Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans - Style

Style

Sunrise was made by F. W. Murnau, a German director who was one of the leading figures in German Expressionism, a style that uses distorted art design for symbolic effect. Murnau was invited by William Fox to make an Expressionist film in Hollywood.

The resulting film features enormous stylized sets that create an exaggerated, fairy-tale world; the city street set alone reportedly cost over US$200,000 to build and was re-used in many subsequent Fox productions including John Ford's Four Sons (1928). Much of the exterior shooting was done at Lake Arrowhead, California.

Full of cinematic innovations, some have called it the Citizen Kane of American silent cinema. The groundbreaking cinematography (by Charles Rosher and Karl Struss) featured particularly impressive tracking shots that influenced later filmmakers, including the longest continuous tracking shot made up to that point: over four minutes in one take. Titles appear sparingly, with long sequences of pure action and the bulk of the story told in Murnau's signature style. The extensive use of forced perspective is striking, particularly in a shot of the City with normal-sized people and sets in the foreground and smaller figures in the background by much smaller sets.

The characters go unnamed, lending them a universality conducive to symbolism. Veit Harlan compared his German remake Die Reise nach Tilsit (1939), pointing to the symbolism and soft focus of Sunrise he claimed that it was a poem, whereas his realistic Die Reise nach Tilsit was a film.