SUNRISE
Born in Germany 1888 (Bielefeld), Died 1931 in a road accident
Murnau had made a number of well received films in Germany before being asked to come to the US by Fox to make Sunrise. .These included especially Der Letzte Mann and Nosferatu
Sunrise holds an important place in film history. It is the first film to mediate between American melodrama and German expressionism.
Some terms to remember:
Look at the "Eleanor Rigby" paper. Think about the question of "structure" of the piece - in the "Eleanor Rigby" paper, the poem can be divided into verss and choruses and so on. What can you say about the structure of Sunruse? Murnau said "All tracking shots must wind up somewhere". What does that mean (other than that the tracking shot must finally stop somewhere. There are two famous tracking shots in the film. How can they be analysed?
According to some schools of analysis all variables can be used to express meaning. A variable is something which can be changed - it has more than one expression. Camera placement for example is a variable, because the distance the camera is placed from the subject can be varied. Here are some variables to consider:
Motion picture film begins to differ from still photography more and more as several possibilities are realized.
In one theory of aesthetics proposed by the Prague School of linguistics, the artistic use of languages differs from its normal use in that it systematically builds and breaks patters in order to create a dynamic tension.
While the Prague school was interested largely in language, the idea has wider application. It has been applied for example to music and here we will try to apply it to the art of film. In order to do this we need to define domains which have variables within them, and which can not co-occur, while the domains themselves can. For example, a shot may be a close-up or a medium or long shot but it can not be all of them at once. Similarly a shot may have deep focus or not, but it can not have both at the same time. However, one can have any kind of distance with any kind of focus. The term “domain” is used here to refer to the collection of things which contains a set of variables which can not co occur with one another, while the domains can co occur. Last time we discussed the kinds of “domains” in which variation can take place as regards film. Some of the things we discussed were:
Photography:
Composition in the frame:
composing he shot. How is the area filled? Where are people placed in the frame. Balance and symmetry.
Camera angles. Where is the camera placed relative to the subjects?
Lighting
lighting the shot
How is lighting done. Very complex – generally the “common” unmarked form is three point – main fill in and back. Lights are placed also at different heights for different effects. More on this when we talk about lighting
Color
Movement
1. By the camera
(panning, zooming, dolly shots)
2. By the performers
how do people enter and leave the frame? How is the camera placed.
Exposure
Quality of the media (film- with all the variations of speed and pushing, video tape)
Lenses (telephoto, wide angle etc.)
Editing
Rhythm (one serious problem with pan and scan is it loses the rhythm of the film)
Parallel cutting
Form cuts
Transitions: dissolves, fades etc. wipes
Sound
Sound within the film is going to constitute a domain which we have not yet visited. It has many variables in terms of volume, on or off screen, diegetic or not and so on). In regards to the latter, background music (unheard by the characters in the film) is a non-diagetic sound which needs considering.
Sets:
What kind of sets are there – are they realistic or not? Can you place them as to place and time?
Costumes and make-up:
Are these realistic or not? Expressionistis?
Symbolism –semiotics – study of signs
”Signs” is a general technical term for things with reference, They may be symbols, icons of indices (singular = index). An index is like a fever – a sign of an illness. An icon has some real world connections between the symbol and its referent, A symbol has an arbitrary (or somewhat arbitrary) reference. The foot print of a dog is an icon, the word dog is a symbol. Burying a body so it faces west is rather symbolic but the connection between the west as the setting place for the celestial bodies makes it an obvious (but not necessary) choice.
Motifs, tropes etc.
Ir is possible to hold at some level all of the other aspects of film making may have symbolic aspects to them.
IT IS IMPORTANT to know the meaning of something used as a symbol within that culture. What does it mean? How is it related to other works of art? What is its referent in general within the culture? (reindeer and Santa Clause)
A general education should make students familiar with many of he symbols found in art.
The film, like many early films has titles and intertitles, the first occur at the start of the film while the second are indicators of what the characters say. In several instances in the film the same title occurs before and after a scene which happens in the past but is being referred to in the present. Hence comments about how happy The Man and The Woman were at first appear as intertitles. Then we see the “happy couple” in earlier times and the we see the intertitles appear again. The same occurs when the two women talk about the money lenders stripping the farm of its assets,
Sound/Silent
No synchronous sound, but there are crowd noises and sound effects of trains and horns of automobiles.
The musical score quotes from some previously composed music including Les Preludes by Liszt and the Siegfried Idyll by Wagner. The first is a bucolic piece of music and takes it name from a poem that asks “What is our life but a series of preludes” The preludes are really to a life which is to come and is discussed as a piece of music whose first solemn note is death. Hence it deals with life and its relationship to a new life. Wagner’s piece was written as a present to his wife and had the musicians lined up on the stairway to their bedroom and in the morning he had them play it as his wife awoke.
The orchestra is often related to the images which may in fact be “seen” on the screen as the imaginings of the people in the film When The City Woman talks to The Man about the city, we see what they are imaging and here some raucous music which The City Woman dances to almost in a frenzy.
The orchestra sometimes mimics the human voice. The horn which is used when The Man calls for The Woman is especially interesting since the idea is to make the story universal. If The Man had actually been audible, there would have had to have been an actual name he called, rather than remaining “universally anonymous”.
Movement
(camera)
There are several tracking shots that are famous in this film – one when The City Woman walks to The Man’s house and the camera follows her path and the other when The Man walks in the marshes to meet The City Woman. His peculiar gait (brought about by wearing heavily weighed shoes and the fact that his distance from the camera remains virtually constant gives an unusual feeling of lack of progress to the walk.
