Silents Please Review
| David Robinson on Sunrise
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SUNRISE DVD Review
by David Robinson
Sunrise
- rarely absent from All-Time Top Ten lists - is conclusive
proof that silent film at its best was an autonomous art form,
with its own aesthetic and the means to affect the spectator
with an intensity of feeling and intelligence that dialogue
films have rarely rivalled.
The story is simple, epic and superbly constructed, beginning
in media res. The Man (the characters are not given names) is
madly infatuated with a woman vacationing from the city -
letting his farm go to ruin, torturing his loving wife, and
finally yielding to the siren’s proposal that he rids
them of the wife by an “accidental” drowning. He
embarks on this evil plan, but repents, and instead takes his
terrified wife to the city. Striving for her forgiveness, he
finds himself wooing her all over again, so that the reconciliation
is like a new marriage. On the return journey however, their
boat is wrecked and it seems that the Woman has now truly drowned.
The desperate Man murderously attacks the city woman, who hurriedly
leaves the village. When his wife is found alive, reconciliation
and redemption are complete.
In the wake of international acclaim for The Last Laugh, Friedrich
Wilhelm Murnau had been brought to Hollywood by William Fox,
with carte blanche to do whatever film he wished. With a script
by Carl Mayer and design by Rochus Gliese, Murnau chose Hermann
Sudermann.s story Excursion to Tilsit. The film married Hollywood
studio opulence and German Expressionism to produce a film whose
breath-taking decors, innovative camera freedom and acting styles
combine to give the maximum expressiveness to the complex emotions
that underlie the story. The range of mood is astonishing, from
the shocking erotic aggression between The Man and The City
Woman to the tenderness of the reconciliation, and scenes of
pure slapstick. The inter-cutting between the couple’s
climactic dance and some expert comic business involving a roué
and a lady’s slipping shoulder straps, is as masterly
as daring.
Sunrise has never been seen to better advantage, within living
memory, than on this new DVD, a superb restoration from the
very limited materials available since the incineration of the
original negatives in 1937. The original synchronised Movietone
music and effects score by Hugo Riesenfeld has been digitally
restored, to prove how intelligent were the theatre musicians
of the 20s. Even though musical tastes have changed, Riesenfeld
brilliantly underscores the action - for instance in his
introduction of a strange and sinister theme for the erotic
encounters with the femme fatale.
The special features include an intelligent documentary on the
history and making of the film and a collection of out-takes
showing some of the astonishing (pre-Steadicam) extended camera
explorations. (Inexplicably there is considerably more of these
on the alternative version with live commentary by the cinematographer
John Bailey than in the selection with titles only). We can
see the original theatrical trailer, pages from the original
scenario and a small collection of rather inferior, washy stills;
and read exhaustive technical notes on the restoration. The
film scholar Janet Bergstrom painstakingly assembles titles,
production designs and stills to evoke the story and atmosphere
of Murnau’s lost (probable) masterpiece, the circus melodrama
The Four Devils.
The most serious complaint against this richly rewarding disc
is the irritating menu, which sets you plodding through misty
marshes, taunted by the sound of crickets, frogs and other wild
life, as you endeavour (in my own case in vain) to find the
promised commentary track by John Bailey or the alternative
newly-composed Dolby 2.0 musical track . Not that you could
better Riesenfeld’s Movietone anyway.
David Robinson 2004© |
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