A symphony of two humans… Sunrise (1927), SFFP Restoration Premier, Il Cinema Ritrovato #40

Sometimes you come into these events after a hectic period working and preparing, doing the things you won’t be doing for eight days of potential self-indulgence. Sometimes you get frazzled by the early morning starts and “flight discipline”, maybe you don’t like Ryan Air or, just maybe you get snagged for 90 minutes of passport control? But, as Uncle George said, Here Comes the Sun and, indeed, here came a Sunrise unlike any I’d ever seen before.

My history with FW Murnau’s film starts with home media – Eureka I think – but I didn’t see it on screen as I was waiting for live accompaniment and, as it’s part sound in common versions, which didn’t happen until Elizabeth Jane Baldrey played magical harp accompaniment in the Early Music Centre in York. It was perfect. A decade later and those excellent folk at the San Francisco Film Preserve – who are on some kind of incredible run at the moment – have restored the film from various sources* and it not only looks different, it is different featuring more sunrise than previous versions.

It was unveiled on the first night of the 40^th edition of Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato and it was one of those times when even the beauty of the Piazza Maggiore faded into the background as you lost yourself in the magic of Murnau with this fable of human frailty and love, featuring extraordinary performances from Janet Gaynor and George O’Brien. George dwarfs Janet and Murnau uses this to his advantage getting the most from O’Brien’s impressive physicality – all awkward angles and shadowy purpose, with surprising tenderness to counterpoint the vein popping rage and passion you’d expect.

George. Images from San Francisco Film Preserve

Even with that wig – and it’s an important prop – Gaynor delicate emotional radiance is indeed Oscar worthy and without her the brutality of her husband’s betrayal and callous connivance would not be so hard felt by audiences over the last century – it is a timeless crime and reflects the guilt we all carry at some point (not drowning but ditching…). Part of the play is also that the audience shares in the husband’s desire to experience something new in the city, perhaps these two were a marriage made in a small town with little choice? Maybe they are holding each other back or, just maybe, they’re the perfect partnership poisoned by soulless desire – sexual and societal: the tram to nowhere?

But it was also Timothy Brock and his 80-piece orchestra – maybe more I stopped counting – who really blew the roof off (I know it’s an open square but you know…) with a truly powerful score that had so much quality of emotional phrasing, thematic shifts and unexpected tonality – rich dense power chords illustrating the looming dangers, the heart wrenching strings of passion and despair, a piano seemingly under assault at certain points and all of the smart stylistic references you could want.

This was richly satisfying music, and the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale ill Bologna were having a time of it – lost in their own music - all dressed in formal wear on a day when the city left many of us broiled and sautéed… and yet it was entwined with the narrative, waxing with the richest of silent cinematic emotionalism and wanning with ferocity, murderous intent and extreme peril. A drunken pig was chased though a dance hall by incongruous violins and Margaret Livingstone’s was the amplified vamp, her allure, never more clearly on show, swirling above the conflicted output of an orchestra under instructions to pull us in but show us no way out.

It felt like watching the film for the first time – it really did – and there’s no higher tribute to this combination of the restoration and the score, but what more could you ask, to see and feel this film again as something new and unpredictable. Lost in music, enjoying the silence. A perfect Bologna evening and a reported audience of seven thousand - live cinema in the hottest week of the year!

It was a day for women falling into water – is this a separate strand?** – as we had both festival poster girl Barbara Stanwyck and Gloria Swanson (the IT Girl of 2026 for many reasons: Queen Kelly!!)

The first was in frank Capra's Ladies of Leisure (1930) which features a powerhouse performance from Ritrovato poster girl Barbara Stanwyck who plays Kay Arnold who is living the life of [insert period code words for sex worker] when tiring of one yacht-based gentlemen’s event, rows to freedom only to meet an artist Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves) who gives her a lift. He resolves to paint her, for no other reason than to show the “Hope” he feels in her.

Initially it’s all about the work, and long hours of him asking her to gaze upwards at imagined stars – it’s only a ceiling she replies – but gradually she falls for his creative approach and, inevitably, her very presence is more than enough to upset the elevated circles in which he moves, his prudish parents and his trophy wife. There’s splendid support from Marie Provost as Kay’s best buddy and leisure lady but the jokes about her weight are hard to watch.

