Critique of a Silent Film: Masters of Expressionism

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Summary
Review
Conclusion
References

Introduction

A silent film is a film that is made without synchronized recorded sound. These films were common in the early twentieth century before the introduction of the Vita phone that made synchronization of dialogue in films possible. This essay will look at the Sunrise1927 film, directed by F.W. Murnau, a German who was a master of expressionism (Travers 1).

Summary

Sunrise, A Song of Two Humans”, is a story of a man whose relationship with his wife had grown weak. The man (George O’Brien) gets lured by a woman from the city to drown his wife and go with her to the city. The man agrees with the plan the woman from the city has. When he goes home, he goes ahead with the plan to go to the city with his wife and drown her on the way. When they reach the point where he wants to drown her, he realizes that he can not do it and thus continues with the journey through his wife (Janet Gaynor) realizes that there is something fishy in his mind. The wife thus runs away from her husband and gets on a streetcar, but he follows her and they head to the city. In the city, the man buys her flowers and becomes apologetic, and expresses his love to her. They then become bonded anew and the man regrets his wicked plans. The longest part of the movie is with this couple in the city bonding with each other. Their adventures in the city are characterized by comedy scenes exemplified by the pig scene and the runaway dress scene. On their way home by boat, a storm strikes and the man gives his wife reeds to keep her afloat after the boat tips over. The man gets to the shore and gets frantic after missing his wife. The city woman hears the commotion and thinks their plan has succeeded but later on, we get the conviction that the city woman will never follow the man again. The man later realizes that his wife is alive and he is overexcited. From his reactions, we can tell that he is ready to protect his love for her (Anderson 1).

Review

The expressionist influence used in the film is not as exciting as the use of synchronized dialogue, but the film still succeeds in invoking the feelings of its viewer. In particular, if a married man watches this film, he gets engrossed in the feelings of the characters in main characters in the movie and the movie ultimately teaches him a thing or two about love and sacrifice. The expert use of the fluid camera makes the movie look like a fairy tale and thus it adds to the conveyance of the theme of the movie. The director uses a lot of artistic styles that add greatly to the value of the film. For instance, he uses flashbacks, irony, hyperbole, humor etcetera to build on the theme of the film (Travers 1).

Conclusion

Murnau’s expertise as an established storyteller and expressionist portrays itself vividly in this film. He not only directs a film produced almost purely with visuals and music, but he also hardly uses story cards. Regardless of this, his film is a masterpiece of film art. It can be confidently regarded as the best silent movie in the history of cinema.

References

Anderson, Jeffrey. “Sunrise (1927)”, Web.

Travers, James. “Sunrise.” 1999. Web.

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Critique of a Silent Film: Masters of Expressionism

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