sonido en sunrise

8/10/2019 Sonido en Sunrise

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sonido-en-sunrise 1/3

F I F I L MU N R I S

SllEN EjSOUN

On e would hesitate to call an y film the finest of its era, though asa climax the silent film, one could certainly defend thestatement if i t were applied to Sunri se

William Everson 324)

In the same way that Sunnse is an uncommon mix of literature and film,of American melodrama and European avant-garde, it also occupies apeculiar median position between silence and sound, making it a curioustechnological hybrid Allen and Gomery, 92 .. Althoughexperimentation with film sound had been one of the key challengessince the days o f the primitiv e cinema wh en Thomas Alva Edisonconceived the Kinetoscope as an extension of his phonograph),commerc ia l sound exhib it ion had been d et en ed b y problems withsynchronisation and amplification These difficulties were by and largesolved by the mid-20s, when various studios adopted competing andincompatible) methods of sound reproductin Warner Bros. embracedVitaphone, a sound-on-disc system, and, in 1926 released a series ofshort films using this technology. In 1927 only a few days afi:er theopening of Sunríse [Lipkin, 349]), Warner Bros. created history withthe premiere of The }a Singa a part-talkie , and again in 1928 withthe production of an all-talkie , The ights o f Ne w York Fox, on theother hand, who had more technological foresight, utilised Movie1One, asound-on-fi lm system - the system that eventually won o ut over th eothers. In 1927, it released a series of newsreels as well as Sunrise whichwas shot as a silent film b ut sy nch ron ised wi th a musical score for

distribution Thompson and Bordwell, 213-15).. Ironically, the graphici llus trat ion tha t graced the programme for the film s showing at theCathay Circle theat re in Los Angles, depic ted Gaynor and O Brienframed inthe centre of a sun that resembled the hole of a sound-on-discrecording. 2

Sunrise is regarded as an unsurpassed work of early cinema. Eventhe Cathay Circle programme refened to it as the Astounding Fox FilmPicture Which Has Amazed Ne w York . Among later critics, not onlyEverson bu t Almendros gran it classic status, with the latter describingit as the peak of the gente 30). Similarly, Fieschi describes it as asummation and a point of perfection in the silent cinema 706) Th e

28

The an calls out to his Wife from the rocks

The ity Woman in f mm f t l pose

or» /

/

o /

29



F I F I L MU N R I S

film s exemplary natme is apparent on numerous levels. WhiJe aspects ofits acting style are infiuenced by Expressionism, other elements belongto the broader history of gestural pantomime perfected by D,.W Griffith

For example, when Th e Man awakes on the day he will sail to town, hepresses his hands to his temples, horrified to recollect his murderous plotagainst his wife And the sequence in which the couple leaves the farm

by boat: Th e Wife has momentary doubts about Th e Man s intentions;she stands up in the boat as though to escape) - a l oo k o f concerncrosses he r face - she then sits down again, calm having retmned to hervisage. Her thought process is entirely legible in both he r movementsand countenance. Later on, afi:erTh e Man has almost killed her, and shehas fied to shore, the two ride silently together on a t ro lle y - w it h himattempting to catch her attention, and with her avoiding his eyes In thisand the sequences that follow, their entire relat ionship is dramatisedthrough a discomse of returned and averted gazes

In addit ion, there is a sense of charac te r s te reotype in unris

indicative of silent film technique, which delineated persona without thebenefit of speech. As Claite Johnston notes in discussing the theories of

Erwin Panofsky):

in the early cinema the audience had much difficulty decipheringwhat appeared on the screen. F ixed ico nog rap hy, t hen , wasintroduced to aid understanding and provide the audience withbasic facts with which to comprehend the narrative 408)

is no smprise, then, that the leading characters in unris are notedonlyas T he Woman trom the City Th e Man , and T he Wife -labels

which emphasise their broad, universal quali ties. Fmthermore theWoman trom the City s natme is registered in visible clues such as herdécolleté black dress, cigarettes, and make-up.

Th e graceful camera movement for which unrÚ is celebrated far example, the tracking shot through the marshes , the r ide on thetrolley) is a clear signatme of the silent era since, with the coming of

sound, cameras were ofi:en trapped in soundproofed iceboxes , unableto move a t least, dming synchronised dialogue sequences). Gn theother hand, with its highly effective and experimental score composedby Hugo Riesenfeld), unns is also a noteworthy work of the earlysound period.. Few who have seen the film can forget the musical

