Sunrise (film)
Encyclopedia
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, also known as Sunrise, is a 1927
American silent film
directed by German
film director F. W. Murnau. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer
from the short story
"Die Reise nach Tilsit" ("A Trip to Tilsit") by Hermann Sudermann
.
Sunrise won an Academy Award
for Unique and Artistic Production at the first ever Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. In 1937, Sunrise's original negative was destroyed in a nitrate fire. A new negative was created from a surviving print. In 1989, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress
and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry
.
In a 2002 critics' poll for the British Film Institute
, Sunrise was named the seventh-best film in the history of motion pictures.
In 2007
, the film was chosen #82 on the 10th anniversary update of the American Film Institute
's 100 Years... 100 Movies list of great films
. Sunrise is one of the first with a soundtrack of music and sound effects recorded in the then-new Fox Movietone
sound-on-film
system. Much of the exterior shooting was done at Lake Arrowhead, California
.
) travels to the country on a summertime vacation. She lingers in one particular lakeside town for weeks, having started an affair. One night, she puts on a slinky black dress and wanders through town to a farmhouse where the Man (George O'Brien) and the Wife (Janet Gaynor
) live with their infant child. She whistles from outside to the Man. The Man leaves his wife and child for a clandestine tryst. The Wife, well aware (as is everyone else in town) of why her husband has gone, cries on her child's pillow.
The Man and the Woman embrace. The Woman tells the Man that he should sell the farm and go with her to the City. When he asks what to do about his wife, she suggests he drown her and make it look like a boating accident. He objects violently at first, but reluctantly agrees. The Woman gathers bundles of reeds so that, when the boat is overturned, the Man can use them to help stay afloat.
The Wife suspects nothing when her husband suggests going on an outing. The next day, they set off across the lake, but she soon grows suspicious of his strange behavior. The Man stands up menacingly and prepares to throw the Wife overboard, but realizes he cannot do it. He sits back down and begins rowing frantically. When the boat reaches the other shore, the Wife flees and the Man follows, begging her not to be afraid of him.
The Wife boards a trolley to escape, but the Man manages to get on as well. It takes them into the City. Once there, the Wife runs from the Man in a state of fear and confusion into the busy street. The Man catches her and pulls her to safety. Together they wander the City, the Wife still fearful and unsure of the Man's intentions toward her. Slowly, she begins to forgive him. He buys her a bouquet of flowers. Soon after, they go inside a church to watch a wedding. The Man breaks down. After a tearful reconciliation, they wander into the street, oblivious to the busy traffic around them.
They stroll around the City, getting their picture taken by a photographer who mistakes them for newlyweds, and visiting a barber shop, where the Man gets a shave, then has to fend off an admirer of the Wife. They make their way to a bustling amusement park, where they play a Midway game and dance to a country tune. As darkness falls, they board the trolley for home.
Soon they are drifting peacefully back across the lake under the moonlight. A sudden storm causes their boat to begin sinking. The Man remembers the two bundles of reeds he placed in the boat earlier, and ties the bundles around the Wife. Then the boat capsizes. The Man awakes on the rocky shore, but cannot find his wife. He gathers the townspeople to search the lake in boats for the Wife, but all they find is a broken bundle of reeds floating in the water.
The Woman From The City wakes to the frantic mobilization of the townsfolk and watches from the shadows. Convinced the Wife has drowned, the grief-stricken Man stumbles home and sobs uncontrollably on the Wife's empty bed. The Woman goes to his house, assuming their plan has succeeded, but recoils in horror as the Man glares at her in a murderous rage. She flees, but he chases her down, and begins to choke her. Then the Maid calls to him that his wife is alive, and he releases the Woman. The Wife has survived by clinging to one last bundle of reeds, and has been pulled from the lake by an old fisherman who did not give up hope.
The Man kneels by the Wife's bed as she slowly opens her eyes and smiles radiantly at him. As the sun rises over their farmhouse, the Woman From The City leaves town on a cart. The Man and the Wife kiss as the film dissolves to the sunrise.
director who was one of the leading figures in German Expressionism
, a style that uses distorted art design for symbolic effect. Murnau was invited by William Fox
to make an Expressionist film in Hollywood.