Actor's movement
O’Brien is able, because of the weighted shoes, to look peculiarly monstrous as he walks and menaces the Woman. Karloff must have studied him for Frankenstein’s monster!
There is a great deal of looking and avoidance of looking as well as being aware of being seen and not being seen. See below.
Things:
Objects also produce motion in the film – most notably the two vehicles – the boat and the trolley ride . These are also tied to shifts ion light from dark ro light or light to dark There is complex movement in here as well as the boat is often moving very fast against the water, yet not relative to the viewer. What implications does this have?
Borders/transitions and set places
Boat dangerous attempted murder as well as the storm Movement across the lake is dangerous. Some may choose to read the lake Freudianly as having sexual implications, and hence the sexuality of the film is dangerous when movement is involved.
Trolley (travel by land) place of start of reconciliation
Light/Dark (day/night)
City/country not really so black and white rather shades of grey
City:/adult
Madonna/whore
Viewer/viewed (reflexivity)
Specularization:
The films title (Sunrise: A Song fo Two Humansand first intertitle card indicate that the story is to be taken as universal. How is this accomplished (some of which would be very hard in a synch sound film)?
All of the oppositions set up above which occur in the film are mediated in some way. They are never fully opposite in association. The city is opposed to the country and good is opposed to bad, bnt neither the city not the country is one or the other. Both have good and bad points, just like the people. Good and bad is fused in The Man who certainly has an underlying nastiness - he attacks or comes close to attacking 4 people in the film - The Woman (his wife), the man in the barber shop, the man urgung him to dance, and the city woman, although all but the first are somewhat provoked and 2 never quite become violent. One the other hand good and evil is split between the two women with The City Woman having virtually no redeeming qualities and The Wife having no determinental ones. This can be related to Western society's idea of a duality in women - the fantasy of the bedroom and a saint (or whore vs. wife/mother). The satorial code for the women indicates this with the black/white opposition in dress.
Structurally the film seems to come in three parts with some subdivisions:
In Part Three, The Man comes out of the water and the moon emerges from behind a cloud.
In a sense these frame the story of the lead up to the attempted murder and the implied death by accident
Part III is, in effect the reversal of Part I. In Part I the attempt is made on The Woman, and in Part III on The City Woman (both of which fail).
The two famous tracking shots, which occur in Part I occur when The City Woman's treek to meet The Man and The Man's walk to meet The City Woman both end with the two coming together. The Man and The Woman are not involved in such shots.
In the Part III which is the mirror of Part I, The CIty Woman again comes to meet The Man - and does so, but without the tracking shot. The Man then prusues her to the fence where he attemps, this time, to kill her. Again he goes to her but without being tracked,.The shift in the relationship is marked by the shift in the camera work.
The intertitle cards for flashbcks occur on either side fo the scenes of the flashback, thus marking are arrival and departure from the chronolgical time of the story. Superimpositions are used for fantasized events (the flooding in the bedroom).
What can you make of the odd shot in the film, often called a "Dutch Angle shot" in which the camera is tilted to the side making the horizon line to appear not to be level.? Is it really a Ducth Angle shot?
Can you find symbolism in the film? We mentioned the Garden of Eden idea above. Does the shot of putting The City Woman on the tree, watching the people coming back from looking for The Woman have meaning? Could you relate it to the serpent in the Garden of Eden? Does The City Woman look "cat-like" and somewhat like a stalking figure?
Consider the various scenes in Part II.In terms of composition and other photographic aspects, what can you say about the scene in the cafe, the church, the photographer's studio, the amusement park (chase woth pig, dance, dinner)?
In some instance, the couple is shown initially with each against a different background (outside when The Man gives The Woman the flowers, he is against a wood backgrund and she is against a stucco background). SHortly after in the church they share the same background (the wood of the pew). Does this indicate a way of showing them coming together?)
Reflexivity:
The film argues for art to look at life and not be artificial at least in its characters emotions. We see this in terms of the photographer ultimately not taking the "posed" shot of the couple, but rather the spontaneous kiss.
A simlar contrast occurs between the "performance" of the peasant dance in the ball room, and actual peasant dance in the field. In some sense this comments on movie goers who watch films rather than real life. Art may comment on life, but perhaps it is life that is the real focus
Day – happy earlier life.; sunrise of reconciliation
Symbols not so simple with Murnae. City is also place of bright lights, while forest is often dark and dangerous. Linking of city with night and woods with day is not so easy.
Country /childhood
Home of The Man & The Woman (garden of Eden)
Dangerous elements – storm, infidelity,
Boorish, peasantry (dance)
City Woman is “devil” - drivem out of Eden at the end
Place of sophistication: many people, fancy restaurant, barber shop, amusement park etc
Place of reconciliation
Clearly there is a set up of The City Woman as evil and the country one as good. This may be the clearest division in the film Despite the idea that one comes from the city, we have indicated the city is not always a bad place. It is in fact, the place of movies as indicated by theater marquee
Much looking through windows, performances (dance) etc. somewhat reflexive
Art mediates desire from experience per se.
The City Woman looks at The Man through window = peeping Tom
Who stares (at whom) and who averts eyes.. (look at eyes in boat and on trolley)
Gaze of the pair at the city
Watching and identifying with watching (watching bride and groom in church and taking vows again). POWER OF SPECTATORSHIP. Get photographed after wedding. See the photographer photographing. (background is fake as in the film)
The film is somewhat reflexive and deals at one level with art (motion pictures) and life. In some sense Murnau seems to express the idea that one can learn more about life from art than from life.
Lost/found life/death death/rebirth sun(moon)rise/sun(moon)set (cyclical)