30

far example, the fareboding, repetit ive theme consist ingof two alternating, ominous notes) that accompanies Th e Man s

through the marshes to meet his lover; the raucous jazz motif withand voice effects) that conjoins the city sequence; the rippling

with wind sounds) that marks the episode of the couple s sailin a storm; the churchbells that ring at the exact moment Th e Man

to spare his wife

Butperhaps the most extraordinary instance ofin the film is one which is precisely synchronised to the human

but without recomse to speech After the boat has capsized andMan awakes by the rocks, he realises that his wife is not beside himdesperately calls out to he r in the darkness. As he cups his hand to

his mouth, we hear a plaintive series of notes on the French horn thataDlJtC1xÍlnatehis cry This strategy is used on numerous other occasionsro signify his call or that of others dming th e s ear ch an d rescueoperation. It is, in fact, suggested in Sudermann s story in which on themorning after the couple s shipwreck, A voice, a woman s voice, was

for help through the fag 48).Because of the success of Riesenfeld s score, it is hard to imagine

unris conjoined with any other accompaniment. Yet, as part of the

h e a zz Singer 1927

UJ

UJ

oUJ

31



Raymond Williams 1)

F I F I L MS U N R I S

1989 Sundance Film Fes tiva l, a new composl tlon wri tten byNewman) accompanied the exhibition o í the film and was per formedagain in 1992 by the Los Angeles Pops Orchestra Farber, 48

While the film s bold straddling of silence and sound is intriguing,its release was not a commercial success. As Allen and Gomery note: Poorly promoted, released amidst the hoopla o í The Jazz Singa and

misteamed with Fox s Movietone newsreel, unnse had no chance at thebox office. As Fox s most exp ensive silent film, ir fai led to recoup itscosts Alle n a nd Go me ry, 91, 103 Significantly, Haskell reads itsnarrative with its shift f tom country to town) as allegorical of changesin c inema his tory : Murnau s c ity often seems like a metaphor for thesound film, trying to burst into the peaceful haven o í the country, thesilent film 406)

TY j OUNTRY

Country and city are very powerful words, and this is no t

surprising when we remember ho w much they seem to stand forin the experience of human communities

In recent years, so-called eco-critics have brought attention to the issueo í lacale in film narrative. As Lawrence Buell has stated: We ve gottenused to character, theme and plot; it s the sense of place that is ignoredor s ligh ted quoted in Par in i, 52) Raymond Williams argues that,wirhin this scenic discourse, the dichotomy of urban versus rural is one

that fundamentally organises human existence.Th e drama of unrise is structured around this kind of tension

Belton, 131-2).. Th e Man is seduced by a vacationing woman f tom thecitywho urges him to sellhis farm and joinher in the metropolis. In onescene , we see her c ircl ing a newspaper adver ti sement for purchas ingagriculturalland; and in another, we learn that Th e Man has mortgagedhis farm to sustain their illicit affair.

Sorne critics have seen Murnau as drawing on schematic andfamiliar notions o í the two locales. Petrie writes o í unnse as dealing in moral absolutes that tap a traditional body o í assumptions about thevirtues o í the countryside andthe evils o í the city 43 .. AndWood finds

32

Murnau has a Romantic a tt itude to nature with the simple lifeupheld against the corruption and artificiality oí the City 5).

in t ru th , M ur na u s d ra ma ha s gr ea te r d ep th - re se mbling m or e v l 11 ~ ambivalent view o í cultural conceptions oí locale:

On the country has gathered the idea oí a natural wa y oí life: of

peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered theidea of an achieved centre: o í learning, communication, light.Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as aplace of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a placeof backwardness, ignorance, limitation Williams, 1

is this sense of duality and contradiction that informs Murnau s visionin unrzse Like other modern artists, he is simultaneously an enthusiast

an enemy o í contemporary life Berman, 24).It is also this complexity one finds in Murnau s later film, Ú rl

1930 , a work which draws on similar themes Rather than depict theeity and c ou nt ry in bla ck a nd wh it e te rm s, M ur na u p or tr ay s th em inshades of grey. Initially, Chicago seems a dreary, exhausting place ftomwhich a young waitress wishes to escape, when she meets a country boyinher restaurant. When however, she marries him and accompanies himto the farm, she faces even greater problems. His fa ther thinks she is l oo se a nd has w ed his s on to gain his land Furthermore, her two-

fisted husband proves entirely emasculated by the patriarch Finally, thefarm hands are lascivious men, one of whom insinuates that he and thebride are having an affair. Eventually, the situation is resolved, bu t thecountry is never portrayed as paradisicaL

For Williams, the rural and the urban have particular tempora lconfigurations: the common image o í the country is now an image oí thepast, and the common image o í the eity an image of the future 297 . Thisconcept is linked to the phenomenon - historic and contemporary- oí themigration from country to town unrise openly embraces such a temporalformulation with the couple s idealised bucolic existence in their past, andThe Man s ecstatic urban existence in his ostensible future This discourse isimbuedwithnostalgia - a tone associated inthe film with the flashback oí thecouple shown content on their fium: Th e Wifeand child relaxingunder a treeas Th e Man plows the land with his oxen - a scene which resembles theutopian viewin traditionallandscape painting.

:t> J

J

J

33

Fischer, Lucy (1998), Sunrise. A Song of TwoHumans. London: BFI (2002). pp. 28-32.

sonido en sunrise

Documents