Tom and Gloria back in time

For Gloria it was not just her character, Mary, but everyone in the ship who crash into a lonely tropical island…after her pappa Lord Loam (Theodore Roberts) takes his family and servants on a cruise. Male and Female is an adaptation of JM Barrie’s stage play, The Admirable Crichton from 1902 and you suspect that the themes of class and entitlement examined by the play’s dislocation of the “natural order” were played down as DeMille went for his now familiar targets. This is exemplified by the re-titling – “now, why didn’t I think of that…” Barrie commented at the time.

Yacht-wrecked with no service operations to provide for them the clueless aristos have to rely on good old Irish ingenuity as head butler William Crichton (Thomas Meighan) emerges as the handiest man and the natural leader. His position in this new society draws the attention of Mary and the two share a bizarre fantasy of themselves in a mythical Byzantian dream in which Swanson famously got ready for her claws-up with an actual lion.

In both films, class plays a part, and love is not enough to bridge the gap… or so it seems. JM Barrie’s tale leaves things open by the admirable Crighton has certainly moved on to find himself in a country once called the United States of America.

All this on Day One… more to come as we plod the streets in search of fresh fruit, hot drinks and new celluloid excess… In The City!

 

 

* Restored in 4K in 2026 by San Francisco Film Preserve at BFI National Archive, Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Cineric, Haghefilm and L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratories, from 35mm elements provided by BFI National Archive and MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art. Funding provided by Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts and San Francisco Film Preserve Preservation Partners

This version runs 94 minutes matching the original runtime of the 1927 Fox Movietone theatrical release but upping the quality in ways that demand rewatching!

 

**There were indeed many more films across the week featuring scenes of women falling in water with surely a missed opportunity not to include Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet although the actress takes a splash in the restored er fremde Vogel (1911) directed by Urban Gad.

 

 

The harder they fall... The Last Laugh (1924) with Jonny Best, BFI

This film has always been on my “ticket list” for watching on the big screen and with a live score: it’s an extraordinary achievement from one of Weimer’s finest actors, possibly it’s greatest director whose images are brought to life by one of the most phenomenal of cameramen.

The Last Laugh, original entitled, Der letzte Mann (The Last Man) was a break out success across the cinema world at the time with the New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall describing it as an “highly artistic film masterpiece…” and it has grown in stature subsequently with critic Paul Rotha saying that it "… was cine-fiction in its purest form…” It gave director FW Murnau, the budget and artistic freedom to make Tartuffe (1925) and Faust (1926) before departing for Hollywood and Sunrise.

Murnau exerts almost complete visual control over this film which was, like Sunrise, filmed mostly in studio with massive sets replicating the hotel where the chief protagonist works, the run-down tenements of his home and the streets in between. Karl Freund’s camera zooms around from balcony to window ledge, choreographing the focus on different character’s reactions. It’s technically brilliant and quite unlike almost anything else at this stage of cinema; lurking in the shadows then suddenly zooming towards or past its targets, as quick as thought and giving the action a curious dreamlike quality.

But then Emil Jannings’ main character is living in constant unreality. He works as a doorman in a swish uptown hotel – The Atlantic – were he helps the prestigious guests to pass from the grimy outside world to its pristine opulence. The hotel is its own fantasy in which appearance is all and status is vital: it has to be a place worthy of the patronage of the guests and this sense of splendour rubs off on those who work there.

To be a visual representation of the hotel “brand” is an honour and source of pride for those fortunate to work front of house. The older and less attractive are kept behind the scenes, cleaning and otherwise maintaining the “front”. Our doorman is however on the cusp with his age starting to tell and his strength on the wane. As one slippery trunk proves too much and he sits recovering his calculating manager spots his weakness and relegates him to a below stairs role in the washroom. He is devastated and, almost immediately, begins to shrink in front of our eyes, an amazingly impressive, protean display of physical acting from Jannings all accentuated by Murnau and Freunds’ angles and lighting.

Spotting his replacement standing younger and taller.

