German film director F.W. Murnau's 1927 film Sunrise: Song of Two Humans won an Academy Award in 1929 for Unique and Artistic Production. It was the one of the first films to have a soundtrack and sound effects recorded with the film. Although the original negative was destroyed in 1937, a second negative was created in 1989 from a surviving print. In 2007, the film placed 82 in a list of 100 best films in the history of cinema by the American Film Institute.
Murnau, an Expressionist, often distorts the visual image to show the inner emotion of the characters. His establishing shots seem filtered to give an Impressionistic view of the black and white world of his story. The farm scene might be painted by Van Gogh. The amusement park reminds me of some of the shots of Rouge City in Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The exaggerated city set utilizes huge stylized sets in the foreground and smaller sets with smaller people in the background (today this would be done with computer graphics). The city set alone cost $200,000 to build.
The story is a fairly simple morality tale, with characters named only by type: The Man, The Wife, The Woman from the City, The Maid, etc. We begin with a drawing of a city train station that dissolves into a life action matte shot of real people against a miniature model train in the foreground, obscured somewhat by the "smoke" from another even closer train. This pulls us away from the urban world to the world of vacations. Eventually we are pulled to a country resort where The Woman from the City (Margaret Livingston) lingers after the other vacationers have left. [We know she is an evil city woman because she wears a black sheath dress and patent leather high heels while walking in the country.] She is having an affair with a married farmer, The Man (George O'Brien). She comes to his farm and whistles for him to join her. He leaves his wife (Janet Gaynor), who is fixing dinner, and joins her. After passionately kissing, she proposes that he drown his wife and come to the city with her. She even picks a bundle of bullrushes for him to use as a flotation device to save himself when he overturns the boat.
The older Maid tells some gossips that the couple were once very happy and laughed a lot.
The Man goes through torment picturing himself drowning his wife, but he proposes a trip in a boat to the city. He puts the bullrushes in the bow of the boat. The Wife says goodbye to their young child and when she enters the boat, their dog who is being protective, breaks loose and swims to her. The Man returns to the home, ties up the dog and begins again. Midway across the water, the Man stands threateningly confronting his wife. She becomes frightened and he relents. When they reach shore, he tells her not to fear him but she runs away.
The Wife runs to a trolley and he joins her as they go into town. The farmer and his wife are roughly dressed as opposed to the sophisticated 1920s costumes of the urbanites. The couple ends up at a restaurant where he brings her a huge plate of pastries. They leave and he buys her a bouquet of flowers from a street vendor which she carries for the next scenes.
The two end up in front of a church where a wedding is taking place. They join ceremony and during the wedding, the presider admonishes the groom it is his job to protect his wife from all harm. The Man breaks down sobbing and the wife forgives him. The bride and groom's wedding become theirs and they exit the church as if a newly married couple, ready to start again.
They pass a photography shop and the Wife proposes they get their portrait taken. She realizes he needs a shave, so they go to a swank barber shop. The owner assumes she wants her hair styled, but she refuses. The Man gets a his shave. While he is shaved, a pretty manicurist tries to do his nails as the wife jealously watches. When he refuses, she is relieved. Then as his shave continues, a man sits beside the Wife and tries to pick her up. He takes one of her flowers and puts it in his lapel. Finally, finished shaved the Man pulls a knife and threatens the accoster.
The couple have their picture taken. As they are posing, they laugh and kiss and the photographer takes the kiss as their picture. While he is developing the picture, the two have a rather silly scene where they end up kissing and knocking off a Greek statue, breaking its head.
As they walk into the street (using rear view projection), the street becomes an idyllic meadow where the two of them ultimately kiss. The meadow becomes once more a street scene and the two have created a traffic jam.
The two end up at a highly stylized larger than life Coney Island-type amusement park/dinner club. The Man throws balls to free a pig. One small pig escapes and runs through the dinner club with the man chasing it. There is a comedy scene where a waiter drinks wine and then sees the pig hidden under a tablecloth and assumes he is drunk. When the Man captures the pig, everyone is happy and the two end up dancing a peasant dance (although the Wife has to convince the husband to do it). After having some wine and barely scraping together enough between them to pay for the bill, they start home.
In moonlight they take the trolley back to the boat and begin sailing home, which the Wife says will be like a Honeymoon.
Out of no where, a storm ravages the city and it finally hits the lake and the farm. The Man pulls out the bullrushes and ties them to his wife. A huge wave knocks them out of the boat.
When the storm passes, it is still night and the Man awakens in the water by the rocky shore. He runs for help and a group of men get out boats to help him search for the Wife. The Woman from the City watches what is going on. As they search, we are shown the woman floating, clutching to the bullrushes, but many loose rushes are floating around her. The Man finds the straggling bullrushes and assumes his wife is dead. He returns desoluted to the farm. The Woman from the City comes and whistles for him to come to her. He comes and attacks her. Just as he is ready to strangle her, the Maid calls him. The Wife has been found by some of the men, alive and well. He rushes to her side and they reunite.
As the sunrises, the Woman from the City returns to the city and the Wife awakes with her child and husband beside her. They kiss and the sun fully rises. Finis.
The film acting is much broader than we expect today, but some of the scenes, such as the church wedding scene are highly effective. George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor make appealing Everyman and Everywoman and do elicit our sympathies.
The drowning of a partner for the affections of another has elements of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, published in 1925 and made into a movie by Josef von Sternberg in 1931. Dreiser's book was based on a real incident. A 1951 version had the famous kiss of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift's A Place in the Sun and became one of the great film kisses.
Murnau's film is based on "Die Reise nach Tilsit," a short story by Hermann Suderman. The film, although American made, has the feel and look of a German morality tale.
Sunrise: Song of Two Humans (1927) ****
The film is found on You Tube and can be downloaded or streamed here.
Note: If Hollywood were ever to make a film about George O'Brien, they might consider Michael Fassbinder. See a publicity shot of O'Brien below:
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