9pm PST – Sunrise (1927) – In this silent film, a farmer’s affair with a city woman almost destroys his life. Cast: George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, Bodil Rosing Dir: F. W. Murnau BW-94 mins, TV-PG
Set your TiVo and prepare yourself for a silent film for those who don’t think they like silent films — what you might call a gateway drug.
Studio chief William Fox brought F.W. Murnau to Hollywood and practically handed his entire studio over to the German director, promising him anything he needed to make the film he wanted. The result was a commercial disappointment, but a pure masterpiece, easily one of the five best films ever made, and something so emotionally haunting it will stay with you for days afterward, or in my case, forever.
If it weren’t for the glorious years of the MGM musical, I would argue the art of film peaked with “Sunrise,” a triumph of visual poetry so achingly beautiful, so bewitching, so exquisite and visually affecting that you won’t feel like you’re watching a movie, but rather a dream, and at times a nightmare.
F.W. Murnau
Sadly, Murnau would only make three more films after “Sunrise” before being killed in a 1941 1931 road accident. But his legacy lived on through John Ford, Howard Hawks, Frank Borzage, and Raoul Walsh, four directors under contract with Fox and encouraged to learn from Murnau. Ford was especially impressed. So much so, in fact, that after he caught an early peak at some “Sunrise” footage he travelled to Germany to visit with the director. It’s hard to imagine a man like Ford deferring to anyone, but at the time Ford called “Sunrise” the greatest film he’d ever seen.
Somewhere an alternate universe might exist where Murnau never was and those four directors never had a chance to learn from him and others from them.
Sounds like Hell for film lovers.
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