Sunrise

The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has presented eighty films with the award of Best Picture, but only one to a category they called "Unique and Artistic Picture," and that was in the first year of the awards. Wings won Best Picture, and has thus always been remembered for that, while Sunrise won the latter, and has fallen by the wayside.

Sunrise was made by F.W. Murnau, a giant of German Expressionism. He had made Nosferatu, the very first Dracula film, and The Last Laugh, and on the strength of those pictures was brought to Hollywood to make Sunrise. The result was stunning. A simple story of a man and his wife reconciling, the techniques employed were ahead of their time and still remarkable even today, as the film was chosen as one of the American Film Institute's Top 100.

The story is set in a small rural town that also hosts vacationers. A woman from the city (the characters have no names, just generic titles) has seduced a simple farmer, played by George O'Brien. The woman is represented as venal and sophisticated, wiling him with her sexual charms (the actress, Margaret Livingston, bears a striking resemblance to Diablo Cody). She persuades O'Brien to kill his wife (Janet Gaynor) by taking her out on the lake in a boat and drowning her. In a powerful scene, O'Brien does row his unsuspecting wife out into deep water, but he can't go through with it.

Gaynor, understandably, flees in terror. She hops a trolley but O'Brien catches up with her, begging forgiveness. They go into the city, which is presented as almost a fantasy of what big-city life is like. They stumble into a church, where a wedding ceremony is taking place, and reconcile. They then have a fun day, going to a barbershop, getting their picture taken, and attending a carnival. This section of the film, following the pathos in the church, takes on a comic tone, as their are many humorous aspects, such as O'Brien chasing down a pig that has got into some wine.

On the trip back, a storm blows up and well, I'll leave the rest a mystery. Murnau meant this story to be universal, which is why the characters have no names and the subtitle is "A Song of Two Humans." The film is really a fable of sorts, suggesting that the sophistication of big city people is like poison to the good simple values of country-folk.

What makes this film a landmark today is the visual style. Murnau and his cinematographers (Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, who won the first Oscars for Cinematography) use many special effects, such as multiple exposures, montage, and long tracking shots. All of this was done in-camera, as there were no optical printers yet. Cinematographers of today still study this film for this reason. All of this cinematic eye candy makes up for the acting, which to be fair was in a style that has long become obsolete, but for its day was considered good (Gaynor won the first Best Actress Oscar, for this film and two others).

Anyone who is interested in cinema history would do well to seek out and view this film.