Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
F.W. Murnau, 1927
A villager (George O’Brien), tempted by a sophisticated woman from the city (Margaret Livingston), reluctantly plans to murder his wife (Janet Gaynor) by throwing her overboard on a boat trip. He is unable to go through with it, however, and after reconciling, he and his wife spend a magical day in the city, falling back in love. But as they cross the ocean on the return home, a violent storm approaches. . .I spent most of this movie stunned at the camera work and effects, almost to the point of distraction. There are lengthy tracking shots that look like steadycam work, decades before steadycam was invented. There are shots that look like chroma-key (blue screen) years before chroma-key was invented. I can’t figure out how half of what I saw was accomplished. After all, these were the days when everything outside of simple editing occurred in-camera. Murnau is rightly hailed as a visual genius on the strength of his Nosferatu, but Sunrise puts the earlier film to shame. This is probably more ground-breaking than Citizen Kane was, and I don’t say that lightly.
Outside of the technical laurels, though, Sunrise is a bit less successful. The story is almost ludicrously simple and the characters are very broadly drawn – frankly, there’s no way this would work if it weren’t a silent film. The layer of detachment created by the format is what allows it to work. On the other hand, Murnau was well aware that he was making a silent film (in fact, there are only a half-dozen or so intertitles in the movie, so it’s not only silent, but very silent), so I can hardly hold this against him. It’s a strike against, but a much more minor one than it might be in a different film. In fact, one could argue that the simplicity is to the movie’s benefit, not detriment, as the proceedings therefore take on the air of a fable or fairytale. I’m not sure I can buy into that argument, but it’s not unreasonable. Either way, whether it’s a fantastic but slightly flawed movie or a fantastic movie period, who can complain?
8.5/10
It Happened One Night
Frank Capra, 1934
An heiress (Claudette Colbert) runs away from home when her father threatens to annul her new marriage. She meets up with a reporter (Clark Gable) who decides to help her out in exchange for an exclusive on her story, despite the fact that they can’t stand each other. This mutual loathing does not at any point blossom into love. Nope. Not at all, not one bit. Nosiree. It Happened One Night is one of the great American classics. It was the first movie to sweep the major categories at the Academy Awards (and one of only three movies to ever do it). It practically created the genres of screwball comedy and romantic comedy. As classics go. . . well, it’s okay.
Clark Gable is a lot of fun (and I’m not generally a fan), it’s very funny in parts – in other words, the comedy and the screwball are fine. It’s really the romance that’s the problem. Early on, when Gable and Colbert can’t stand each other, they’re great together. Fun to watch, good chemistry, things zip along just fine. Once they start to like each other, though, you can feel all the air going out of the tires and the movie grinds to a halt (the interminable musical interlude on the bus doesn’t help). Later, after the inevitable misunderstanding, things pick up again – but then love triumphs after all and it all falls apart again. I have to wonder if Capra realized that seeing our heroes happy together was not a good thing, because the entire reconciliation and everything that goes along with that happens offscreen, and the last 5 minutes or so are filled with supporting and incidental characters talking about what’s going on*. This results in an extremely unsatisfying conclusion, which harkens back to a very pained extended metaphor that the screenwriters just can’t resist bringing up at every opportunity. I swear, if I hear the phrase “walls of Jericho” one more damn time. . .
The more I write about this movie, the less I like it, so I’ll just stop here. I did enjoy about half of it quite a bit, and I have to give it a little credit for creating its own genres, so I guess that puts us at:
5.5/10
*As I consider it further, I think the ending was actually a matter of satisfying dear old Will Hays. The second to last scene ends with Colbert's father giving a zinger that feels like it should end the film - the problem is that what he says can (and should) be interpreted as "I don't care if they are married yet, they should totally have sex!" If you realize that this is a problem late in production, there's no real way to fix it other than to tack on a scene without any of the leads (who were probably busy on other movies by then) in which a kindly motel owner assures us that he has seen the marriage license. Problem solved.
Progress: 51 (Par +3)
No comments:
Post a Comment