United States, 1927
Directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
With George O’Brien (the man), Janet Gaynor (his wife), Margaret Livingston (the woman from the city)
A few scenes are enough to set out the tragic intensity of the melodramatic plot starting the first American venture of director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau: the forbidding, feisty flapper from faraway shocking the quiet fishing village and tormenting the unnamed man who looks like the quintessential hard-working, serious, and faithful head of a household but who is so mesmerized by the newcomer and so eager to please her that he neglects his shy wife and sells out his farm one element after another.
Then comes the first climax. By night, under a bright moon, the camera tracks the love-struck and stupefied man then boldly jumps through the forest to capture the expectant temptress, then the kissing and chatting and finally the sudden dissolve of the background to show the razzmatazz of the city, the dazzle of the lights and the jazzy atmosphere electrifying on the spot the woman and putting a spell on the man; when things are back to normal and close-ups prevail comes the horror – the devious suggestion by the smirking lady to do away with the wife. Reluctant, the man assents.
It should happen in the next sequence, on the nearby lake. But that is no easy task for the man while the wife’s initial happiness to take a ride with her man is swiftly tinged with malaise. A dramatic series of high-angle shots interspersed with a few stunning low-angle ones capture the increasing tension, the burst of rage of the man, the vivid fear of the woman, the vain attempt to carry out the unspeakable task. The man cannot do it but as soon as their rowboat reaches a shore the wife runs away, scared, the joy gone and the trust broken. The camera now shoots even more dynamic movements, the rush for a trolley, the trip on the meandering rails to the distant terminal and then the frantic arrival in the city, the man and the wife still unable to patch up things, to mend fences, to get together.
This rush forward, made lethal by the traffic, abruptly ends in a church: a shelter for both the runners and the scene of a wedding. The long trip that should have led to a quick death ends up being an odd spiritual awakening, shot in genuine Expressionist lighting and sets. The narrative is reaching a point of no-return and a new level: this is about the resurrection of the old bonds and the beginning of a fantasy of a day trip.
Morally, the outcome is going to be completely upended. The city seemed the evil place distracting the decent fellow from good life and true love, the ultimate temptation vindicating crime – but it was just the woman coming from the city that was so bad and dangerous. As they rove through the streets by day and across a sprawling, stupendous modern fair by the evening, the man and his wife find happiness again and enjoy life to the full in that big, busy city; their surroundings become glamorous, welcoming and even downright jolly. From the hairdressers’ sophisticated ways to the antics of a pig escaping his owner, from the blunders with a kind photographer to the exhilarating dances on a restaurant floor, it is about fun – both the experiences of the lead characters and, surprisingly, the tone and style of the film are transformed.
The journey back stands as the ultimate trial for the lovers, the inescapable ordeal that would make or break their renewed commitment and test the bad woman’s strengths. A storm hits the lake when the legitimate couple is rowing; the disaster occurs; it seems the wife is lost and the woman from the city has the golden opportunity she was yearning for. But fate decides otherwise and the man breaks the spell. The happy ending demanded by the genre unfolds as hoped: the disgruntled bad woman is carried away from the village and the good one is pampered and celebrated. The sun rises again on a world where good once again prevailed and the final images are a poignant and wonderful contrast to the dreadful walk under that bright moon that started a chain of events and a kinetic exploration of a couple in crisis, put under pressure by male desire and illusions of a different life.
The first intertitles cast “Sunrise” as a mundane, eternal story, that could happen anywhere, anytime, and to anybody. The sentimental and moralistic events involving the unnamed, archetypal characters are framed within the old cycle of light and dark, life and death, the full cycle of time. Shaped by the literary ideas of the 19th century it could find echoes in religious narratives. Yet it belongs to the modern times: once the claim made, the camera rushes to shoot in spectacular shots a busy railway station and through a few iconic images celebrate the brand-new idea of summer vacations and tourism – and the bad woman is just a visitor who fancied not to go back home alone. The typical moving melodrama tackles modernity through the new, moving pictures in a nuanced and brilliant style.
In keeping with some cultural and political views and the call for stark moral contrasts easily relatable the city beckons as an evil place, from where the bad woman comes and where she wants to trap the innocent man. But the city does present later a merrier and gentler side which is not deprived of the needed spiritual guidance and allows the acknowledgment of genuine feelings and identities: the man and his wife manage to reconcile and get the opportunity to be celebrated, by a photo or in a ballroom.
What matters is the individual sincerity and responsibility. The camera rightly emphasizes how crime is far more difficult to do than to plot in a sequence that frees the guilty man from his insane desires; this is the virtuous story of a man rediscovering his true feelings and recognizing what he owes to the woman he used to love and who gave him a child. The careful observation of the faces reveals the moral gap between the women and conveys the tension upsetting the relations between them and the man: the film showcases the lasting fight between innocence and cunning, sincerity and lust in the most human and moving terms till the bad apple gets thrown from the garden in the penultimate shot.
Modernity enables that old story to get a fresh, dynamic, vivid narration through the craft of the director and a confident, brilliant command of filmmaking. The big train pulling out of the gigantic railway station at the onset of “Sunrise” encapsulates the urge to grasp the American way of life Murnau was discovering, the energy of life, and the drive of the passions to animate the characters. He deals with the story not only by creating stunning, compelling images expressing the characters’ strong sentiments but more essentially by throwing the man and his wife on never-ending, pulsating movement his camera tracks with fluidity. The film becomes a long, extended, and daring journey through space and soul, both subtly connected. The most spectacular moments rely on the overflowing intensity of Murnau’s close-ups, fueled by fierce stares or shouting faces crying the events (the more the plot progresses, the more the director of “Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens – Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror” is here keen to neglect the use of title cards, which tend to appear and vanish in aesthetically surprising ways). This is an eloquent and vibrant piece of filmmaking that enable an old narrative to resonate through novel visual emotions.