Finished copies have gone out to distributors today.

My Vengeance Is Mine shipped today from amazon, but not SUNRISE, which is now listed as "unavailable," and with no shipping date estimate. What went wrong?

Unfortunately, the factory shipped them out, sealed, with no booklets. We recalled them. Some got out, with no booklets (contact Eureka if you are missing a booklet). Otherwise, hang on a day or two... and it should reappear at amazon. What can I say? Out of our hands, but we stopped many going out without booklets.

Amazon still showing no signs of having this ready to ship. Looking dismal and I'm sad

Is anyone carrying these yet? I'd cancel my amazon order and place it through someone else to get my hands on it.

www.xploitecinema.com seems to have it.

Pretty much everywhere have it except amazon.co.uk (I don't know why)

cd-wow have it, play.com have it, bensons have it...

Full marks to Eureka for customer care.

I bought Sunrise last weekend in the MVC closing down sale. Opening up the sealed case, I discovered the booklet was missing. With no option of returning it to the now-defunct MVC, I contacted Eureka and received the booklet in the post this morning. Can't wait to read it properly - it seems to be an essential companion to the disc.

Apologies if this has been dealt with somewhere but a search didn't throw anything up.
I've just been watching the 4 Devils doc. on MoC's Sunrise and comparing it with Lotte Eisner's account in her Murnau book. Although she bases her writing on memories of a pre-war viewing she states quite categorically that although there are no extant prints Fox have a negative.

Anyone have more on this????

Incidentally one gripe - I didn't get a booklet in my copy.Was there a problem with the initial batch of this???

Fox report that they don't have anything, hence the documentary. I heard a story, I don't know if it's true, about how decades ago an actress stole the negative from Fox's archive and threw it in the sea.


Yes, about 500 copies got out without booklets. Pressing plant error. Please PM me your address and I'll get a booklet to you. Thanks.

So no discussion of the film here? I guess it's considered such an acknowledged classic that it isn't going to generate much heat. But I just watched it for the first time on the wonderful MoC disc, and I had a pretty interesting reaction to it. I guess mostly I was just surprised, for such a universally acclaimed film, how of-its-time it felt. I'm aware of the rep on a film like Birth of a Nation, where its formal merits and innovation maintain it as a classic in spite of the outdated and even offensive attitudes on display. But I hadn't heard any such thing with respect to Sunrise, and yet it struck me as a similar situation -- except that here the odd attitudes of the film regarded gender rather than race. The tone of the film is just incredibly strange to me, and there's a real awkward tension between the grim mood of the first half-hour or so and the rest of the film where the couple falls back in love. It was just very hard to take it at face value that the woman was able to fall back in love so quickly after an attempt on her life -- even considering the husband's obvious remorse.

It really just felt unbelievable, especially since the film seems to assume that we should be rooting for the couple to reunite. Why, exactly? There's no evidence that they're so good together that it ought to overcome a murder attempt. In fact, once the couple gets back together, Murnau even shows them almost immediately pulling apart again, in the scene where the woman wants to dance romantically and the man continually refuses, preferring to keep playing the carnival game. It's pretty trite stereotyping that I'm sure wouldn't've made anyone blink at the time, but doesn't really hold up today.

In a way, the film feels like it's split roughly into thirds, with each section pushing against the others so that the whole doesn't really cohere. The opening third, before the couple's arrival in the city, is clearly the most masterful. The shot of the husband weaving through the swamp -- with its prominent fake moon -- to find his lover is enthralling. Likewise the dog sequence and the whole boat ride in general, it's just handled really well. And the mood is consistent and overpowering, building up in nearly every scene until the inevitable climax. The second section consists of the city visit itself, and this is a bit of a shambles -- it starts sentimental and overwrought, adds a few doses of trite humor, and ends when the couple sets out to reverse their earlier boat ride. In this second section, the sexual politics on display is incredibly outdated, and verges into the offensive when placed right up against the first part of the film. For the woman to retain her essential passivity and loyalty in the face of her husband's murderousness is, frankly, bizarre, and really offputting. It really took me out of the film at this point -- my modern brain just can't suspend disbelief enough to remain engaged with a story where the basic assumptions about its audience are so obviously counter to my own thinking. The third section has some nice sequences -- the moonlit boatride with the passing dance barge is lovely -- but basically feels like an afterthought, since the resolution was already fairly obvious in the city section of the film.

