Programme notes CH 01 — The Silent Signal
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
A man is talked into drowning his wife. The film is what happens instead.
Murnau, arrived in Hollywood with a blank cheque, made the most fluent silent film ever shot — the camera moves through swamps and tram rides like a thought. It won the only Academy Award ever given for 'Unique and Artistic Picture,' a category invented for it and retired after it. The middle hour, where an almost-murder becomes an accidental second courtship in the big city, is cinema discovering it could hold two tones at once and let them tremble.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- F. W. Murnau
- Photographed by
- Charles Rosher
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Janet Gaynor at Fox in consecutive seasons; the first Academy Award for actress was given for both, and for Seventh Heaven besides. Murnau gives her a city to be lost in; Borzage gives her a fog to hide in.