Review of Sunrise (1985) by Ryan H — 16 Oct 2010

Murnau will always be a great mystery to me. I wouldn't go as far to say he's all visuals and no substance, but close. The images here are at times as incredible as any you would find in other great silent films like Metropolis, but the film, for me at least, lacks much of anything to keep my attention.

What starts off as an intriguing thriller turns into an enjoyable romance, before finally devolving into melodrama. The main male character strikes a rather Raskolnikov-esque figure, lurching around contemplating murder. This is interesting. That same character kissing his wife in a photo studio half an hour later, not so interesting.

The romance plot begins well enough, there are even plenty of good jokes to be found here, but it just feels overly long. Plus, it's hard to really side with the male character anyway, seeing as how he tries at various points to murder both his wife and mistress.

Overall, the film had an odd, male-centric tone. In the wedding scene, the focus of the priest is on the male protecting the wife, obviously in line with the narrative up to that point, but the real scene that bothers me is from the photographers studio. In a sequence that could scream nothing but Eden, the wife attempts to feed a piece of fruit to the unwilling husband, and as a result, he falls back and smashes one of the photographer's statues. It's not much, but the film seems littered with little, disconcerting scenes like this.

Overall, yes, I think the movie was good. Do I think it's one of the great silent films? Not really. Give me a Dovzhenko, a Keaton, a Pabst instead. I'm in no hurry to seek out any other Murnau films. While his classic Nosferatu is well worth a watch, I feel that that too falls into the same habit of establishing a great premise, accomplishing it visually, but lacks very good story telling. However, the first half hour or so might be enough to consider it a classic, because the first half hour or so is really, really good.