Oscars:
- Best Actress (Janet Gaynor - The Wife)
- Best Photography (Karl Struss and Charles Roshes)
- Unique and Artistic Production (Fox)
Nominations:
- Art Direction (Rochus Gliese)
Best Picture Contenders:
- Chang
- The Crowd
Duration: 95 min.
The first movie on this blog and in this massive undertaking immediately requires a thorough explanation. If you check any list of winners of the Oscar for Best Picture (OBP), you will see that the first movie in that list, and thus the first winner of the OBP, is Wings. That, however is only a small part of the truth.
You see, there was actually no OBP at the first Academy Award banquet. There were two categories that came close to what eventually would become the Best Picture category: Unique and Artistic Production, and Outstanding Production (other sources, including the Academy's own Oscar Database, mention the names Unique and Artistic Picture, and Outstanding Picture). Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans won Unique and Artistic Production, while Wings was honored for its outstanding production. Later it was decided that Outstanding Production would be the category corresponding to the current OBP, but some (including yours truly) feel that this does not give enough credit to Sunrise, as Unique and Artistic are arguably at least as honorable terms as Outstanding Production. And that is why on this blog there will be 82 movies after 81 Academy Award years, and why there will be two films to get the number 1. in their post title.
Now, on to the actual movie. It's actually also included here because it truly is a magnificent film. It was directed by the great Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, a German director who had already known great successes in Germany with his expressionist masterpieces Nosferatu: Symfonie des Grauens and Der Letzte Mann. He was brought to Hollywood in a master scheme of the American Studios (at that time, all the studios were bringing Europe's greatest stars and directors to Hollywood to enrich their cinema, robbing Europe of its masters), and the first movie he made there was Sunrise. It was the only acclaimed movie he would make in all his time in Hollywood (where he would die some years later), as he suffered the fate of many European stars: he found the studio system was too stringent for him to work in, and instead of bringing him to greater heights, the studios ultimately destroyed his career and life.
But Sunrise truly is a masterpiece. It tells the story of a farmer and his wife (prosaically named "The Man" and "The Wife"), who are visited by a tourist girl from the city. The girl falls in love with the man, and together they plot to murder the wife. However, as he is about to do it, the man is struck by remorse, and he cannot bring himself to murder his wife. He follows her as she flees to the city, and there he begs for her forgiveness and they rekindle their love.
What actually sets this movie apart however, and makes it the still revered classic that it is today, is the breathtaking photography for which Karl Struss and Charles Roshes quite rightly won an Academy Award. Every frame looks like a magnificent, frameable picture in itself. Murnau cleverly uses double printing to create ghostly visions and dreams, to show us the thoughts of his characters. And there is one beautiful one-shot scene where the couple walking in the city moves to the fields and back to the city (couple continuously, background changing), all in pre-green screen days.
As Norma Desmond would say 23 years later in Sunset Boulevard: "We didn't need words, we had faces." Because it is a silent movie (actually shot in Fox Movietone Sound-on-film, featuring music and some basic sound effects), the director can either tell the story through intrusive intertitles, or as Murnau has done, through the facial expressions and candid acting of its stars. The faces really do all the talking in this movie, and they make watching this film worthwhile all in themselves.
I leave you with a nice cameo of a famous Belgian in this movie. Check back in on Monday for the other first winner, Wings.
The first movie on this blog and in this massive undertaking immediately requires a thorough explanation. If you check any list of winners of the Oscar for Best Picture (OBP), you will see that the first movie in that list, and thus the first winner of the OBP, is Wings. That, however is only a small part of the truth.
You see, there was actually no OBP at the first Academy Award banquet. There were two categories that came close to what eventually would become the Best Picture category: Unique and Artistic Production, and Outstanding Production (other sources, including the Academy's own Oscar Database, mention the names Unique and Artistic Picture, and Outstanding Picture). Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans won Unique and Artistic Production, while Wings was honored for its outstanding production. Later it was decided that Outstanding Production would be the category corresponding to the current OBP, but some (including yours truly) feel that this does not give enough credit to Sunrise, as Unique and Artistic are arguably at least as honorable terms as Outstanding Production. And that is why on this blog there will be 82 movies after 81 Academy Award years, and why there will be two films to get the number 1. in their post title.
Now, on to the actual movie. It's actually also included here because it truly is a magnificent film. It was directed by the great Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, a German director who had already known great successes in Germany with his expressionist masterpieces Nosferatu: Symfonie des Grauens and Der Letzte Mann. He was brought to Hollywood in a master scheme of the American Studios (at that time, all the studios were bringing Europe's greatest stars and directors to Hollywood to enrich their cinema, robbing Europe of its masters), and the first movie he made there was Sunrise. It was the only acclaimed movie he would make in all his time in Hollywood (where he would die some years later), as he suffered the fate of many European stars: he found the studio system was too stringent for him to work in, and instead of bringing him to greater heights, the studios ultimately destroyed his career and life.
But Sunrise truly is a masterpiece. It tells the story of a farmer and his wife (prosaically named "The Man" and "The Wife"), who are visited by a tourist girl from the city. The girl falls in love with the man, and together they plot to murder the wife. However, as he is about to do it, the man is struck by remorse, and he cannot bring himself to murder his wife. He follows her as she flees to the city, and there he begs for her forgiveness and they rekindle their love.
What actually sets this movie apart however, and makes it the still revered classic that it is today, is the breathtaking photography for which Karl Struss and Charles Roshes quite rightly won an Academy Award. Every frame looks like a magnificent, frameable picture in itself. Murnau cleverly uses double printing to create ghostly visions and dreams, to show us the thoughts of his characters. And there is one beautiful one-shot scene where the couple walking in the city moves to the fields and back to the city (couple continuously, background changing), all in pre-green screen days.
As Norma Desmond would say 23 years later in Sunset Boulevard: "We didn't need words, we had faces." Because it is a silent movie (actually shot in Fox Movietone Sound-on-film, featuring music and some basic sound effects), the director can either tell the story through intrusive intertitles, or as Murnau has done, through the facial expressions and candid acting of its stars. The faces really do all the talking in this movie, and they make watching this film worthwhile all in themselves.I leave you with a nice cameo of a famous Belgian in this movie. Check back in on Monday for the other first winner, Wings.
Drunken innkeeper from Sunrise.
Belgian minister for Pensions Michel Daerden
Belgian minister for Pensions Michel Daerden
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