his wife’s life.

The story itself is pretty melodramatic, but director F.W. Murnau does a wonderful job offsetting that by infusing the film with a real undercurrent of malice. There’s an anger to it from the start, a lot of that coming from the city woman, and it’s a representation of cinema generally on how this film shapes your mood. You feel for both man and wife – you feel his rage and her betrayal and then the tenderness of the relearned love. O’Brien’s grief towards the end swinging back around to a newly-directed malice, bringing the film to a great narrative cycle.

This is helped in part to some pretty exceptional performances. Janet Gaynor and O’Brien between them are given no lines of dialogue at all, so there’s a lot riding on the expression within their faces and movements, and both do sterling jobs of this. . Gaynor in particular gives a wonderfully harrowed and broken performance as the wife. Margaret Livingston too is strong as the manipulative and deceitful city woman, and the way she moves is so interesting – almost like a huntsman spider, and the implications of that alone is pretty wonderful.

That being said, the hero of Sunrise is the cinematography. Visually, this film is sublime.  The landscape shots and the use of shadow is as close to flawless as you can get with cinema, and the mobility of the camera work lends not to jerky hand-held shots, but instead to beautiful tracking of characters. Not only that, but the layering to define motive and express character thought is so clever and interesting and lends so much to the narrative and development of character. See what I mean at the caps below.

All in all, it’s pretty hard to fault this film, and it’s one that everyone should watch if they get the chance.

Rating: 10 / 10

Director: F.W. Murnau

Writers: Herman Suderman, Carl Mayer

Cast: George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor & Margaret Livingston

Nominations: Unique & Artistic Production (winner), Best Actress in a Leading Role (winner), Cinematography (winner), Art Direction

Category 10, 1927, BW, Drama, Nomination:Art Direction, Nomination:Best Actress, Nomination:Best Picture, Nomination:Cinematography, Oscars01, Silent, Won:Best Actress, Won:Best Picture, Won:Cinematography

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