The resulting film features enormous stylized sets that create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world; the City street set alone reportedly cost over US$200,000 to build and was re-used in many subsequent Fox productions including John Ford
's Four Sons
(1928). Murnau manages to use a subtle technique of animal and plant imagery as an important tool to indicate the mood or tone in a particular scene and accent the deconstruction of generic dichotomies.
Titles are used sparingly in the film. Previously, in Germany, Murnau had made a film called The Last Laugh which told its story with only one title card (to explain the ending). In Sunrise, there are long sequences without titles, and the bulk of the story is told through images in a similar style. Murnau makes extensive use of forced perspective
throughout the film. Of special note is a shot of the City where one can see normal-sized people and sets in the foreground and little people in the background along with much smaller sets.
The film is also notable for its groundbreaking cinematography (by Charles Rosher
and Karl Struss
), and features some particularly impressive tracking shots that influenced later filmmakers. The film contains the longest continuous tracking shot ever made up to that point: over four minutes in one take. These innovations have led some to call it the Citizen Kane
of American silent cinema.
The lack of names contributed to its feeling of symbolism. When Veit Harlan
made Die Reise nach Tilsit
, he pointed to the symbolism and soft focus of Sunrise to claim that it was a poem, whereas the realistic Die Reise nach Tilsit was a film.
of The New York Times
highly praised the film calling it "A Film Masterpiece." Time said it was a "meagre story" and "manages to remain picturesquely soporific for a long evening." It was ranked number 3 in a list of the 100 greatest films of the Silent Era.
Academy Award nominations (1929)
Other awards
Other distinctions
in Region 1, but only as a special, limited edition available only by mailing in proofs-of-purchase for other DVD titles in their 20th Century Fox Studio Classics
line, or as part of the box set Studio Classics: The 'Best Picture' Collection. Individual copies of this DVD can frequently be found on eBay
. The DVD includes commentary, a copy of the film's trailer, details about Murnau's lost film
Four Devils, outtakes and a great many more features.
In late 2008, Fox released the "Murnau, Borzage and Fox Box Set" in some markets. Both Movietone and European silent versions of "Sunrise" are included. A documentary of the three individuals is also part of the collection.
Sunrise has also been released on DVD in the UK as part of the Masters of Cinema
series. In September 2009, Masters of Cinema released a 2-disc DVD reissue, containing both the Movietone version and the shorter Czech print found on the 2008 "Murnau, Borzage and Fox" DVD, as well as the extra features found on the previous Masters of Cinema DVD release and the Fox Studio Classics release. The film was released simultaneously on Blu-ray Disc
, with both versions of the feature rendered in 1080p High-definition video
, and both the stereo and the mono soundtracks rendered in Dolby TrueHD
lossless audio. This UK release is notable as the first occasion of a silent film being released on Blu-ray.
1927 in film
-Events:*January 10 - Fritz Lang's science-fiction fantasy Metropolis premieres in Germany.*April 7 - Abel Gance's Napoleon often considered his best known and greatest masterpiece, premiers at the Paris Opéra and would demonstrate techniques and equipment that would not be used for years to...
American silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
directed by German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
film director F. W. Murnau. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer
Carl Mayer
Carl Mayer was an Austrian screenplay writer who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Haunted Castle , Der Letzte Mann , Tartuffe , Sunrise and 4 Devils , the last five being films directed by F. W...
from the short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
"Die Reise nach Tilsit" ("A Trip to Tilsit") by Hermann Sudermann
Hermann Sudermann
Hermann Sudermann was a German dramatist and novelist.- Early career :He was born at Matzicken, a village just to the east of Heydekrug in the Province of Prussia , close to the Russian frontier...
.
Sunrise won an Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Unique and Artistic Production at the first ever Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. In 1937, Sunrise's original negative was destroyed in a nitrate fire. A new negative was created from a surviving print. In 1989, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
.
In a 2002 critics' poll for the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
, Sunrise was named the seventh-best film in the history of motion pictures.
In 2007
2007 in film
This is a list of major films released in 2007.-Top grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2007...
