Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)

F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (often referred to as just Sunrise) is generally referred to as one of the greatest silent films ever made. The film is about a guy whose mistress convinces him to drown his wife and make it look like an accident. The man is about to throw his wife off a boat but suddenly decides he loves her. His wife freaks out that her husband was going to kill her and when they get to shore in the city she tries to run away. Amazingly, she forgives him rather quickly and they become very much in love and have a wonderful evening on the town. While rowing the boat back across the lake to get home, there is a terrible storm and the boat capsizes. The man gets back to shore and thinks his wife is dead. His mistress is thrilled thinking their plan worked perfect but he is furious at her and tries to choke her to death. While doing this, his wife's body is found and he runs to see if she is alive or dead. The film ends with the man and his wife laying together in bed as the sun rises.

Stylistically, this film is Murnau's attempt to bring German expressionism to an American film. The film has all kinds of enormous sets that create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world. Unlike films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the sets in this film come off as fairly plausible. The film also has some fairly long tracking shots and makes ample use of forced focus. It is also worth noting that there were very few intertitles in this film. Apparently Murnau used very few intertiles in his films and once made a film with just one. The film is also one of the first films to have sound on the film rather than have an orchestra play.

Today, this film is very well-received. In the most recent critics poll by Sight and Sound Magazine, this film is tied with The Battleship Potemkin as the greatest silent film ever made and the seventh greatest film of any sort. The film won two or three Oscars depending on how you count (Janet Gaynor won best actress but in the first year of the Academy Awards, actors were judged on all films they appeared in that year - 3 in Gaynor's case). While I can appreciate certain aspects of this film, I found the plot less interesting than The Battleship Potemkin and I don't think the expressionistic style was as well-done as in other films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This is certainly one of the more important silent films ever made, but I don't think this film has much to offer for the typical viewer today.

70/100
C-