Sunrise (1927)

Originally posted to Facebook on 6/7/2018

Sunrise was our sixth film from 1927, and our fourth by F.W. Murnau. Along with a few other awards, it won the first Oscar for Best Unique and Artistic Picture, while Wings won the similarly-themed first Outstanding Picture Oscar. The former award was eliminated after the first Oscar ceremony in favor of the latter, so Sunrise remains the only winner of this strange pseudo-Best-Picture Oscar. The film's story concerns the male lead (George O'Brien) who lives in the country with his wife (Janet Gaynor) but is cheating on her with a woman from the city (Margaret Livingston.) Gaynor is probably the best remembered today, though O'Brien was a successful actor of the era as well. None of the three leads acted prominently beyond the late forties, but all three lived into the 1980s, dying in the space of a single year-long period in 1984-1985.

From a technological standpoint this was, I believe, the first Movietone feature we've seen, which means that, while it was still a silent film and did not have synced sound, the soundtrack was recorded on film, and we saw and heard essentially the same thing as audiences at the time. This included actual voices in crowd scenes and in background songs, but nothing synced to a particular actor or that was particularly important to the plot. Still, it is a tangible step towards the end of silent films, which we are rapidly approaching.

It is difficult to discuss the film without giving away some of the plot. Specifically, early in the film, Livingston advises O'Brien to kill his wife, and he reluctantly agrees. But at the crucial moment Gaynor realizes what is happening, and her terror and panic cause a change of heart in O'Brien, resulting in the two of them going into town and rekindling their love. It is a little bit like John Lennon's "Starting Over," if there had been an early stanza or two about the singer's adultery and plans to murder his wife. This was Murnau's first Hollywood movie after leaving Germany, and the film in some ways reflects that -- the adultery and attempted murder is filmed and performed expressionistically with grim Germanic foreboding -- while the scenes in the city are light-hearted and optimistic -- more stereotypically American. That they mesh together at all is a tribute to how well each of them work on their own. Gaynor won the first Best Actress Oscar for her roles in this and two other films during this time period -- acting Oscars not yet being tied to a specific film -- and she does give a strangely interesting performance in an essentially passive and reactive role. Her character, even after realizing that her husband in a weak moment may cheat on her and try to murder her, is remarkably accepting, and I think the movie's solution to this seemingly odd reaction is just that she loves and is willing to forgive him. I feel like the film might have been a little stronger -- without changing the overall plot -- if it had somehow acknowledged that this was not an entirely healthy attitude on her part. But the movie wants to portray Livingston as entirely bad, and Gaynor as entirely good, which gives it a certain strength and simplicity, but also means that the audience has to accept the two female leads as archetypes, rather than as psychologically realistic. It also has the result of largely absolving O'Brien of responsibility for his actions, leaving the blame on Livingston, in almost exactly the same way that John Gilbert's guilt was pinned on Greta Garbo in 1926's Flesh and the Devil. In fact, both films have a similar scene where the male lead turns on and attacks the woman that has, in the films' authorial view, lured him into behavior he now regrets.

But, even with these flaws, the movie is made up of many excellent moments and sequences that eclipse, for me, its larger problems. This movie was made with the polish and sure-handedness that marked the best silent films from the last half of the twenties. Although I am very much looking forward to sound, and to the films of the thirties, there's a part of me that wishes the silent film era had lasted just a little longer, perhaps five years. It feels as though the changeover happened just as the best filmmakers from the era had reached a certain level of mastery, and I strongly suspect that we lost a number of excellent movies as a result.

Next week we see our seventh film from 1927, and our fourth Lon Chaney film, The Unknown, which features a young Joan Crawford. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT