When I had covered Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, it made me realize the value that silent films have to offer.
They work within a constraint (no spoken dialogue), and with that constraint, filmmakers have to pull off a very pure trick: they have to tell a story visually.
Of course, all films are visual in some ways, even the most dialogue heavy ones like My Dinner with Andre can make Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory at a table for two hours compelling; however, having this limitation can force the filmmaker into a load of creativity.
And although this was true for The Gold Rush, I feel this film demonstrates it even more, as the visuals are nothing short of balls to the wall stunning.
Of course, I’m talking about 1927’s Sunrise, written and directed by F.W. Murnau.
Love Overcoming Corruption
Story-wise, the movie is pretty simple. Although simple can be a good thing. It’s so simple,Murnau doesn’t even bother naming his characters. Simple stories usually have very clear messages.
And this movie’s message is, “you shouldn’t kill your wife.” Half-kidding, although, this dude really does love trying to murder people.
But more precisely, the message can be summed up as “love is what can overcome corruption.”
The man originally thinks he loves the woman who’s a stranger, so much that he’s willing to take up his favorite hobby and try to murder his wife on a boat for this stranger. He doesn’t really love her though. He is corrupted by her (indicating, by the way, that he doesn’t have a ton of self-agency).
But when he’s on the boat, and he sees his wife so vulnerable, he falls back in love with her. She’s scared at seeing his corruption, but when he proves to her that he has fallen back in love with her, she falls back in love with him.
So much of the middle of this film is that couple holding onto their love, even in the most chaotic of situations, avoiding corruption at every turn.
The biggest possible corruption is when the wife almost dies at sea, right around the time when the strange woman reappears. But in the end love wins.
Happy ending. Oh, except for the stranger woman dying a terrible death. I mean, it was the 20’s.
Be Trippy
The visuals of this movie are straight-up trippy, which makes this so fun to talk about.
Rather then describe them to you, since I’d need a thousand words per picture, I’ll just post what I’m talking about
A sensory masterpiece, the kind we don’t see much today.
The message of this movie is a bit symbolic of what happened to these kinds of films.
The visual medium of film is a form of love. It’s touching the viewer right in that emotional no-no spot.
With sound dialogue, a lot of plot can come in to hook the viewer. But one could also look at that sound as a form of corruption.
Not that there’s something wrong with sound movies. The vast majority of the greatest movies ever made are ones with spoken dialogue.
However, a bit of purity is lost (ok, I know I just called it touching the viewer in their emotional no-no spot, but stay with me). We do still get some of this visual wowing with filmmakers like Terrence Malik and Jonathan Glazier, but for the most part, the images aren’t necessarily the first priority within a movie.
The dialogue in a screenplay typically takes up way more space on the page than the visual descriptions do.
I’m not saying we should kill the dialogue from movies like our main character would so love to do to anyone. Hell, I didn’t even really fully appreciate silent films until a few months ago.
I think, though, that a lot can be learned about how to tell a story visually from Sunrise and Murnau, so that even between the dialogue we can have a movie that’s close to as visually appealing as this one.
And maybe keeping the plot simple can help too. If we’re so lost in the plot, we might not appreciate the visuals as much.
But I am hoping many future filmmakers are still inspired by these types of films and have the ability to touch us all…you know where.
Thanks for reading!
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