Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Short description
A farmer living contentedly in the countryside with his wife becomes infatuated with a woman visiting from the city. Her attention turns his head, and the affair leads him to see his marriage as an obstacle. Pressured by his new lover, he begins to consider doing away with his wife, and the two women come to stand for the conflicting pulls of temptation and devotion inside him. A trip out on the water becomes the setting for a crisis that changes the course of the marriage, though the couple's troubles are not yet over.
The film was directed by F. W. Murnau, made in Hollywood after his earlier German productions Nosferatu, The Last Laugh and Faust. Carl Mayer wrote the screenplay, and William Fox produced through Fox Film Corporation. George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor play the farmer and his wife, with Margaret Livingston as the woman from the city.
Released in November 1927, the film runs just over an hour and a half and is a silent drama. Critics judged it considerably more favourably than audiences did, with a critics' rating of 9.5/10 from 64 reviews against 8.1/10 on IMDb from around 57,000 votes and 7.8/10 on TMDB from roughly 934 votes. It took about 2 million US dollars worldwide at the box office.
What's left behind the scenes
- The first film with musical and sound effects recorded using "Movietone" technology.
- The entire city in the film is one huge set.
- In 1989, the film was included in the U.S. National Film Registry.
- The film's negatives were destroyed in a fire in 1937.
- ’Sunrise’ is the first and only film to have received an ‘Oscar’ for Best Picture in the category of ‘Unique and Artistic Picture’ (this category no longer exists).
- The film's screenplay is based on Hermann Sudermann's 1917 novel 'Journey to Tilsit'.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
