Sunrise

Some Analytical Terms

Film: Sunrise
Director: F.W. Murnau

TERMS

test (plot): What the story is
subtext (theme): What the story means
message What is being sent - information
codein what form the message is sent since we generally lack ESP. (e.g. language, gesture, etc.)
channel how the message is sent (e.g. speech, writing,
medium the general context or setting in which the communication happens. (e.g. face to face, broacast etc.)
marked a part of the message that is made to stand out or foregrounded.
Superimposition One image is placed over another
falshback a movement in the narrative out of chronological order going to a previous time.

Dutch angle shot Camera is tilted so the horizon line is not level

Story Telling

Stories can be told in a number of ways - verbally, in dance, in photography and so on. "Silent" films tended to be more restricted to visual story telling than the "talkies" which could rely more on words.

If we subscribe to the theory that films communicate, then we have to look at HOW the films do that. Remember in communications theory there is a sender who sends the message. a receiver who gets the message and a message.
The message is "encoded" in some way and sent through some medium.

Sender======================

message code sound medium

======================receiver

The code for the message might be language (as compared to paralinguistic or just sounds)
The channel might be oral/auditory (as opposed to written)
The medium might be face to face (as opposed to broadcast)

FILM AS COMMUNICATION

In films, the sender of the message is the film maker and allied people (writers, directors, actors, set designers). These people work co-operativesly (hopefully) to send a cohesive message to the "reciever" i.e. the audience. The message comes often in two different levels - the text or plot (what happens in the story) and the sub-text or theme (underlying meaning).

The message is coded in both words, and visual images. The words have all the variables open to writers as is discussed in the Eleanor Rigby paper. The visual image is constructed from a set of domains or areas which are variables to be manipulated. Some of these are composition, lighting, texture, acting, sound, camera position and movement, editing and so on. Each of these constitutes a variable that, if altered, can either change or alter the message. The chapters in the text book and the lectures in the course are broken down by different variables. In performing arts and visual arts these variables are numerous and complicated. Building and breaking categories in order to "mark" or "foreground" parts of the message are complex tasks.

Some of the areas open to manipulation are:

Photography:

Movement

Ir is possible to hold at some level all of the other aspects of film making may have symbolic aspects to them.

It is Imorptant 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.

We try to look at all of these to see how they impact on the story telling aspect of the film

(actually family name is Plumpe. Murnau is the name of a famous Bavarian artists colony known as Die Blaue Reiter (the Blue Riders) Group

BEFORE THEFILM

Feridrich Wilhelm Murnau

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.

Dialectics.

Originally a term used by Hegel indicating a statement (thesis) its opposite (antithesis) and its resolution (synthesis) which can easily become the next thesis.

Things in dialects tend to deal with mediation of opposites. Ultimately, French structuralism under Claude Levi-Strauss brings this idea to both culture and specifically folklore. From there h=it has continued to be relevant in art analysis including film. Opposites are brought into conflict in some way.

Although this form of analysis has been falling out of favor since post modernism, one can wonder whether or not artists didn’t think in those terms in those days, in the same way that Freud was very much in vogue at a certain period of time an dmany wrks had “Freudian” overtones. See Tennessee Williams and as a kind of counterpoint Alfred Hitchcock’s sort of funny psychological expressions at the end of films like Psycho, Vertigo and Marnie.

Sunrise does set up a number of opposing categories within the film (although there are some which are interesting outside it as well). For example, the story is clear from the start that it could be anywhere, but the town has to look like something and it clearly isn’t Japanese or Chinese. In fact, where would you locate it? (Europe).

Murnau was after all, a displaced German working on his first film in the US, so many of his image will bear a European stamp. In addition, he recruited a number of people for the film that he had worked with in Germany. Murnau (who co-authored Caligari, only to have it butchered by the director) would himself, in Germany, write the screenplay for Sunrise based on a story by a German writer Hermann Sudermann called “Reise nach Tilset” or “A Journey to Tilset”. There aer significant changes between the film and the book but they need not interest us here. A film should and must stand on its own and any film which requires you read the book to understand the film is a BAD film. For those interested in screen writing, it is often informative to see how books, short stories and plays are adapted for the screen.

