6. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

So this was the film that inspired me to start this blog. If such a good film could pass me by all these years what other gems have escaped me? Laziness is the reason that I haven't yet got round to watching All About Eve (it's been sitting on my freeview box for about a year now unwatched) but ignorance is the reason I hadn't seen Sunrise.

I watched it on Youtube, where you can find it in nine 10-minute parts. The quality is fine for Youtube, but if you want to watch it on your 40" plasma telly you might want to get the DVD instead.

I'm not going to play the film critic — there are far more learned writers out there than me (for example they would use than I) — and neither am I going to pointlessly spew out the plot which will just be dull for those who have seen it and spoil things for those who haven't. Instead I intend to simply jot down some impressions of the films I watch. There will inevitably be some spoilers but I'll try to only reveal as much as any newspaper review would reveal and I promise not to give away any endings.

One thing that really struck me is how unusual Sunrise is, at least to my modern eyes. This might sound rather trite but it genuinely reminded me of Bollywood films with their pot pourri of action, drama, romance, comedy and everything else under the sun. Sunrise has romance in spades, of course, but also very funny scenes, psychedelic fantasy scenes, melodrama, scenes of dramatic tension. There are special effects (at least, what passed for special effects in 1927), elaborate sets, dancing and even a drunken animal doing a slapstick routine — something which sadly we don't see in many mainstream films nowadays.

But most striking of all is how dark it is in places. The first segment is like something out of a gothic horror film (it has the same director as Nosferatu after all) with mist sweeping over the swamp, grotesque villagers gossiping and a man bewitched by an evil harpy. We see this man's tormented eyes and heavy walk as he contemplates and almost carries out an unforgivable crime. Later on he confronts a stranger who has been rude to his wife. It doesn't last long but his reaction is terrifying with a real — almost psychotic — malice. This kind of character just isn't seen as a romantic lead in today's cinema and the experience is a little strange.

The film presents itself as some kind of fable (the characters are called "The Man", "The Wife" etc.) but I'm not entirely sure what the moral of the story is supposed to be apart from perhaps giving some hope to the Ike Turners of the world. Maybe more subtle metaphors will reveal themselves with further viewings but that's not really what interests me here. I've read reviews which describe this as the last great film of the silent era and mourn the backwards step that cinema took with the introduction of sound and I can completely see the point — it's visually enthralling from the first scene to the last, shot by a director at the height of his powers. But its narrative is equally strong — powerful and frightening and sad — and it's for this reason that the film is so astonishing in my opinion. Everybody should see at least one silent film and I can't think of a better example.

The title's rubbish, though.