Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #5
Well ladies and gents, this is my 1,500th post on Land Of The Nerds!!! And what better movie to serve as the centerpiece of such a momentous article than Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans, a movie so phenomenal I want to bypass all other formal introductions so I can get to singing the praises of it all the more quickly. Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans is the kind of movie that, the moment it's finished, leaves me wanting to go outside and imitate George Bailey at the end of It's A Wonderful Life by telling every person I see in a hysterically giddy fashion about the amazing imagery I just witnessed!
In case you're unfamiliar with it, Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans is a 1927 Silent American movie from director F.W. Murnau. The plot concerns a married couple, referred to solely as The Man (George O'Brien) and The Wife (Janet Gaynor), who live a simple life in the countryside with their child. The Man has been recently carrying out an affair with The Woman From The City (Margaret Livingstone), a lady whose been using his property recently for monetary gain. One day, The Woman From The City suggests to The Man that they could be together in the city if only he would get rid of his wife in a most gruesome fashion....by drowning her in the nearby lake.
The Man agrees to carry out the task, but he's reluctant to do so. After luring his wife out into the lake, he makes the moves that make it clear he's going to flip her off the boat and...he can't do it. He just can't do it. The Wife is understandably distraught from this turn of events and she attempts to evade her spouse when the two end up in the city. It is here however that sparks reignite for the two, with the rekindling of their romantic relationship serving as the crux of Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans. And golly, what a beautiful crux it is, serving as a fantastic way to take advantage of the streamlined narrative possibilities offered up by silent movie cinema.
There is a sense of inventiveness coursing through every frame of Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans, there really isn't a moment hindered by convention. Let's look at a good example of this kind of inventiveness that occurs early on in the story when The Man is grappling with having to pull off the murder of The Wife. To illustrate the amount of temptation The Woman From The City is pulling over him, the film doesn't resort to a flashback to demonstrate how mentally preoccupied The Man is with her but rather by having multiple ghost-like versions of The Woman From The City appear and put themselves over his body. From this visual, you immediately get the level of control this lady has over The Man but there's also a creepy factor to the visual that cements the characters antagonistic nature.
Something else showing a level of inventiveness is just how much this film goes whole hog on the whole silent movie gimmick that was the default standard of the time due to technological restrictions of the time. Title cards illustrating dialogue are limited to only the most important dialogue exchanges with the actors carrying so much in their physical mannerisms and facial expressions that you really don't need verbal communication to get across important character dynamics and other crucial facets of the story. Others may have been daunted by the limitations that come with the world of silent movie cinema, but like the best filmmakers of this era, F.W. Murnau isn't just not daunted by those challenges, he manages to find and fully embrace the many benefits found in this unique format of filmmaking.
This means loads of incredibly powerful visuals emerge in Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans whose effect on the viewer likely couldn't be replicated by dialogue. A church-set scene where The Man is overcome by repentance for his wicked deeds against his Wife makes use of dialogue from a priest that's conveyed via title cards but everything The Man in this scene comes down to George O'Brien's performance, one that he imbues full of tortured pain and regret in this moment. The sight of him bawling and showing genuine regret for his past misdeeds is a formidable image the movie uses as a way to show the couple maybe, just maybe, have a chance to get their relationship back on track.
After this, visual-oriented sequences depicting the couple getting into antics in the big city transpire. Right after breaking my heart with the powerful church-set scene, Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans becomes downright enchanting in its depiction of these two human beings falling back in love each other. I love how each of their romantic escapades is so mundane, like a photo shoot that goes awry for intsance. Their most heightened experience in this location is a highly entertaining to watch night at the fair that leads to The Man chasing down a rambunctious piggie (OH MY GOD THAT PIG IS SO CUTE, he may just have displaced Babe as my favorite silver screen swine!) with even that culminating in a more everyday experience of the two leads romantically dancing. Keeping things small-scale, even when The Man is chasing a piggie, makes them falling in love with each other all over again feel oh so realistic and more emotionally investable as a result.
It doesn't hurt the insanely riveting romantic couple that they're being portrayed by two actors who have impeccable chemistry with each other with each bringing their individual characters inner pain or problems to the surface while showing, in their winning dynamic together, why they benefit as people being together. It's thanks to their performances, as well as Carl Meyer's tremendous screenplay, that Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans is able to so amazingly chart the experience of romance from its highs and its lows and everything in between. As some opening text details, that is the very nature of love and it's a concept the motion picture utilizes to magnificent effect. Thank God we have movies as gloriously crafted and emotionally compelling as Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans.
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