We just went through the acclaimed silent Murnau film Sunrise in class. Besides the initial student bewilderment that others call this one of the greatest movies ever made, another one is what could possibly be gleaned from this very old movie.
I have these struggles, too. It is not my favorite.
Nevertheless, here’s a tiny observation about the film’s editing, which conjures up a bunch of associations that create vast meanings.
The movie tells us to watch it as a general fable, in fact as a “song,” the keyword in the subtitle. Maybe that means it’s a ballad.
In ballad tradition, we get here a love-triangle and a moral adventure involving a serious existential choice, of which the consequences are life-changing. As with many ballads, murder could happen.
The possible murderer is The Man. That’s his name here, meaning he’s a generic type of every man. He falls for “The Woman of the City,” also her name. But The Man is married to The Wife. They live in the country, with a small child.
The tension in the film’s first half is all on The Man. The city-woman whispers to him that he could kill his wife and run away to the city. Will he do it?
The opening sequence has this vacationing seductress siren-singing to him. Here she is outside his house.
And then the next shot shows us his dilemma. This is the first time we see him. He’s sullen and sulking, slumped in the bottom left-hand corner of the frame.
Notice we have what appears to be normal film geography. She’s occupying most of the right-side as she calls out to him. When the movie cuts to the next shot, the one above, he’s on the left, the object of her calling. Perfect geography. They are laid out as any director or editor would.
But then there’s a big catch in the next two shots.
Notice our geography has completed shifted. It’s turned around entirely.
She’s on the center-left side, and when the movie cuts to him, he looks to the far left. That’s not in the direction she’s at in the frame. He should be looking, from where he’s at, up and to the right just a little bit.
This would suggest, in any typical film, that something is off about their relationship, the way the two of them relate to one another in particular. A theory goes that our unconscious minds will register that they are way off somehow, far apart even. She’s calling out towards the middle-right, leftwards granted, but he’s on the bottom left and looking away from her area.
As you might expect, this is what Sunrise wants us to notice: the awkward conflict that the Man has. He’s twisted and twisting away from the center, his moral center.
He’s even moving away from his own house, towards that window, the symbol of escape within the frame above. I say that because just a bit later, The Wife will enter the frame from the right and occupy that right side. Towards the right here is the domestic life, and towards the left is the moral seduction of the City.
This geography is maintained in the next few shots.
Here the man occupies the center of the frame, after standing up from his chair and moving towards that column. It’s an obvious dividing line. To the left, the city’s seductress. To the right, the humble Wife in the country.
To the left, moral wrong. To the right, moral right. The movie has just forged a bunch of associations and framed the Man as having this stark choice.
Well, later he leaves the house and has a dalliance with this seductress. Meanwhile, the movie shows the Wife weeping in her home.
Ah, here’s the same geography we just saw. He’s pinned down in the bottom left, while she occupies a center. That allows the movie to focus on her as the decision-maker. She’s going to be the one to suggest that the Man drown his Wife and run away to the city.
Anyway, spoilers ensue from here on.
The movie repeats the geographical structure discussed above. It happens near the end, after the Man and the Wife have reconciled. He chooses not to kill her. They renew their wedding vows, then have a grand old date-night in the city
But then he thinks she dies in a storm at sea. Crushed, he goes home to bed, alone.
So then the City Woman comes to call him again, in a repeat of the opening shots we saw above.
Same siren-song, same spot in the frame: center-left.
But where is the Man now?
In bed, he awakens to her whistle. And note that now he’s in the right geographical spot, right on top of where her mouth whistling is. His ear is hearing her tune. He’s even looking in the correct direction, as he wasn’t (arguably) in the opening.
That would mean . . . that everything is just right. That in fact their relationship is sympatico, that he responds to her, that they are in sync because the editing has them in the right positions to connect to each other.
But that’s all irony. Because we know that the Man now despises the Woman.
Yet he gets what he wanted in the first place, a relationship with her. That’s what the editing is telling us here. It’s a real sick joke, or sad comment on his earlier desires.
The movie really messes with us here. From the perspective of the City Woman, it’s a comedy, and all is well, because the Wife seems to have drowned. That is what the lovers planned in the beginning.
From his perspective, it’s an ironic tragedy of immense moral proportions. To be tempted in the beginning was already to lose the relationship he had with the Wife, even if he chose not to kill her and to stay happily married.
I should add below an image from a wonderful sequence where, in the beginning of the movie, after he’s gone out at night to have a dalliance with the City Woman, he is surrounded by her image.
This shot occurs about twenty minutes in, before the Man nearly acts to the point of killing the Wife.
What is the City-Woman here? She’s not really there; it’s her spirit that envelops him.
It’s at least an image of what his internal temptation looks like, if not the literalization of her Spirit moving his own to nefarious deeds soon. That they are on the bed is suggestive; that’s because they’ve probably had sex during their midnight dalliance.
You’ll note this shot above has the geography right: the spirit holds him, each facing the same direction. the two becoming one because the image is superimposed on the reality.
That’s not what we saw in the opening sequence, when even though he’s having an affair with her, he’s looking away from her whistle.
Instead, this temptation image syncs up with the ironically edited ending.
I suggest therefore that the spatial organization of Sunrise, looked at and compared across the movie, will lead to a dozen or more thematic resonances like the one above.
This is a small part of why others call it one of the greatest movies ever. It’s as if the artwork has a careful craftedness to it, which eludes modern viewers I am familiar with because it’s almost 100 years old.