Unable to face the humiliation of this demotion, the doorman steals his uniform and puts it on when he returns to his tenement for his niece’s wedding party (she's played by Maly Delschaft). He carries off the deception for the night and a drunken good time is had by all and yet he has the most vivid of inebriated dreams in which his strength and position are restored with some superb imagery from Murnau.

The next day it’s back to his new reality and his humbling is compounded by the careless humiliation of the guests and, when he is discovered, from his neighbours and even his own family. He creeps home a mere shadow only to be laughed at and scorned. The schadenfreude is open and relentless… everyone seemingly happy to see him brought down to earth and even hi niece ashamed of him.

The doorman returns his coat to the hotel and is discovered by a friendly night-watchman who is the first person there to show him any real kindness. As the watchman helps him to his chair in the washroom his torch illuminates a broken heart and a man at the end of his tether.

Down the drain

There’s surely only one way this story can go… or is there? The ending is controversial or possibly a work of genius… and I’m starting to be convinced it’s the latter as I reach the stage when lifting those metaphorical trunks myself is getting a bit harder.

Jannings gives one of the best performances of the Weimar years. He is a physically powerful actor, yet he is able to expand and reduce his size in proportion to the character’s fortunes. He is supported by a superbly expressive moustache and expert make up and the film, with so many close ups and, no dialogue, makes the most of his range.

The Last Laugh is a testament to the unchanging truths of capitalism, mortality and, in the end, love. It also shows cinema pushed to the very limits, an almost completely “silent” film in terms of specific “commentary” and one that is reliant on the expression of its performers as well as Murnau’s editorial control.

Jonny Best’s accompaniment followed the rhythms of the film and he had Jannings’ back throughout. This must be a challenging film to play with as the music needs to leave as much “unsaid” as the film and allow the audience to weave the emotional warp and weft themselves.

Already a highlight among the Weimar Season with so much more to come… details on the BFI website.

Good Day… Sunrise (1927), with Elizabeth-Jane Baldrey, National Centre for Early Music, York, Yorkshire Silent Festival

I have waited so long to see this film screened and with live accompaniment. Normally the film is shown with its score from the early talkie period - Sunrise being one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical and sound effects soundtrack - but as it is one of the toppermost films of the silent canon, I just had to see it done proper… and I couldn’t have chosen a lovelier venue or a better accompanist.

Elizabeth-Jane Baldrey gets more sonic variation from her harp than you’d expect; not only does she use the frame for percussion (fingers tapping to create the skin-crawling sound of scampering rats for Nosferatu…), she hits groups of strings with her palm to generate atonal power chords, picks off the harmonic sweet spots with alacrity – hard enough on a six-string – and genuinely creates a singular cinematic language from bliss to bedlam. She can even vary the tension on the strings using the foot pedal to create a kind of metallic sound: I have seen the future of accompaniment and it could be 47 string grunge!!

Margaret Livingston

She was on super form with Sunrise, and as with most of us, Janet Gaynor’s toupee aside, feels it is deservedly in high regard. She mixed improvisations with some lovely pre-scoring – honestly, if you don’t feel the fear when big George looms over tiny Janet in the boot, or, darn it, cry a tear, when the two finally re-connect, then you’re probably in the phantom zone. But Baldry doesn’t over-play the positive emotion in the film and the surprise, if you haven’t seen harp accompaniment before, is just how dark it can go.

Murnau’s film is a fable and as such has various elements of traditional Teutonic fairy stories, Grimm though they be. Yes, George O’Brien’s Man falls all too readily under the spell of the Woman form the City (Margaret Livingstone) but she has put a spell on him; a female version of Nosferatu whose silken stockings and knock-out undergarments, make him incapable of reason.

He agrees to kill his sweet wife because he is under the control of this jazz-age succubus, his assignations are even in the swamps, hardly the kind of place to charm a regular flapper: there is demonic power at play and Janet Gaynor’s Wife knows just by the dark shadow cast by her huge husband that all sense of himself has left.

George O'Brien towers over Janet Gaynor

After he pulls back, he repeatedly says “don’t be frightened of me” … a mantra with little persuasion given his actions and it’s only when the couple are thrown together by the alien world of the city that they begin to discover each other again. They go to a hair salon where George gets a shave and Janet hold on to her wig for dear life. When glamourous Jane Winton (a small but key role) arrives to offer the strapping lad a manicure – way to “un-sex” him now – he looks down in horror and declines and it’s another sign that he’s coming to his senses.

