F. W. Murnau (1888 – 1931) was one of the greatest film makers of the Silent Era. Born in the province of Westphalia, Germany, he made his most famous movie, Nosferatu, in 1922. Hollywood soon beckoned, and he emigrated to America in 1926. He made Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans in 1927.
F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise
Much of the planning for Sunrise was done in Germany before Murnau came to Hollywood. The novella from which it was taken was German, the film script was written in Germany, and the sets were designed there. It may have been the first German-American movie.
The film won several Oscars and it’s easy to see why. Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien are the stars, and the silent format forces them to convey emotions through gesture and looks, movement and essential pauses. Their unique physicality as they move from scene to scene takes the place of vocal inflection, tone and script. They move the story along with great skill and effect, but they do not act alone. Murnau was a master at creating mood through his amazing set designs, the angles filling his interiors, the expressionistic distortions of distance and perspective, and lighting. Chiaroscuro is especially important in the early scenes down by the water, as O’Brien walks toward his waiting lover. Moonlight and reflections on the waves. The farm on the edge of that water. The shots of the shore. The perspective created when we see the lovers embrace.
The plot is simple. Murnau doesn’t even name his characters. They are the Man (O’Brien), the Wife (Gaynor), the Woman From the City (Margaret Livingston), the Maid (Bodil Rosing) and so on. The story is essentially one of temptation, adultery, murder and redemption, with several twists thrown into the mix. City and country are juxtaposed. Peasant and city dwellers are contrasted. The simplicity of farmland ways and the complexity of the raucous and frenetic city. The dream of the city. The woman from that city wants the farmer to dump his wife and go with her to live under the neon lights, in a place that points, in some ways, to another silent classic, Lang’s Metropolis.
Murnau mixes moods through music as well, as the soundtrack adds menace to the early scenes and spices up the jazzy insanity of the big city soon after. Traffic, hustle and bustle, scenes of dancing, brass and concert bands flow into one another to create the new world for Gaynor and O’Brien. They ride an emotional roller coaster that keeps pace with that city, and Murnau heightens those changes through artistic distortion and special effects. He used every technical innovation available to him at the time.
The silent picture format, in this case, adds emotional depth, and heightens our participation in the flow of the film …
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The quality of the DVD remix is very good. It looks better than this “official trailor”. You really don’t get the effect of bleached out light with the DVD.
It’s a remarkable film and has earned a chorus of accolades across the decades. The word “classic” is sometimes handed out too quickly, but Sunrise easily deserves the label.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I’m a huge fan of Murnau but have not yet seen Sunrise.
I recommend the film “Shadow of the Vampire/Burned to Light” (goes by both titles I believe) starring John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe, and Eddie Izzard as a fictionalized –and far out — depiction of the process of filming Nosferatu…Malkevich’s portrayal of Murnau is memorable, as is Dafoe’s of the film’s namesake…The expressionistic ambiance is palpable, and satisfying…
Thanks for the recommendation, Tony. Will look into that movie. Sounds very interesting.
Sunrise is brilliant. Though I’m guessing it’s not for everyone. It takes some readjustment to get used to the silent mode. But I enjoy that. Murnau also doesn’t rely too much on text. Just a few pages of script in between the action. Motion, gesture and visage drive the action for the most part. And, again, his sets and overall artistic frames are stunning.
If you will bear with me, I would like to add a few notes as background and to bolster the impression of what a great film “Sunrise” is. From looking around in IMDB and Wikipedia, I find that “Sunrise” has been and continues to be the recipient of widespread admiration among film students and enthusiasts and critics. Also, one of its awards, which it shared with a film called “Wings,” is the equivalent of the current Best Picture award, and that this award was conferred at the inaugural Academy Awards event (double-check this).
Now, it appears that Robert Wiene, the director of the 1920 film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” is not so highly acclaimed as a film director. “Nosferatu” came a couple of years after “Caligari”; “Caligari” of course is full bore expressionism, whereas “Nosferatu” is considered not to be so much as expressionistic as an example of the development in German silent film called “Kammerspiel,” or the chamber play style of filming. From the description posted here it seems that “Sunrise” is stylistically different from “Nosferatu”; but what I take from all this is the experience of the less deserving filmmaker. Though he is not mentioned in the on-line accounts in connection with Murnau, I continue to find it interesting that “Nosferatu” was produced shortly after “Caligari” and that the connection continues thereafter. The Dracula character in Murnau’s film is called “Graf Orlok” or “Count Orlok.” From 1924, hence shortly after “Nosferatu,” there is a film by the aformentioned Wiene titled “Orlacs Hande” in which the character “Orlac” (sounds like Orlok) is an accomplished pianist and has lost both his hands but then has a new pair of hands sewn on, from a fresh corpse I think, and is thus enabled to go back with divine ferocity to his encounters with the piano. (Please double-check my account of the plot if you are interested — these are sketchy and hastily typed notes.)
Anyway, I am at the moment supremely enjoying the second part of a two-part novel by Stefan Zweig, the date of which as shown on the book is 1924. Titled “Amok,” it is the “zweite Ring,” the second ring, in the chain, “Die Kette.” Oh, by the way, I’m sorry; “Kammerspiel” applies to the film by Murnau from 1925, “The Last Laugh” or in German (differently) “Der letzte Mann.” and not to “Nosferatu.” In any event, the point would seem to be that Murnau showed more subtlety and imagination in his film techniques than did Wiene. So, getting back to “Die Kette” (The Chain), it seems extraordinary to me that the following comment is made about this film: “The Last Laugh” in the Wikipedia article: “An important innovation was also utilized in this film called the ‘Unchained Camera Technique’, an intense mixing of tracking shots, pans, tilts, and zooms.” Since the novel by Zweig that I am reading, the second in the chain, is thoroughly drenched in the discoveries of psychoanalysis, and since the effective terms are in German as I read them not in an English translation so that the words are new and vibrant for me, I am sitting here at the computer terminal just positively transfixed by the notions of all these great (or less great) films and film techniques and the concepts of the chain and being chained and unchained and this wonderful read that I am having to which I will now return.
Robert, thanks for the interesting addition to the post. Would like to read your take on the Zweig book and in other movies you’ve enjoyed … Send them on!!
Today, on Tuesday, March 3, 2009, about two and a half months after the posting and comments regarding F.W. Murnau and silent films and German expressionism, I find that the director Robert Wiene’s film Orlacs Haende is the anchor of a discussion on the symbolic meaning of myths about dissevered body parts. The discussion is fun and interesting to read, especially for anyone interested in the history of film. It can be found at http://www.kinoeye.org in vol. 2, no. 4, and is dated 2/18/2002. The author is Ruth Goldberg, who teaches (or did then) film history, with one of her emphases being horror film, at SUNY/Empire State College.
Thanks again, Robert. Good reference point for further discussion of a brilliant film. One that still haunts.
Once again the link I provided appears not to help. Google or Dogpile Ruth Goldberg and you can get to the article that way.