Sunrise - song of two people
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Sunrise - song of two people |
| Original title | Sunrise - A song of two humans |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1927 |
| length | 91 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau |
| script | Carl Mayer |
| production | William Fox for Fox Studios |
| music | Hugo Riesenfeld |
| camera |
Charles Rosher , Karl Struss |
| cut | Harold D. Schuster |
| occupation | |
| |
Sunrise, Song of Two People is an American romantic drama from 1927 that starred George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor . For Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , the German director of the film, it was his first film in the United States. The plot is based on Hermann Sudermann's story Die Reise nach Tilsit ; the film was premiered on September 23, 1927. In its release, the film received excellent reviews and won three Oscars , but was at the box office for the flop . In 2012, the film was voted fifth among the best films of all time in a survey by Sight & Sound magazine among film critics. The French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma listed him in fourth place in 2008.
action
It is summer time and many city dwellers travel to the countryside to relax. The attractive, but cold-hearted and manipulative “woman from the city” has taken up residence in an idyllic village. For weeks she has been targeting a farmer in the village and every evening visits the house of the farmer who lives there with his wife and their child. The city woman whistles in front of the house and after a brief hesitation the man follows her to a rendezvous. On the other hand, the farmer leaves his good-natured, provincial-looking wife with the food and memories of happier times. The once happy marriage of the two is over and the financial situation of the farm is also suffering from the man's affair with a city woman, reports the old maid of a friend's family. During the nightly meeting at the lake, the farmer and the woman from town not only get numerous tokens of love: the woman from town advises the man to drown his wife in the lake. Then he should sell the farm and come with her to the promising, pulsating city. After the man initially responded shocked and negatively to the murder plans, he succumbs to the seductive arts of the city woman and agrees to her sinister plan. The woman from town gives the farmer reeds , which he can use to save himself after capsizing the boat with the woman. Then he should tell everyone in the village that his wife's death was a tragic accident.
The next day the farmer suggests to his wife to take a day trip by boat. She does not suspect, on the contrary, instead she believes in a new chance for their marriage and happily agrees. When they are on the water, however, a suspicion grows in the woman due to the gloomy omens of the surroundings and the strange behavior of her husband. When her husband finally wants to throw her overboard, she begs for mercy. The man is finally finding his senses again. Ashamed, he turns away from the murderous intentions and rows back to land. He wants to make up, but as soon as the boat docks, the farmer's wife flees from her husband. She wants to escape using a tram , the man can also get on the train at the last moment. After the tram arrives in town, the man tries to win his wife back with attentions and gestures, but she initially remains anxious and suspicious of him. It is only when the couple witnesses the wedding of a young couple that both are touched and remember their past love. The woman forgives her husband, who breaks down crying. Then the couple experiences an exciting and entertaining day in the city: They visit a café, then a hairdressing salon and finally they have their photos taken. They spend the evening in an amusement park. At the end of the day, their love for one another has blossomed again.
In the dark, the couple set off home by boat. A storm breaks out and the boat capsizes. While the man can save himself on land, the woman is gone. The village community supports the man. Everyone is looking for the woman in their boats, but they only find parts of the bundle of reeds that the man had tied around his wife as a makeshift swimming ring when the storm broke. The farmer gives up all hope and is firmly convinced that his wife drowned. His lover from the city has heard of the peasant woman's supposed drowning and assumes that the joint murder plan has succeeded. But when the woman from the city arrives at the farmer's house, the farmer tries - in his hatred and desperation - to strangle her. At the last moment the old maid of the family appears and reports to the farmer that his wife was able to cling to a last bundle of reeds, was found by an old fisherman, and has survived. While the woman is leaving the city, the man and his wife, who wakes up in bed, kiss. Meanwhile the sun rises over the village.
production
With his films shot in Germany, especially Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror (1922), The Last Man (1924) and Faust - a German Folk Tale (1926), Murnau had advanced to become one of the most important directors of the silent film era . Murnau had also become a coveted name in Hollywood through these films. William Fox of Fox Studios eventually signed Murnau with him. He marketed it in Hollywood under the name The German Genius . Fox wanted Murnau to continue the well-known expressionist style of his German films, so he gave him a lot of freedom and a high budget. Despite the move from Germany to Hollywood, Murnau was also able to sign up some confidants. The screenplay for Sunrise was written by the Austrian Carl Meyer , who had already written screenplays for other Murnau films such as The Last Man (1924). The remarkable film sets are made by Rochus Gliese from Berlin , who had already worked on Der brennende Acker (1922) under Murnau's direction.