The two head to a nightclub after George rescues and escaped piglet (long story) and the band plays a peasant tune allowing the tow to show the townies what real dancing is: it’s a romantic display between two lovers and the jaded jazzers step back in respect. Oddly, one man keeps on replacing the shoulder straps of a slinky lady next to him, almost as if the couple’s dance has raised the bar of morality…

The couple walk through Murnau’s carefully choreographed streets as traffic passes them by and they even end up in an imagined field of blossoms. They are making their own reality.

The City sleeps as they walk

 When they get their photographs taken, it is not in a formal pose but in a clinch the photographer is delighted to capture. He seen enough posturing and recognises unconditional expression when he sees it.

All the other drama is there to enable this sunrise of a new devotion and naturally Murnau creates a universe of unreal perspectives – part set/part camera angles – architecture from a Europe left behind and a city of dreams and impossible structure – models in the foreground and at the back to create impossible depths and the impression of an endless city in constant flow. Amongst this emerge two humans in song, once more in perfect accord despite his mad moments of doubt.

It's interesting to compare with Murnau’s later City Girl which also features a young couple under pressure only they are very much in the real world of economics and more everyday wrong-doings. Sunrise has maybe more in common with the same director’s Faust?

George passes the Jane Winton test...

Technically it is a, frequently astonishing, film with those forced perspectives – gauze was used in the windows of some city scenes in order to reveal the extraordinary elaboration beyond. The two cinematographers, Charles Rosher and Karl Struss, maximise the anxious angularities and there are countless dolly shots as they cut through scenes placing the viewer deep within the heart of the interior stories of lives defined by locations: from the secret meeting with the seductress in the swamps to city streets melting away to reveal those blossoms.

In truth there's so much to discuss about the film, even weighed down by the expectations of its enduring reputation, this is a film with very high levels of content from all parties. I even watched it again just to grab these few images... result hundreds of screen shots that are all mini-marvels in their own right.

The peasant dance is completely free of city formalities - just pure passion

The storm at the end is pathetic fallacy in excelsis completing the lover’s journey with the final test of fate and faith. Elizabeth-Jane’s harp flowed alongside the conflagration and in contrapuntal opposition to thunder-cracks and flash. In her hands the harp is so flexible, fragile and fierce; the perfect instrument for Murnau’s timeless fantasy.

While George and Janet perform so well we shouldn’t overlook the playing of Margaret Livingston who gets her clutches into the country boy but is surely driven by something more than malice; Murnau always had a soft spot for his vampires.

The National Centre for Early Music is situated adjacent to the 11th century St Margaret's Church,  which today was illuminated by the almost unnatural sunlight of a York spring day; sun streaming through the churchyard trees across hundreds of bluebells still in full bloom. A splendid place and one serving York Minster Ale… the scene was well set.

Sunrise is available on Blu-ray and DVD combo from Eureka, but I’d gladly swap all of that for this experience of FWM and E-JB in the EMC at YSFF18.

Full details of the excellent programme for this year is available on the Festival's website. 

No, er, not the hair... it's erm, a very special cut...

Here’s Connie! Der Gang in Die Nacht (1920) with Richard Siedhoff, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto Day 6

"Where does the art of the writer end, and the art of the director and the actors start? One doesn’t know. Everything is intertwined. Everything is – there’s no better word for it – complete…

Willy Haas, Film-Kurier (no. 277, 14 December 1920)

If Der Gang In Die Nacht (Love’s Mockery) was Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s only film we’d probably rate it a bit higher than we are able to in the context of his later work. All the same I was surprised at its controlled composition and feel although it varies in tone from comedy to weird.

For me this is a better film than say The Haunted Castle from the following year but that could also be down to the uncanny presence of Conrad Veidt who’s eyes, hands and, indeed forehead… are transfixing throughout. Murnau makes the most of his gaunt asset from the get-go when he arrives by boat, standing tall with sightless eyes, seeing more than we know… a foretaste of Count Orlac on the ship.