Basically, I wanted to prompt some discussion of the film, since I had such an ambivalent reaction to it. On the one hand, it's easy to see why it's remained such a classic on a formal level -- it's a lovely, assured film with some really well-executed shots. But its attitudes and ideas just haven't held up particularly well, which was surprising to me considering its status. Oh yeah, and big props to MoC for including the Robin Wood essay in the booklet, since it's very critical of the film as well and takes a fairly similar line to me. It was interesting to finish the film and then find many of my reservations repeated in the booklet. That took guts, guys!

A couple of points:

-The film is a fable so I'm not sure how relevant it's believability is.

-No murder attempt was made. The Man changed his mind. He made a moral choice.

-I don't think the film assumes that we should root for the couple to reunite. It shows nothing positive about the couple before the Man decides not to murder the Woman. Most movies start out with "marriage as utopia" so that the audience knows what to yearn for a return to. Sunrise, on the other hand, iniially posits marriage as a expressionistic nightmare. Then, through the city scenes, it demonstrates why the couple should reconcile. For fans of the film, this demonstration succeeds remarkably. I'm not sure what you mean by the woman's passivity. She's the active agent who changes (physically transforms) her husband.

What do you think are the basic assumptions about its audience?

Well, I think it's making some assumptions based on the conventions of marriage at the time and relationships between men and women. ie: audiences at the time would probably have thought nothing of the woman's passivity and quick recovery, while it was more offputting to me in a modern context. I'm not necessarily saying it's a failing of the film in itself -- it's certainly a product of its times -- but that changing contexts have altered the film. I just have trouble so quickly buying into the supposed renewed love between a couple who 15 minutes earlier had been on the verge of a murder. I may also be responding to the film's status as a "fable," which seems to be used in order to justify its characters' complete non-specificity. They're archetypes, yes, but even archetypes have to behave in believable ways for me to respond emotionally to their story.

marriage: ...for better or for worse--

Let's not forget that from her perspective--if we really feel the need to crawl into their fictional mindsets and check the shelves--hubbie had been a little distant of late, staying out late at night and tracking swamp muck through the living room. Well, now he's decided to take her out finally. But he's looking kind of withdrawn. All of the sudden he rises with murder in his eyes. What's up with that?! But then the storm passes almost as sudden as it arose. But there was still that look in his eyes and this may be the end of this blissful union. We in the audience know that he had premeditated murder in mind; she did not. What she saw was a very disturbing sudden storm that seemed to seethe from quite a bit of built-up frustration. Sure times were tough, but there were also all those good times ( the flashback(s) ).

--until Death do us part:

Perhaps this is the kind of assumption Murnau was playing to? It's a fable about love and the trials in a modern age it comes up against. I've watched this I don't know how many times and am always blown away by the scene on the tram; I can feel it. He went too far obviously and now has come back...but she is still in that horrible land that he exiled her to with his tempest on the boat. The scenes that follow see her slowly come back, realising that he is back to being the husband she had married all those years ago. And then the scenes that follow that depict how a union that has undergone and survived a nearly fatal sundering will snap back but stronger, thus the dancing and piglet chasing. The renewed go go juice of youth, time past, time somewhat regained.

Sunrise: untouchable.

Indeed.

sevenarts, give Sunrise another shot.

Like the skuhner I've seen this umpty thrumpty times but most memorably with a 90 piece Symphony orchestra with an audience of 3000 souls. A memory that courses through my veins. And when they give out I'll take it to my grave.

In the scene in the cafe when he tries to make amends by pushing the piece of cake towards her you could hear 3000 hearts melt despite the LSO giving it their all.

To paraphrase A.L. Kennedy who said she could never marry anyone who didn't love Colonel Blimp. That's how I ,and I guess a load of others, feel about Sunrise. So sevenarts, I reckon we ain't ever gonnae get spliced or even partake of a same sex civil ceremony.

I don't know if any movie is really (or should be) untouchable; really I just hoped to kickstart some conversation about the film. I'm not sure I'm really getting my points across that well, and I think the booklet essay by Robin Wood probably communicated much of what I felt about the film much better than I'm doing here.

