Director: F.W. Murnau
Year: 1927
Run-time: 1 hr 35 min
Source: Paid Youtube
The day before watching Sunrise for this list, I was looking late at night on HBO Now for something to watch. Partly to make my wife laugh, I settled for Fifty Shades Darker. Halfway through, I jokingly titled this film Red Flags: The Movie, since what makes the film so squeamish to watch is that Christian Grey is an almost entirely unredeemable jerk, and Anastasia Steele should run far, far away. (I do think the film has its slight merits, but I'll save those for a think piece that will never be written.)
Fans of Sunrise should admit that it too is Red Flags: The Movie. However, Sunrise is one of a handful of films that on any given day, I could consider to be my favorite. Every time I watch it, it strikes the core of my being, and reduces me to tears. The pure fantasy of this film - and in our society it's a dangerous one, to be sure - is that the husband might be a good man, and is worth forgiving. He, and the audience, knows that he is not, but we want to believe he is. I think this is because there's a part of all men that believe ourselves to be monsters inside.
The greatest decision Murnau made with this film, one that may have never been successfully repeated, is to place this film's deep melodrama before its light-hearted comedy. That's a pretty bold move, but it's why the film works so, so well. The joy that the couple feels on their day in the city is the kind of delirious, freeing joy that can only follow tremendous anguish, and the audience feels it too. The reason that Sunrise is my favorite film is that it's the only one I've seen to tap into that rare emotion successfully.
Of course, it only works because O'Brien and Gaynor have such incredible chemistry (which Dakota Johnson and Jaime Dornan definitely don't have).
Year: 1927
Run-time: 1 hr 35 min
Source: Paid Youtube
The day before watching Sunrise for this list, I was looking late at night on HBO Now for something to watch. Partly to make my wife laugh, I settled for Fifty Shades Darker. Halfway through, I jokingly titled this film Red Flags: The Movie, since what makes the film so squeamish to watch is that Christian Grey is an almost entirely unredeemable jerk, and Anastasia Steele should run far, far away. (I do think the film has its slight merits, but I'll save those for a think piece that will never be written.)
Fans of Sunrise should admit that it too is Red Flags: The Movie. However, Sunrise is one of a handful of films that on any given day, I could consider to be my favorite. Every time I watch it, it strikes the core of my being, and reduces me to tears. The pure fantasy of this film - and in our society it's a dangerous one, to be sure - is that the husband might be a good man, and is worth forgiving. He, and the audience, knows that he is not, but we want to believe he is. I think this is because there's a part of all men that believe ourselves to be monsters inside.
The greatest decision Murnau made with this film, one that may have never been successfully repeated, is to place this film's deep melodrama before its light-hearted comedy. That's a pretty bold move, but it's why the film works so, so well. The joy that the couple feels on their day in the city is the kind of delirious, freeing joy that can only follow tremendous anguish, and the audience feels it too. The reason that Sunrise is my favorite film is that it's the only one I've seen to tap into that rare emotion successfully.
Of course, it only works because O'Brien and Gaynor have such incredible chemistry (which Dakota Johnson and Jaime Dornan definitely don't have).
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