Sunrise (1927)

FW Murnau's Sunrise is a movie I like more than what is good for me. It is an unabashedly misogynistic film in which all bad sides of urbanization are epitomized by brash, prowling femininity (black dress, cigarettes & short hair) in the guise of a man-eater who does most anything to steal a man from his poor, innocent wife. So what's there to like? Well, the way the scenes are developing works magically - the camera work is dreamily fluid and very elegant (often, I do not like fluid camera-work: in its notorious attempt to create that special floating atmosphere, it often enough ends up in a kind of sterility - Matrix is of course one example). Murnau uses the cinematic medium at its fullest and the viewer can take delight in small details ranging from how one scene fades out into another and how Murnau superimposes one image on another, or uses juxtaposition and contrasts. And then there's the city. Evil and tempting - well, but also loony and perversely fun to watch: Murnau's approach sometimes paves the way for the screwball comedies of the thirties (many directors seemed to have been greatly impressed by the scene involving a bunch of people involved in the delicate pursuit of chasing a pig) - it even features one of the most important themes of those films: true love is found in the form of re-marriage, where the bond of love has been tested and then strengthened. Some of the city scenes go from loony to tender in a second, which is an interesting way to tell a story.

The cheesiness of the plot only adds to the charm of this movie - but as I said: it's also a disquieting kind of charm and in one scene towards the end, the romantic film turns into a sort of horror movie, a horror movie where the film's perspective is hard to make out. The basics: a guy falls in love with a girl from the city. But there's the wife problem. That sort of problem can be solved - by murder. Guilt-ridden and tormented, the guy sets out on the mission to kill his wife but well, the events take a sudden turn... As I said, Sunrise contains shady elements and it is V E R Y sentimental but the film itself is pretty impossible to resist.