Romancefest 2011: Sunrise

I’ve been meaning to watch SUNRISE for a long time. I’m not sure how long – it seems like as long as I’ve been reading about movies, I’ve been reading about SUNRISE, the silent romance directed by F.W. Murnau. I knew the name Murnau from his association with horror films – he directed NOSFERATU, the first vampire flick and, some say, the greatest horror film ever made. I always found it fascinating that the name Murnau, so associated with the horrific images of NOSFERATU, was also the director of this reportedly beautiful romantic film, SUNRISE.

Anyway, I finally watched SUNRISE yesterday and I wasn’t disappointed. As always, I had to try to get in the right frame of mind for a silent film, but SUNRISE made it easier than most – it’s only an hour and a half long, and, being from 1927, it’s about as modern as you can get for the era. The bonus is that Murnau is a groundbreaking director who was ahead of his time.

SUNRISE is the story of a husband (George O’Brien) and wife (Janet Gaynor) who live in the country in an unspecified time and place -- the whole film has kind of a fairy tale quality, without really involving any elements of fantasy. O’Brien is tempted into an affair by a woman who is visiting from the nearby city (Margaret Livingston) and who hatches a plot to have Gaynor murdered. Livingston suggests O’Brien should lure Gaynor out into the water on his rowboat, and then drown her, making it look like an accident. O’Brien, like a doomed robot or zombie under the control of Livingston’s seduction, reluctantly sets the plan into motion, suggesting he and his wife take a day trip to the city across the water.

This first half hour is pretty dark and moody. Without giving too much away, the husband and wife reach the city in spite of the murder plans, and things gradually lighten up. The rest of the film deals with their day out on the town, first as an estranged couple, then as a couple slowly forgiving each other, and finally as a couple at the height of their love for one another. They get spruced up at a barber shop, attend a stranger’s wedding, get their photograph taken, go to a carnival, and have a romantic dinner. Because of the out-of-time setting, the story plays out as more of a metaphorical allegory of a marriage, as opposed to a literal story, taking the viewer through decades of a relationship in only 24 hours.

The movie deals in many contrasts, not least of which has to do with the setting of the film – half of it takes place in the country side, which is idyllic in some shots and dark and foggy in others, while the other half takes place in the bustling city. Then, there’s the contrast between the “woman from the city” and Gaynor as the wife – the woman from the city is either clad in black or half disrobed, constantly smoking, overly concerned with her hair and shoes and lit harshly while the wife has plain clothes, non-descript hair, and is shot softly. There is only one main male character, the husband, but as the story unfolds he goes from a guilt-ridden, depressed, murderous monster to a light-hearted romantic hero, and the transformation is physical. In the first part of the film, O’Brien carries himself almost like Karloff would later in FRANKENSTEIN – stomping around, hunched shoulders, eyes downcast -- I wouldn't be surprised if James Whale took this as direct inspiration. O'Brien's hair is unkempt and his face is obscured by several days’ worth of stubble. Once he gets to the city, he gets cleaned up, starts walking upright, and even smiles.

The way SUNRISE is put together is strikingly modern. The filmic language is more like modern day films than it is like films that came before it or even films that came decades after it. The camera and editing have a freedom in this film that you don’t normally see in movies prior to. . . oh, I don’t know. . . the 60s? There are lots of long takes, often involving complex camera movements, the likes of which were later associated with guys like Scorsese, Altman, PT Anderson and DePalma – except they had technology and decades of collective experience on their side.

The most famous shot is an early one in which the camera follows O’Brien over rough terrain and through overgrown trees to his secret rendezvous with Livingston at the edge of a swamp. This involves not just the camera seemingly floating around and through obstacles, but also a set that includes the foreground foliage, a distant lake, and a ghostly moon on the horizon. There are similar shots, often following characters as they walk – the camera stalks Livingston as she strolls confidently through the country town, it follows the husband and wife as they cross a street in the city busy with traffic, cars careening everywhere, and it sits stationary in a trolley, looking over the shoulder of the conductor as we travel from the country into the heart of the city. Each of these involve amazing sets as most of the film was not shot on location, but on the Fox back lot, where limited space was transformed into vast country and cityscapes thanks to the magic of forced perspective.

A lot of what I’m saying here has been informed by the insightful and stimulating commentary by John Bailey provided as a special feature on the DVD version of the film that I watched, which I listened to partially because Roger Ebert’s review of the film mentioned it. Commentaries like this can be very valuable when it comes to putting a film in the proper context, especially one removed by decades of time. So much of film language is kind of subconscious that you don’t always fully realize what you’re looking at until you take a step back to examine it outside the moment. The DVD also contains outtakes from the cutting room floor, which is a pretty amazing find for a film of this age, and especially interesting to look at in a film with such complex camera set ups. This is why the DVD format (and Blu-ray) is so great – if you have the right DVD of the right film, you can give yourself a little self-taught film appreciation class.

Still, even without all that, you can tell you’re watching something special as SUNRISE unfolds. It doesn’t look like any other silent film I’ve ever seen, and is more fluidly put together than most sound films from the following decades.