, the film was chosen #82 on the 10th anniversary update of the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 100 Years... 100 Movies list of great films
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
. Sunrise is one of the first with a soundtrack of music and sound effects recorded in the then-new Fox Movietone
Movietone sound system
The Movietone sound system is a sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures that guarantees synchronization between sound and picture. It achieves this by recording the sound as a variable-density optical track on the same strip of film that records the pictures...
sound-on-film
Sound-on-film
Sound-on-film refers to a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying picture is physically recorded onto photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog sound track or digital sound track,...
system. Much of the exterior shooting was done at Lake Arrowhead, California
Lake Arrowhead, California
Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in the San Bernardino Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, within the San Bernardino National Forest, adjacent to Lake Arrowhead Reservoir...
.
Plot
A Woman From the City (Margaret LivingstonMargaret Livingston
Margaret Livingston was an American film actress, most notable for her work during the silent film era....
) travels to the country on a summertime vacation. She lingers in one particular lakeside town for weeks, having started an affair. One night, she puts on a slinky black dress and wanders through town to a farmhouse where the Man (George O'Brien) and the Wife (Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor was an American actress and painter.One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven , Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel...
) live with their infant child. She whistles from outside to the Man. The Man leaves his wife and child for a clandestine tryst. The Wife, well aware (as is everyone else in town) of why her husband has gone, cries on her child's pillow.
The Man and the Woman embrace. The Woman tells the Man that he should sell the farm and go with her to the City. When he asks what to do about his wife, she suggests he drown her and make it look like a boating accident. He objects violently at first, but reluctantly agrees. The Woman gathers bundles of reeds so that, when the boat is overturned, the Man can use them to help stay afloat.
The Wife suspects nothing when her husband suggests going on an outing. The next day, they set off across the lake, but she soon grows suspicious of his strange behavior. The Man stands up menacingly and prepares to throw the Wife overboard, but realizes he cannot do it. He sits back down and begins rowing frantically. When the boat reaches the other shore, the Wife flees and the Man follows, begging her not to be afraid of him.
The Wife boards a trolley to escape, but the Man manages to get on as well. It takes them into the City. Once there, the Wife runs from the Man in a state of fear and confusion into the busy street. The Man catches her and pulls her to safety. Together they wander the City, the Wife still fearful and unsure of the Man's intentions toward her. Slowly, she begins to forgive him. He buys her a bouquet of flowers. Soon after, they go inside a church to watch a wedding. The Man breaks down. After a tearful reconciliation, they wander into the street, oblivious to the busy traffic around them.
They stroll around the City, getting their picture taken by a photographer who mistakes them for newlyweds, and visiting a barber shop, where the Man gets a shave, then has to fend off an admirer of the Wife. They make their way to a bustling amusement park, where they play a Midway game and dance to a country tune. As darkness falls, they board the trolley for home.
Soon they are drifting peacefully back across the lake under the moonlight. A sudden storm causes their boat to begin sinking. The Man remembers the two bundles of reeds he placed in the boat earlier, and ties the bundles around the Wife. Then the boat capsizes. The Man awakes on the rocky shore, but cannot find his wife. He gathers the townspeople to search the lake in boats for the Wife, but all they find is a broken bundle of reeds floating in the water.
The Woman From The City wakes to the frantic mobilization of the townsfolk and watches from the shadows. Convinced the Wife has drowned, the grief-stricken Man stumbles home and sobs uncontrollably on the Wife's empty bed. The Woman goes to his house, assuming their plan has succeeded, but recoils in horror as the Man glares at her in a murderous rage. She flees, but he chases her down, and begins to choke her. Then the Maid calls to him that his wife is alive, and he releases the Woman. The Wife has survived by clinging to one last bundle of reeds, and has been pulled from the lake by an old fisherman who did not give up hope.
The Man kneels by the Wife's bed as she slowly opens her eyes and smiles radiantly at him. As the sun rises over their farmhouse, the Woman From The City leaves town on a cart. The Man and the Wife kiss as the film dissolves to the sunrise.