Doctor Eigil Börne (Olaf Fønss) is engaged to doe-eyed Helene (Erna Morena, her out of Von morgens bis mitternachts), until he gets distracted by the charms of music-hall performer Lilly (Gudrun Bruun-Stefenssen) who, by combining charm with a faked ankle injury manages to get her man. The Doctor quits his promising city work and becomes a GP in a remote costal area far away from the tattling tongues of the metropolitan elite…

At first all is well and the two love-birds enjoy healthy walks and jokes about feet until, that is, the dramatic appearance of Conrad as Der Maler – an artist who has gone blind and is seeking a cure from the remarkable country doctor.

As usual the promotions team got carried away... give him two years and he'll scare you alright!

 The sequences showing the return of Maler’s sight are very effective and once the artist can see again he’s drawn to natural beauty all around including Lilly who, to be fair, has also more than noticed him. Now… this can’t go well for the three of them and we shouldn’t really forget poor Helene wasting away back in Berlin.

The narrative lets the film down but the atmospherics eventually win through as passions are stirred, the doctor performs miracles and love does indeed make fools of them all. Veidt stands out, natürlich, but this is still a well-shot film if not a “complete” single-vision… yet it’s now one that has been stunningly well-restored. And I mean stunning!

Richard Siedhoff  accompanied with elegance and edge and also enjoyed himself with Der Golem (detailed below).

We also watched: a third collection of Nasty Women including the gloriously kick-ass Texas Guignan.

Harry Solter’s The Taming of Jane (1910) featured an odd courting ritual involving a cowboy trying to lasso his intended into forced matrimony… maybe they’d been inspired by Asta Nielsen’s dance in Afgrunden or maybe this was indeed the norm in the land of the free? Then again, as with all the films in this delightful strand, the women are smarter than the men. Which is not difficult someone said...

George Le Soir’s An Up-to-date Squaw (1911) was another victory for les girls this time with a fashion-conscious squaw who can’t resist westernising her wardrobe…

The Taming of Jane (1910)

Texas Guignan brought the house down in Jay Hunt’s The Night Rider (1920) when, deciding she needs to take a husband to help prevent cattle rustlers, she lassoes one chap only to then find a much better option: “wish I’d seen you first!” she exclaimed and half the audience laughed!

I like Texas a lot and she is so assured in her characterisation and whip smart in delivery; this was a delight with a plot that served its sense of humour well.

The Circus Imps (1920) was surely an inspiration for Todd Browning as two cheeky girls run away to the circus and hang out with the freak show. The Dog-Faced Boy is shocking but no more so than when the two kids – Katherine and Jane Lee - share a bath and a pot of jam!? Not in our house they didn’t!

Neil Brand was our compositional cowboy and he corralled this feisty herd with the practiced poise of William S Hart himself.

The Duel After the Masquerade by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Tableaux Vivants was a fascinating experiment and one of the most delightfully immersive experiences of the week so far. Valentine Robert has spent years collating film sequences that are based on artworks from the religious work of Gustav Dore (natch!) and James Tissot to recreations of historical scenes such as Archibald Willard’s The Spirit of ’76 (c. 1875) and the Assassinat de Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday (engraved in 1793).

The paintings inspired films which then inspired other films and the visual language became passed down morphing from its illustrative origins to more cinematic copying: Alphonse de Neuville’s Franco-Prussian War painting, Les Dernières Cartouches (1873), was the basis for scenes in films by Lumière (1897), Méliès (1897), Pathé (1899), Gaumont (1898 and 1907).

Of course, “art” always provided and excuse for showing a nudity and the film of the 1900s embraced that as new media always does.

Stephen Horne improvised with great subtlety and variety through these various scenarios. This was no gentle picture show, there’s an impact and edge to some of this art which still challenges.

Duel after the Ball (1908)

One of the treats of the week was also a restoration of Heinrich Galeen’s Der Golem (1915) or at least what remains of a film thought lost until the recent discovery of the second reel. It is very similar to the 1920 version and Paul Wegener’s costume and menace are tantalisingly in place but there are differences in setting – this is the modern world and an altogether different “origin”.

The film is not complete – just 24 precious minutes but, as with the Murnau and Now We’re in the Air we have something!

Der Golem brings something new to the party.