Anyway, I'll definitely be watching it again eventually (not soon -- too much else in my unwatched pile), and I certainly appreciated it from a formal standpoint even if I didn't get the emotional engagement that so many others seem to feel for it.

I think you communicated your points quite well and they are perfectly founded. You didn't buy the cupcake they were peddling cause you don't care much for the flavor...or perhaps better said: it was just a little stale around the edges. And I'm very happy you started this whole thing as this film is worthy of much discussion. Heck, I just finished watching it again just now after reading your initial post (I wanted to go back and see if my memory of the boat incident was accurate. Well, when the piglet showed up and my kids started getting excited I figured I might as well go to the end).

And you're right, nothing is untouchable. I didn't mean that literally. Last thing I'd want to do is shut down any back and forth on Sunrise. I wish I had the MOC booklet handy (I have the R1Fox edition).

The one major demerit to this film (in my eyes) is the incredibly over-the-top acting of the "bad city woman".

(I personally prefer Last Laugh and Nosferatu to Sunrise.)

Perhaps, but there's often so much "hamming it up" in silents that I often don't notice it...unless it's a world class ham like Emil Jannings.

Tribe

7arts, I'd respectfully like for you to consider something:

Versus the idea that these characters are nonentities, or "mythological stereotypes" give you a hurdle in your effort to identify with them:

I think the problem that you may be having with the film is that they are not stereotypes. Now before you get defensive, consider what I mean..

I think you want the woman to be "like most women today", or "most women you know". Because she is NOT behaving according to your own pre-expectations that you've brought to the cinema, you cannot wrap yourself around the film enough to accept it as a fanctional melodrama. This woman is unlike yourself, or those you know or encounter or perceive to be your sociological peers, so you have difficulty with the film.

I recall a discussion over on THE RIVER thread with member lubitsch who chortled superiorly at the triteness of a film positing women saying "the highest calling of a women in the bearing of children" (paraphrasing).

Of course anyone is allowed to like or dislike a film for whatever reason: if it doesnt work, it just doesn't work. But, in terms of discussion about "failings", films, some of the most magnificent, are about all kinds of crazy people engaging in all kinds of ridiculousness. In terms of the RIVER-- it is a story about a woman (as well as others) who feels that way. Uninpeachable as a fact... she, like other women back then as well as today, all over the world, feel that maternity and the raising of a family is the absolute core and essence of what it means to be a woman. She is not supposed to be seen as "right", she is supposed to be seen as "who she is". The point is not whether or not the audience would behave as all characters onscreen would, the point is whether or not this tale of very different people in a very different place takes you away. Can you watch PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK even though you don't inject heroin intravenously? Watch TAXI DRIVER even though you're not teetering in white boy masturbatory hell and lash out in a murder spree?

One thing I too can say about SUNRISE is that I always marvel to myself about how the film convinces me viz the WOman's tentative turnaround; each time he follows after her like a desperate poodle begging to be trusted I say to myself "this time I'm not going for it.. no way," and yet, each time he breaks down in the church, I fucking break down with him like a weak squab. I marvel every single time-- because, just like it doesn't make any sense that she should forgive him or feel for him, it doesn't make any sense that I should break down and feel for him. In a sense we become the woman, answering the call of her emotions which make no sense in rational terms (that's what love is), not sure if the decision to feel for him is the right one, not sure if it's all goiing to repeat itself over and over again. That's life and the hazy, half-involountary world of being in love. Certainly he becomes a small child before her, she becomes elevated, sees him in motherly terms as a foolish child who has learned his lesson and come home, and the reuniting is not debasing to her. He is fully and completely the fool. His guilt is my guilt and anybody's guilt who has deceived a patient faithful lover, or been deceieved and had to negotiate this rule-free terrain... that's why this film blows the eyeballs out of most everyone who sees it.

And the world today is filled with all kinds of people-- don't kid yourself. WOmen return over & over again to men who beat them awfully, over and over again. Maria returns to Tony in WEST SIDE even though he killed her brother. When someone is in love you can't tell them otherwise. And this husband in SUNRISE appears to have previously been a genuinely good faithful man, and provider, who went astray this single time, and has given ample reason to signal to his wife that it just may be completely and without doubt truly over. He had a complete public pleading, weeping breakdown. He never laid a hand on her as other men regualrly do, killed anyone, appears to have gotten hold of himself versus an experience of seduction to which he formerly had no experience or defenses. She makes the decision to give him a chance and see what the deal is. Certainly she'll have her eye closely on him from here on in.

