The Oscar Project

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

Sadie Thompson (1928)

A Gloria Swanson Pictures Film. Distributed by United Artists.

Sadie Thompson was a bit of a revelation for me. I went in with little knowledge of the film, bar a flimsy familiarity of the concept (one which is really quite dated). Sadie Thompson, played spectacularly by Gloria Swanson, a woman of questionable background, arrives on the island of Pago-Pago to start a new life. As a base for military men, Sadie enjoys the attentions until local extremist missionary, Davidson, played by Lionel Barrymore, takes issue with it. He lashes out at her with a little too much relish, in a desperate attempt to send her back to San Francisco. It all culminates into a series of pretty intense confrontations.

There’s a lot to like about this film. It deals with some controversial issues for the time – particularly corruption in the church which, at the time, was a pretty big no-no cinematically. Male dominance, patriarchy and controlled sexuality are also portrayed in a negative light. This is done particularly through Davidson’s extreme efforts to quash Sadie, but also in the effect it has on the slew of strong supporting characters, particularly Dr. McPhail (Charles Lane) and Sergeant Tim O’Hara (Raoul Walsh).

The film is held up by some pretty wonderful performances. Gloria Swanson as the title character is a powerhouse performer. She’s alternately flirty, seductive, feisty, angry and vulnerable (plus she has a pretty awesome swagger). She’s a total star in this film and steals every scene she’s in.

Lionel Barrymore as Davidson is great too. He plays a man who’s really on the edge, a missionary with old values in a new world, and Sadie’s provocation (intentional and not) pushes him over it. He becomes crazed, taking a little too much pleasure in his pursuit and then condemnation of Sadie. There’s a stand-out moment where he forces her to kneel in front of him which lends itself to a sexual charge from Barrymore’s Davidson. It’s both beautifully enacted, and really pretty creepy.

The whole film is beautifully shot too, with some wonderful uses of shadow and angles that works together with a pretty compelling script. The film is silent, so dialogue is done only through title cards, but, compared to other films I’ve watched so far, it relies in no small part on lip reading from the audience. Mostly in the fact that Swanson as Sadie swears quite a bit through the film, but as it wasn’t on the title cards, it didn’t affect the censorship during the release.

Unfortunately, the last 8-minute reel of the film is now lost, but the restoration company did a pretty good job piecing it together with remade title cards and stills from the film. You do lose some of the dramatic impact though, because the climactic confrontation is lost. That being said, I could write essays on this film. It’s wonderful and has so much happening for it that makes it feel ahead of its time. It’s a highlight for me from this year.

Rating: 8 / 10

Director: Raoul Walsh

Writers: W. Somerset Maugham & Raoul Walsh

Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Blanch Friderici, Charles Lane & Gloria Swanson

Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role & Best Cinematography