Sunrise
Release date 23rd September 1927
Country : USA
Running time : 95 mins
Genre : Drama/ Romance
Starring Janet Gaynor, George O'Brien
Screenplay by Carl Mayer
Directed by F.W.Murnau



  A man is tempted by the bright lights of the big city and a vamp. He intends to drown his wife but is redeemed. Later though it looks like he has lost her in a storm at sea.

The real star of this film is Murnau's camera. I can't think of any other silent film or other film for that matter which uses its visuals so cleverly. Right from the opening shot of the drawing of the trains which comes to life, the montages of the city etc. the director's use of the camera as an eye of the character was pretty revolutionary at the time although copied since it was never again used with the same moving precision. The camera adds extra depth to the film and the characters by almost entering their minds at times. Flashbacks can often interrupt the flow of a film and leave the audience baffled here they are totally appropriate and you know exactly what they relate to.

I particularly like the way Murnau starts the film with the characters already married without any exposition of the situation. Other directors would have used a few reels to introduce the characters, Murnau does not making the audience feel valued and not spoon fed. Of course this is typical of the intelligence of German expressionist cinema and Murnau in particular. In the end the plain plot and characters aren't important in Sunrise, what is important is how Murnau uses cinema to tell the story.

 

Its often thought Orson Welles was the first film-maker to be given total control by a major studio. Not true F.W. Murnau got this fourteen years before Welles after the huge American success of his German film The Last Laugh.

Murnau made only three more films before his tragic death in 1931 in a car accident : the lost Four Devils, City Girl and Tabu.