The plot of the film is based on Hermann Sudermann's book Die Reise nach Tilsit , published in 1917 , in which the main characters are Ansass and Indres. Murnau, on the other hand, made the characters in his film nameless in order to make the message more universal. The foreword in the film's opening credits also serves to support this: the story is from no place and yet from any place, you could perhaps encounter it anywhere at any time. The village scenes were shot at Lake Arrowhead , the majority of the rest of the film in the studio. Because of the expressionist elements, Rochus Gliese had to build special film sets and backdrops. The construction of the street in the city alone is said to have cost US $ 200,000 - which was the sum for a normal Hollywood feature film at the time. Murnau shot the film using the then novel optical sound system with film music and sound effects. This already announced the sound film, so to speak, in 1927 the film The Jazzsinger gave the sound film the breakthrough. Murnau also paid a lot of attention to camera work, which is why he hired two of Hollywood's most important cameramen, Charles Rosher and Karl Struss .
He demanded top performance from his actors, as leading actress Janet Gaynor later recalled: “I never forget the first day he called all three of the leading actors together - George O'Brien, Margaret Livingston and me - and presented us with his plan for the film. He said that Sunrise should be a study of the melody of life and that melody should be expressed through emotions. He wanted us to take all emotions with us - the loved ones, the hated ones, the hungry and even the odd little caresses - and that they should all be tied together in a big rhythm. "
style
Murnau's mastery of film technology, which had grown in the course of his film career - cross-fades , double exposures , graduated tones, subtle camera movements, light and shadow effects - he combined with an image montage that was appropriate to the narrative rhythm and that adequately expressed human emotions and moods. The director used all of these techniques in his first Hollywood film Sunrise , and Murnau's use of the camera in particular was later seen as revolutionary.
In addition to the moral themes of guilt, remorse and a new beginning, in Sunrise - as in Murnau's earlier film The Burning Acker (1921/1922) - sympathy for the farmer and the contrast between the country and the big city played dominant roles. In many cases, different versions of these structures were also put together so that he could rotate every shot with the correct camera angle. In particular, the street with the tram stop and the large illuminated buildings in the background has a similar recognition value as Fritz Lang's Metropolis pictures and went down in film history as an exemplary stage design. Murnau shows a realistic looking city with crowd scenes in pulsating life, the big city is an organism in constant motion.
Many major Hollywood directors, especially those signed to Fox Studios, have been directly influenced by Murnau's work. Frank Borzage , Howard Hawks , Raoul Walsh and John Ford were impressed and all of them added "murnausche" elements to their next films. John Ford even called Sunrise "the best movie ever made". Ford even had his next film Four Sons (1928) shot on the Sunrise film sets , and he also consulted Murnau. Frank Borzage's drama Seventh Heaven (1927) was partly shot on the film sets. In contrast to Murnau's film, Seventh Heaven and Four Sons were big box office hits.
reception
Reviews
When Sunrise was released in 1927, it received largely positive, even enthusiastic reviews. For example, Mordaunt Hall wrote in his review in the New York Times of September 24, 1927: “It is filled with intense emotions and these are embodied in deeper subtlety. Mr. Murnau shows himself as an artist in camera studies, he produces phenomenal results from lights, shadows and settings. He also shows himself to be a true storyteller, and it just so happens that this is a tale where the happy ending is welcome. ”Hall also praised George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor for providing“ inspirational displays ”and the new sound effects of the time. He concluded his review: “Mr. Murnau proves through Sunrise that he can do just as fine work in Hollywood as he did in Germany. A cinematic masterpiece. ”The US trade journal Variety was also impressed: “ Sunrise is an outstanding one for the screen, made in this country, but produced according to the best German school style. In 'his art, dramatic power and graphic suggestion' the work of the foreign director appears promising. ”In contrast, a negative voice came from Time in 1927 , saying that Murnau's film was“ painterly soporific ”.