Visually notice the village, the amusement park, the city and see if you can place what part of the world they are in. The signs are in English, but…….

Part of expressionism is that the film is not realistic looking. Many Americans find this annoying. Films here are to be realistic. The Terminator must really look like he is changing form. Expressionism is not like that. It forces perspective in some instances. Watch for the scene in the film where the City woman enters the house in which the background recedes enormously.

In acting watch for the peculiar movements – especially of “The Man” (George O’Brien) who wore weights in his shoes in several of the scenes to give him anunnatural gait. What other movie does is gait remind you of?

Murnau however is also something of a romantic with an emphasis on nature (especially as it opposes culture and the city). This is very obvious in this film. In fact it is one of the common oppositions seen in the film nature/culture; country/city. Watch for others. What ones can you spot?

Sound/Silent
Light/Dark (day/night)
City/country
Stasis/movement
Land/water (fear death by drowning)
Madonna/whore
Objective/subjective
Poetry/narrative
Painting/cinema
Classical modernist
Viewer/viewed (reflexivity)

Two great tracking shots.

Dark scenes vs. light scenes
Changes in light on the trolley ride

Anonymity of the place and characters No names for the man and women (no name in cast)
Place is non descript - both the town and the city. Don't really look American. Don't really look like Europe. Language on signs is English.

The film deals with the universality of the human condition - it is everywhere the same.

The film also looks at the nature of film making by showing that what needs to be filmed is reality, not posed or constructed pictuers.

AFTER THE FILM

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 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,

Water over the bed
Change from city to country as couple walks through the city.

Flashbacks

Flashbacks are often placed between two of the same intertitle cards. This is a "marker" that let's the audience know that what follows (and/or) proceeded is not in linear sequence.

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”.

Cultural knowledge. Many artists have wide knowledge of other arts which they "reference".

Music

There is a score for the film which is composed for the film, but other music also occurs:

Les Preludes is a musical "translation" of a poem that starts "What is our life, but a series of preludes". It talks about people going to the country after the storms of life to "recuperate". The film opens with this music. The film shows the train station and the train (and then many other forms of transportation) leaving the city.

Siegfried Idyll was written by Wagner for his wife. He lined up musicians on the stairway of this house and had them play it in the morning. Although he said he wouldn't use it commercially, it winds up in his opera Siegfried.

Funeral March of a Marionette is used when the statue falls and the couple believe they have broken the head off. Notice the way the music imitates the sound of the Man calling his wife. This would be less impressive if she had a name we knew.

What is the importance of the "Peasant Dance"? We get to see the information on the music as to what the title is, and that it is a peasant dance.

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 bing 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) Night – dangerous – illicit meeting, storm at sea
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.

City/country not really so black and white rather shades of grey
Country /childhood
Home of the man & woman (garden of Eden)
Dangerous elements – storm, infidelity,
Boorish, peasantry (dance)

City:/adult
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

Madonna/whore
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

Viewer/viewed (reflexivity)

Specularization:
Much looking through windows, performances (dance) etc. somewhat reflexive
Art mediates desire from experience per se.
City woman looks at 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)

While all of these are oppositional categories none seems easily associated with a single meaning. The city is not good, not bad. The City woman may imply negativity about the city, but it is also the place of reconcilliation. The film seems to lean toward the idea that the people funtion the same way in any landscape making the theme more universal. The universality is certainly made overt by the opening titles which say it is a "Song fo Two HUmans" and indicate it is much the same everywhere. The main characters are not named to help in this. None the less, there are symbols which are specifically cultural (at least to the west - for example the wedding ring which we see on the man's left hand).

The film has a reflexive element when the couple go to the photographer's studio who makes a pucture of them, much the way Murnau ios making a picture of them. We notice though that despite all the work the photographer does "arranging" them in the picture, that the ultimate picture is not arranged, but simply the expression of their own true emotions.

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