Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. 1927. USA. Directed by F. W. Murnau. Screenplay by Carl Mayer, based on the story “The Trip to Tilsit” by Hermann Sudermann. With George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, Bodil Rosing, J. Farrell MacDonald. Restored by the San Francisco Film Preserve with archival footage from The Museum of Modern Art, the British Film Institute, and others. US premiere of a new restoration from the San Francisco Film Preserve and the Sunrise Foundation. 95 min.
F. W. Murnau’s first American film was made under conditions few directors have enjoyed: William Fox gave him a blank check and left him alone. The result is a fable stripped to archetypes (the credits list no character names, only The Man, The Wife, The Woman from the City) and staged with a stylistic assurance that still takes the breath away. A farmer, seduced by a vacationing city woman into plotting his wife’s murder, cannot go through with it; husband and wife flee to the city, reconcile, and return home through a storm that nearly finishes what the husband could not. Murnau and cinematographers Charles Rosher and Karl Struss built elaborate sets incorporating forced perspective and miniatures, then moved the camera through them with a fluidity that had no real precedent in American production. Murnau’s revolutionary technique had a profound effect on two of his directorial colleagues at Fox, John Ford and Frank Borzage.
This is the American premiere of a new, definitive digital restoration carried out by the San Francisco Film Preserve, incorporating elements from MoMA, the British Film Institute, and other archives.