After Sunrise was somewhat forgotten at the beginning of the sound film, it has been recognized again by film critics and increasingly also by film audiences in recent decades. At Rotten Tomatoes , the critical consensus on the film is: "Mixing masterful camera work with a well-acted, wonderfully romantic storyline, Sunrise is perhaps the final - and probably definitive - statement of the silent film era." Overall, 98% of professional film critics at Rotten Tomatoes rate the film positively The only negative review comes from Time from 1927. Murnau's coherent drawing of inner attitudes and feelings full of fervor have been praised again and again, which is why the film historians consider Sunrise to be the director's most sophisticated feature film. This is how the lexicon of international films writes : A cinema dream of great intensity, in which elementary feelings are experienced and dissolved. Masterful in photography, mood and style.
Theatrical release
At the box office, however, Sunrise could not meet the expectations, which was also due to the high production costs. In his subsequent films in Hollywood, Murnau no longer received the same freedom from the producers as he did with Sunrise .
Awards
At the Academy Awards in 1929 , the first ever, Sunrise was nominated in a total of four categories and, together with Das Glück in der Mansarde , directed by Frank Borzage, was the most successful film with three Academy Awards each . He was appointed as Best Film in the category Artistic Production ( Unique And Artistic Picture Award), while William A. Wellman's flyer Drama Wings the award for Best Production received. The only time that an Oscar was awarded in this Artistic Film category, as the division into two categories for Best Film was abandoned the following year . Charles Rosher and Karl Struss were honored in the Best Cinematography category, and Janet Gaynor finally received her Oscar in the Best Actress category for her achievements in Luck in the Attic as well as in Sunrise and Engel der Strasse .
Mentions
The film received more attention in 1989 because it was one of the first to be included in the National Film Registry . In 2002, the film also came in 63rd place in a poll by the American Film Institute for the 100 best American romance films . In 2007, Sunrise was voted 82 of the 100 best American films ever in another poll by the American Film Institute.
In the polls carried out by the British film magazine Sight & Sound for the best films of all time, Sunrise came in 7th among the film critics in the 2002 poll, together with the battleship Potemkin ; In a new survey by Sight & Sound in 2012, Sunrise was able to move up to 5th place. It is the highest-placed film by a German director on this list. In another list published by the French magazine Cahiers du cinéma , Sunrise was even voted number 4 of the best films of all time.
Remake
Under the original title Die Reise nach Tilsit , the material was filmed again in 1939 in Germany under the direction of Veit Harlan .
Web links
- Sunrise - A Song of Two people in theInternet Movie Database(English)
- Sunrise - A Song of Two people atRotten Tomatoes(English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cahiers du Cinema 100 Films ( Memento from July 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Essay on "Sunrise" by Brian Darr
- ↑ Quoted from Greg Ferrara: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) - Articles. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved on November 21, 2019 (English): "I'll never forget that first day when he called the three principals together - George O'Brien, Margaret Livingston, and me - and outlined to us his plan for the picture ... He said that Sunrise was to be a study of the melody of life and that the melody was to be expressed by emotion. He wanted to take all the emotions - the loves, the hates, and the hungers, and even the little whimsical tendernesses - and blend them all together into one big rhythm. "
- ↑ Essay for Sunrise by Brian Darr
- ^ Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times
- ^ Sunrise at Variety
- ^ Criticism in the Time
- ^ "Sunrise" at Rotten Tomatoes
- Jump up ↑ Sunrise - Song of Two People. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 6, 2016 .