Initial Release Date: September 23rd, 1927

Also Known As: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

Position on the List (at time of viewing): 8

Yes, you read that right. This is, according to the aggregated list at theyshootpictures.com, the eighth greatest movie in the history of film. Quite an accomplishment for a silent film that runs barely over 90 minutes, and tells a fairly simple (perhaps even stereotypical) love story between a man and a woman (they are never referred to by name in the film). So, what’s all the fuss about? And will you care if you give it a spin today? I think that the answer is yes, and not just because of its technical and historical accomplishments.

The plot is simplicity itself, working primarily on the level of allegory (hence the lack of proper names for the characters). The story concerns a man (George O’Brien), drawn away from his devoted wife (Janet Gaynor, in the second performance of the year that won her the Academy Award) by a seductive other woman (Margaret Livingston). Driven almost to the point of murdering his spouse, he at last realizes that he cannot, and the film follows the couple as they fall back in love with each other. Nothing about the narrative really innovates. It doesn’t particularly surprise at any point, and you will probably see the entire shape of the plot from the first moments of the film. But none of that matters. When reflecting on the film, one remembers the story, but remembers it for the manner of its telling, not for the story itself. Despite the narrative simplicity, this movie burns bright in the mind because of its incandescent beauty and emotive presentation.

This was the first American film of F.W. Murnau, one of the biggest names in German Expressionism (and a towering figure whom we have seen before in these reviews). This film came about when William Fox offered him the chance to come to America and make a movie with the sensibilities of German Expressionism but with a Hollywood budget. The result is one of the most singular and beautiful films ever made. Murnau had astonishingly elaborate sets made, with some costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, in order to capture a kind of heightened, fairy-tale reality in his scenes. He also laid down ridiculous amounts of track so that he could do moving shots in most scenes, resulting in a film that is more kinetic and natural-feeling than any that came before. Because of this, it’s the first film that truly feels like a modern movie to the viewer. We’re so used to effortless camera movement tracking the action and highlighting actor motion that we don’t even notice it anymore, or think that it ever needed to be invented. But it did, and Murnau was the director who did it. The problem with this praise is that it’s hard to contextualize without the history of film that came before this. Watching this movie in its historical context is legitimately jarring: it’s hard to believe that such a huge leap forward is possible in a single film.

And the acting! It’s like nothing we’ve seen before. Murnau had the revelation, finally, that a set was different from a stage, and that actors could convey things so much more subtly for the camera than they could for the 500-seat audience. Although the narrative is still broadly melodramatic, this is the first film that has acting that pulls back, that shows restraint, that attempts to convey through a glance or a tiny motion the emotional turmoil roiling just beneath the surface of its characters. O’Brien and Gaynor’s characters are unlike any relationship portrayed on screen before. The two both turn in career-best work, and manage to make tropes that were tired even in the 1920s into engaging, moving drama. When watching silent film, there is often a layer of abstraction because of the modern viewer’s detachment from the format. Often when watching a silent classic I will think that a scene is sad, but Sunrise made me actually feel sad. Obviously this is a very subjective response, but I think that it’s meaningful. In a single film, movies make the leap from being art that I respect (or enjoy or appreciate) to art that moves me. My heart was in my throat throughout the climax of this movie, and no amount of intellectual acknowledgement can equate to that feeling. It even overcame my wife’s disdain for 1920s gender power dynamics, a feat which few other films have even approached.

The day I post this is the 93rd anniversary of the film’s release, and it’s hard to believe that almost a century has passed since this film first appeared in theaters. I could easily go on for another thousand words about the movie. I haven’t even mentioned its revolutionary soundtrack, one of the first to be recorded on film so the movie had a definitive synced soundtrack and effects. I haven’t talked about how it uses almost no intertitles, often going for minutes with nothing but brilliantly choreographed action to convey its story. All of that material is easily accessible to anyone doing some research, though, and I think that belaboring the technical merits of the film belittle the holistic accomplishment that Murnau made here. The simple fact is that all of the elements listed in this review (and even more besides) come together in a ‘lightning in a bottle’ scenario. Murnau died tragically in a car accident less than four years after this movie was released, and never made anything that approached its perfection. The writing, the acting, the production, and the direction unify into a whole that changed movies forever. Perhaps even more than the bigger names in ‘medium-changing films’ (Citizen Kane, 2001, Breathless) Sunrise has left its stamp on all of movies. There isn’t a great movie in existence today that doesn’t utilize the visual language that it codified, or the unique understanding of the medium with which Murnau dazzled the world 93 years ago today. I cannot imagine a movie lover who would not find something to love in this movie. It is striking in its simplicity, and affecting in its subtle emotionality to this day. I’m grateful that I watched it, and I think you will be too.

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