Cast
- George O'Brien as The Man (Anses)
- Janet GaynorJanet GaynorJanet Gaynor was an American actress and painter.One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven , Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel...
as The Wife (Indre) - Margaret LivingstonMargaret LivingstonMargaret Livingston was an American film actress, most notable for her work during the silent film era....
as The Woman From the City - Bodil RosingBodil RosingBodil Rosing was a Danish born American film actress in the silent and sound eras. She made one or two stage appearances on Broadway but in the meantime raised four chidren.-Filmography:* Pretty Ladies...
as The Maid - J. Farrell MacDonaldJ. Farrell MacDonaldJoseph Farrell MacDonald was an American character actor and director. He played supporting roles and occasional leads. MacDonald, who was sometimes billed as "John Farrell Macdonald", "J.F...
as The Photographer - Ralph SipperlyRalph SipperlyRalph Wilson Sipperly was a comic and character actor who appeared in ten films between 1923 and 1927. His most notable portrayal was as the barber in the Academy Award winning film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans ....
as The Barber - Jane WintonJane WintonJane Winton was a movieactress, dancer, opera soprano, writer, and painter. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.During the 1920s she began her stage career as a dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies.-Film actress:...
as The Manicure Girl - Arthur HousmanArthur HousmanArthur Housman was an American actor in films during the Golden Age of Hollywood.-Career:Initially as a leading man, Housman later became known as Hollywood's most familiar comic drunkard in films of the 1930s, usually playing cameo parts in features but with better opportunities in short films...
as The Obtrusive Gentleman - Eddie BolandEddie BolandEddie Boland was an American film actor. He appeared in 112 films between 1912 and 1937.He was born in San Francisco, California and died in Santa Monica, California from a heart attack.-Selected filmography:...
as The Obliging Gentleman
Style
Sunrise was made by F. W. Murnau, a GermanGermany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
director who was one of the leading figures in German Expressionism
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
, a style that uses distorted art design for symbolic effect. Murnau was invited by William Fox
William Fox (producer)
William Fox born Fried Vilmos was a pioneering Hungarian American motion picture executive who founded the Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and the Fox West Coast Theatres chain in the 1920s...
to make an Expressionist film in Hollywood.
The resulting film features enormous stylized sets that create an exaggerated, fairy-tale-like world; the City street set alone reportedly cost over US$200,000 to build and was re-used in many subsequent Fox productions including John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
's Four Sons
Four Sons
Four Sons is a silent drama film directed and produced by John Ford and written for the screen by Philip Klein from a story by I. A. R. Wylie. It is one of only a handful of survivors out of the more than fifty silent films that Ford directed between 1917 and 1928. It starred Margaret Mann, James...
(1928). Murnau manages to use a subtle technique of animal and plant imagery as an important tool to indicate the mood or tone in a particular scene and accent the deconstruction of generic dichotomies.
Titles are used sparingly in the film. Previously, in Germany, Murnau had made a film called The Last Laugh which told its story with only one title card (to explain the ending). In Sunrise, there are long sequences without titles, and the bulk of the story is told through images in a similar style. Murnau makes extensive use of forced perspective
Forced perspective
Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther away, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is. It is used primarily in photography, filmmaking and architecture...
throughout the film. Of special note is a shot of the City where one can see normal-sized people and sets in the foreground and little people in the background along with much smaller sets.
The film is also notable for its groundbreaking cinematography (by Charles Rosher
Charles Rosher
Charles Rosher, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer who worked from the early days of silent films through the 1950s...
and Karl Struss
Karl Struss
Karl Struss, A.S.C. was a photographer and a cinematographer of the 1920s through the 1950s. He was also one of the earliest pioneers of 3-D films. While he mostly worked on films, he was also one of the cinematographers for the television series Broken Arrow.He was born in New York, New York and...
), and features some particularly impressive tracking shots that influenced later filmmakers. The film contains the longest continuous tracking shot ever made up to that point: over four minutes in one take. These innovations have led some to call it the Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
of American silent cinema.
The lack of names contributed to its feeling of symbolism. When Veit Harlan
Veit Harlan
Veit Harlan was a German film director and actor.-Life and career:Harlan was born in Berlin. After studying under Max Reinhardt, he first appeared on the stage in 1915 and, after World War I, worked in the Berlin stage. In 1922 he married Jewish actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson; the couple...
made Die Reise nach Tilsit
Die Reise nach Tilsit
Die Reise nach Tilsit is a German 1939 film directed by Veit Harlan. It is a sound remake of the silent film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, which was based on Hermann Sudermann's short story "Die Reise nach Tilsit"; Harlan maintained it was a true film, whereas Sunrise was only a poem, and it...
