Sunrise (1927)

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Sunrise (1927) – F. W. Murnau

Poised on the very verge of the sound era (with a pre-recorded soundtrack including sound effects but no spoken language), Murnau’s Sunrise represents the culmination of cinema as dream (and his first and only Hollywood film with no constraints).  With characters named only “The Man”, “The Wife”, and “The Woman from the City”, the screenplay operates as a fable purporting to tell a moral tale at an abstract level (“a song of two humans” is the film’s secondary title and the themes are Manichean).  However, it is the rich details of the mise en scene (country vs. city) – magically created from ceiling wax and shoe polish and other items in Murnau’s bag – that absorb and transport the viewer, and enable her or him to gasp as The Man nearly drowns The Wife to pursue a naughty relationship with The Woman from the City, to weep at the outcome of this harrowing event, and then to weep again when forgiveness is granted, love is renewed, and all moves toward a epiphanic happy ending (save only for a terrible storm and, of course, not for The Woman from the City).  Truly, each shot in Sunrise is a painterly vision, crafted by hand and in the camera (with no help from CGI). Just think at what might have been if Murnau hadn’t died in a car crash four years later.