But the idea of the film is to play on the audiences identification with the agony of realizing the size of a mistake in a relationship when it's probably too late, the agony of trying to decide whether or not to let someone back into their lives after indiscretions, etc. Emotional recall usually results in those who understand this confusing, anguishing terrain breaking down like helpless tykes in soiled pampers.

And of course there's the mindbending filmmaking-- of course....

I think there's definitely something to what you say here. I can obviously only watch this film in the context of my own thoughts and the time I live in, and I think you're probably right that part of my problem is that the archetypes on display here are very much out of date in today's world. This is clearly not the fault of the film itself, but for me it affected my enjoyment. The characters are still stereotypes, but they're stereotypes of a different age. It's not my only problem, though...


Well, you're somewhat misunderstanding my point. It's not that I wouldn't behave the ways these characters do, which is frankly immaterial, as you say. I wouldn't behave like the men in Eric Rohmer's films either, but the crucial difference is that those films don't require the audience to identify with the men onscreen. We're not supposed to be rooting for Jean-Claude Brialy to score with Claire in Claire's Knee. To keep with the Rohmer example for a moment, his films explore the ideas and motivations of male characters who many would call misogynistic, and though he humanizes these characters to the point that we can understand them and to some extent sympathize with them, the films still work even if we find them to be utterly deplorable characters.

Sunrise, on the other hand, ceases to work for an audience who is not rooting for the couple. I guess the film convinced you, but I didn't see anything in its city segment that justified the woman getting over her husband's prior murderous streak. For me, it's as if Claire's Knee had ended on an upbeat note with Jerome and Claire getting together -- it rings false. There's no indication that the man in Sunrise is a particularly great husband, or that the couple is so wonderful -- to some extent, the scene with the pig only emphasizes their incompatibility -- that the great turnaround is justified. If the film was simply presenting these events in a more neutral tone, I probably would have no problem with it, since then there would be room in the film for my thoughts about the relationship. As it is, the film only grants one possible interpretation, and it's not the interpretation that I came up with.

Your example of wife-beating is actually instructive as well. I have no problem believing there are wives who continually go back to abusive husbands, just as there are probably wives submissive enough to even overlook an occasional murder threat. I mean, of course these people exist. But it's the way it's presented in the film that matters. I'd have the same problems with a film that required a positive interpretation of a woman going back to her abusive husband. For me, a film that ends by reuniting a woman with her husband who wanted to kill her, is at the very least a bittersweet ending, awakening fairly complex emotions. There are none of these shadings in the second half of Sunrise -- after a relatively brief weepy period, the tone of the film becomes one of unleavened joy.

I don't see much percentage in my rationalizing a "like" of the film into you. You didn't like it, and that's fine.

I would say I don't see what you see re "incompatibility" via the pig scene.

Nor do I see the woman as a "stereotype of the times". Quite a great variety of women are on display in the film, which came out in a very decadent era of the Jazz Age when women went out, smoked, drank, got laid on a par with today. He's presenting a stereotype of a good wife, waiting for a good man who's been led astray.

Knowing Murnau well, there is a motif here that repeats itself throughout much of his work. It's in NOSFERATU, BRENNENDER ACKER, hell even FAUST, TARTUFF, SUNRISE, CITY GIRL, 4 DEVILS, and TABU. SOme force out "there" comes in to ruin something that once was eternal. Into the middle of a great and lasting love taking place in perfect harmony come the forces of the great mass of urbanity and what operates under the guise of sophistication. The husband in this film falls victim to something that was not worth it-- having not eoncountered it before and therefore not been prepared to defend against the seduction to discover it's worthlessness-- and catches himself before it is truly too late. Which is still a good thing.

I'm not saying that this is what you, sevenarts are supposed to feel, now, having read what I wrote here now. I'm saying this is what so many folks who see their own lives in the tale, who remember their own failings, see and feel in the film. That's it.

Just got this for £11.57 delivered at Amazon.co.UK