Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

NEW 35mm PRINT! ► In 1926, with much fanfare, the great German filmmaker F.W. Murnau, renowned director of Nosferatu and The Last Laugh, was lured to Hollywood by the Fox Film Corporation and given carte blanche to make the movie of his choice. The result was Sunrise, a work often cited as one of the finest achievements of silent film art, and one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces. (It was voted one of the ten best films of all-time in the most recent [2002] version of Sight and Sound’s once-a-decade poll of international critics.) The film’s plot is pure melodrama: a vamp from the city (Margaret Livingston) seduces a happily married farmer (George O’Brien) and convinces him to murder his devoted wife (Janet Gaynor). Murnau’s fable-like rendering is nothing short of sublime: a tour de force of fluid camera movement, shimmering lighting, and dreamy, stylized set pieces. The famed seduction sequence, set in a misty, moonlit swamp, is as sensuous as anything in cinema. Winner of the inaugural Oscars for Best Actress (Gaynor), Best Cinematography, and Artistic Quality of Production (an award never given again), Sunrise brought the visual expressiveness of silent film, and of German Expressionist cinema, to a remarkable pinnacle. With the coming of talkies, and the limits imposed by primitive early sound equipment, it would be years before the camera would have such wings again. This new 35mm print, featuring a refurbishing of the film’s original orchestral score (recorded on the early Fox Movietone sound-on-film process), showcases one of cinema’s most lyrical masterpieces in full luminous glory. B&W, 35mm, silent with musical score. 95 minutes.