Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

A woman from the city persuades a married farmer to kill his wife. He makes his move in the boat and cannot do it. Afterwards the two of them go into the city, and a murder plan turns into a single day of falling in love again. F. W. Murnau directed. Carl Mayer adapted the screenplay from Hermann Sudermann's 1917 story The Excursion to Tilsit. None of the characters has a name, and that anonymity gives them a universality that lets them work as symbols. Technically it is silent and also not: it carries synchronised sound effects and music through the Movietone system. The sets were enormous by the standards of the day; the city street alone cost over 200,000 dollars to build and was reused in later productions. At the first Academy Awards in 1929 it won Unique and Artistic Picture. Janet Gaynor took the first Best Actress award at the same ceremony, given collectively for three roles across 1927 and 1928. The box office was modest: 818,000 dollars in domestic rentals. Its standing rose over the decades, and it placed eleventh in the 2022 British Film Institute poll. Who it is for: anyone who wants to see the visual summit of silent cinema. Who it is not for: viewers troubled by the moral simplicity. The woman from the city is used as a symbol of corruption from beginning to end.