, he pointed to the symbolism and soft focus of Sunrise to claim that it was a poem, whereas the realistic Die Reise nach Tilsit was a film.
Reception
Mordaunt HallMordaunt Hall
Mordaunt Hall was the first regularly assigned motion picture critic for The New York Times, from October 1924 to September 1934....
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
highly praised the film calling it "A Film Masterpiece." Time said it was a "meagre story" and "manages to remain picturesquely soporific for a long evening." It was ranked number 3 in a list of the 100 greatest films of the Silent Era.
Awards and nominations
Academy Award wins (1929)- Best Actress in a Leading Role - Janet Gaynor (at this time acting awards were given for an actor's entire body of work in a year, so Gaynor's award was actually for this film, Seventh Heaven, and Street Angel)
- Best Cinematography - Charles Rosher and Karl Struss
- Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production
Academy Award nominations (1929)
- Best Art Direction - Rochus Gliese.
Other awards
- Kinema Junpo Awards: Kinema Junpo Award; Best Foreign Language Film F.W. Murnau; 1929.
Other distinctions
- In 1989- National Film RegistryNational Film RegistryThe National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. - Top 10 of the Sight and Sound critic's poll for best film ever made in 2002.
- American Film InstituteAmerican Film InstituteThe American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 100 Passions list.
DVD and Blu-ray releases
20th Century Fox originally released Sunrise on DVDDVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in Region 1, but only as a special, limited edition available only by mailing in proofs-of-purchase for other DVD titles in their 20th Century Fox Studio Classics
20th Century Fox Studio Classics
20th Century Fox Studio Classics refers to a collection of films ranging from the late 1920s to the late 1960s released on DVD by 20th Century Fox.-Features and pricing:...
line, or as part of the box set Studio Classics: The 'Best Picture' Collection. Individual copies of this DVD can frequently be found on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
. The DVD includes commentary, a copy of the film's trailer, details about Murnau's lost film
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
Four Devils, outtakes and a great many more features.
In late 2008, Fox released the "Murnau, Borzage and Fox Box Set" in some markets. Both Movietone and European silent versions of "Sunrise" are included. A documentary of the three individuals is also part of the collection.
Sunrise has also been released on DVD in the UK as part of the Masters of Cinema
Masters of Cinema
The Masters of Cinema organization began as a website dedicated to the most well-regarded film directors in the world. Founded by a diverse international group of like-minded film enthusiasts: Jan Bielawski, a mathematician; Doug Cummings, a graphic artist and freelance critic; Trond Trondsen, a Ph.D...
series. In September 2009, Masters of Cinema released a 2-disc DVD reissue, containing both the Movietone version and the shorter Czech print found on the 2008 "Murnau, Borzage and Fox" DVD, as well as the extra features found on the previous Masters of Cinema DVD release and the Fox Studio Classics release. The film was released simultaneously on Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
, with both versions of the feature rendered in 1080p High-definition video
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
, and both the stereo and the mono soundtracks rendered in Dolby TrueHD
Dolby TrueHD
Dolby TrueHD is an advanced lossless multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories which is intended primarily for high-definition home-entertainment equipment such as Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD. It is the successor to the AC-3 Dolby Digital surround sound codec which was used as the...
lossless audio. This UK release is notable as the first occasion of a silent film being released on Blu-ray.
External links
- An essay on Sunrise by R. Dixon Smith for the Masters of CinemaMasters of CinemaThe Masters of Cinema organization began as a website dedicated to the most well-regarded film directors in the world. Founded by a diverse international group of like-minded film enthusiasts: Jan Bielawski, a mathematician; Doug Cummings, a graphic artist and freelance critic; Trond Trondsen, a Ph.D...
DVD release. - Roger Ebert's Great Movie essay on Sunrise.
- Village Voice essay.
- Reprint of historic review at CinemaWeb.com
- Murnau, Borzage & Fox at 20th Century Fox Studio Classics.
- Voted #7 on The Arts and Faith Top 100 Films (2010)
- Photographs and literature on Sunrise
- Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) at YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, in nine parts. 1, 2, 3, 4,5, 6, 7, 8, 9.