This is one of the best silent films I have seen ever before. The English subtitles and the silent dialogue between the characters all pave a good way for the whole story. First of all, this silent film enables me to experience how lust, love, fear, and loyalty are intersected together to shape the Man called George’s life. Director Murnau gives the man Gorge a complicated motivation and look. He is seduced by the woman from the city and gets into the murder plan to her wife. The twist of his expectations of the better city life conjured by the city woman and his series of redemption behaviors such as begging for his wife’s forgiveness and tie the bundles of reeds around his wife, the audience is forced to predicate what the man will do between his wife and the city woman. By constantly rekindling the love between the man and woman, Murnau does not let down the audience because the man always could identify himself in the crossroads of city life and love.
One of the most striking elements of this film is the mise-en-scene because it always makes the plots and characters so predictable to the audience. Murnau gives a realistic setting to the story such as the farm and the busy city roads and the lake, all of which make the performance of the characters so believable and natural. when the settings of the couple transfer from the farmhouse to the hectic and eventful life of the city, the audience feel natural to juxtapose the life of woman, man, and the city woman who persuades the man to sell his farm and kill her wife. Of course, the use of tracking shot contributes a lot to the imagination of the audience about the relationships between the man and woman after their trust crisis.
One of the critics I have read about the film is from James Blake Ewing. He describes that Sunrise is not simply about the depravity of life but the joys of life. I do agree with that because Murnau offers a lot of visual clues to shift the story by slowly rekindling and reuniting the man and woman. This resonates with both me and the other audience’s expectations of the transition of the story.
What makes this film a great film is largely associated with the performance of the two leading characters, the universality the film achieves by its realistic portraits of the city life during the 1930s, and the incidental music that blends smoothly throughout the movie. The emotions of the characters, the context of each shot, and the direction of the storyline are mainly built upon the setting of the city, which also drive Murnau to seek a depth of the city’s look and chaos that shape the man and women’s life during the early era.
“My favorite film-Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” the guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/nov/16/my-favourite-film-sunrise
https://creativecriticism.net/?p=1612