SUNRISE
C.A. Lejeune 1928 The Year in Retrospect
P.S. Harrison on public reaction to the film in 1927. And more(External Link)
Music and Motion Pictures. By the film's composer, Hugo Riesenfeld (External Link)
Above - Charles Rosher at viewfinder, Karl Struss in long coat, FW behind Struss, face obscured by extra. Photo from Kevin Brownlow collection.
William Fox (Head of Fox Film Corp. and producer of 'Sunrise')
For release in the new season, starting September 1926, Fox takes another great step forward through the production of the world's best stage plays and popular novels of high screen value. [Murnau comes to America] to put...subjective thought on the screen, to open up the mind, the heart, the soul.
FW Murnau [On the USA]
There are wonderful types here, wonderful faces. Tremendous energy. The whole tradition here suggests speed, lightness, wild rhythms. Everything is novel. Sensational. I was in Child's Restaurant last night. It was an amazing place to me. Tonight I am going to Coney Island. It must be barbarous there. I would like to do a wild picture about Alaska.
Edward Ulmer (Assistant art director)
The script of Sunrise - I think I still have it I storage - Carl Mayer had written it like poetry, one shot on every page. The language! The most unbelievable love went into that thing.
Janet Gaynor (Actress, 'The Wife') (On Murnau)
He was very tall, six feet four or something, and very handsome, and he had red hair, and he wore a blue jumpsuit, the kind that Mr Churchill made famous during the war, and a blue beret. He wore around his neck a blue glass, and he would twirl it. He did not wear a monocle, but somehow the blue glass sort of took the place of that. He had a German assistant director, and I was told by people who could understand German that he was very, very cruel to him in his language, but he was absolutely marvelous to me. Sometimes I wouldn't be on the set until ten o'clock if I was not in the first scene. [I'd arrive on the set and] I could just feel the tension. I could tell the assistant director was upset, and Murnau would be there too, so stiff, twirling his glass, and everybody was just tense and shy. Then the property man would come over and he'd put another stool right next to Mr Murnau's. I'd come in very quietly and I'd just get up and sit on the stool and never say good morning or anything like that, just sit there very quietly. Finally, a great big arm would come around and go round my shoulders and literally you could almost hear the set go 'Ahhhhhh.' At least I got him in a good mood.
Margaret Livingston, George O'Brien, FW and Janet Gaynor
Edward Ulmer [Asked about Murnau's camera movement]
And (Murnau) built them. When you talk about Murnau, you must talk about his best friend, who collaborated with him - a very fine director, Rochus Gliese, whom he brought to this country (USA) on Sunrise. Rochus was my partner, a fantastic designer and camera builder.
Karl Struss (co-director of photography)
Charlie Rosher would occasionally call me in to help him. While I was in Italy doing Ben Hur, Charlie had made connections with Murnau in Berlin and was preparing to shoot Sunrise. When I got back, Charlie called me, and that's how we got together on the film. In the scene inside the restaurant we shot out a window looking out across the street, which was downhill on the set. The people that you see across are all midgets dressed like normal people! The film almost closed the studio down. Oh, the other people on the Fox lot hated Sunrise. They looked on us as trespassers. I guess you could say we were a rental company. We didn't even do our developing at the Fox lab, but sent it out to the Auer lab.
Janet Gaynor
It was nothing to have twenty, thirty, forty takes. And it was usually not because of the actors, it was because of...light. In Sunrise we had all those scenes in the bullrushes, and that was out in the sun. We were out on location, and the light either hit one bullrush, or didn't hit the bullrush.
Karl Struss (On the tracking shot across the marshes following George O'Brien on his way to meet Margaret Livingston, the Woman from the City)
We were suspended from an overhead dolly. The set used the north, west and south walls of the studio. It was filled up with trees, open country, etc. The camera picks up George and pans over to where we can see the low moon. Then, we follow him as he slowly turns to the right, finally going out of the shot. The camera, however, keeps going on through all this foliage, tree trunks, everything. We had a wedge-shaped thing in front of the dolly that spread all this as we moved. Finally, as we come through the trees, Margaret Livingston's standing there powdering her nose... All during the shot the camera was between my legs. It was a son of a gun; all I had to work off was a tiny image on a ground-glass to keep it framed properly. And no viewfinder!
Janet Gaynor and George O'Brien on location at Lake Arrowhead in California
FW Murnau
They say that I have a passion for 'camera angles.' But I do not take trick scenes from unusual positions just to get startling effects. To me the camera represents the eye of the person, through whose mind one is watching the events on the screen. It must follow characters at times into difficult places, as it crashed through the reeds and pools in Sunrise at the heels of the Boy, rushing to keep his tryst with the Woman of the City. It must whirl and peep and move as swiftly as thought itself, when it is necessary to exaggerate for the audience the idea or emotion that is uppermost in the mind of the character. I think the films of the future will use more and more of these 'camera angles,' or as I prefer to call them these 'dramatic angles.' They help to photograph thought.
Karl Struss
Murnau was marvellous. Very open. I made a number of suggestions that he listened to. [One day], we were fighting daylight and wanted to get this one last shot. We had fifteen minutes before the sun was going to set, so, in order to get the effect of light coming through a window, we put white powder on the ground underneath the window to give the illusion of streaming light... It was all studio, all artificial, but it had the atmosphere of reality. Murnau [was] the first director I ever worked with who really knew what was going on when he started to move that camera. He knew that you move until you come to a climax, the end of your scene. That's the ultimate, that's what it's all leading up to.
[On the final film's number of titles, twice as many as the original script] This was done as a concession to the great public, which presumably cannot as yet take its entertainment by seeing and thinking for itself.
Edward Ulmer
When we came in and saw the rushes at night, Murnau used to get up when the light went on again and say 'Now we know how not to do it.'
FW Murnau
In Sunrise some of the critics were severe with me because of the ugly two-coloured wig I allowed Janet Gaynor to wear. They complained that it extinguished her beauty and made her almost plain. They did not guess that that was exactly what I was trying to do! I wished Janet to play, not Janet Gaynor the screen beauty but a poor stupid little peasant girl. I had to submerge her physical beauty to emphasize the beauty of her heart.
And for a laugh.....
Welford Beaton, Film Spectator critic
Murnau's direction reflects Germanic arrogance. His players are chessmen and he moves them as such...Murnau is cold, too cold ever to give us a truly great picture...A man who can make us cry is a greater director than one who only makes us think.
William Fox
If you could get the intellect of Murnau, and the heart of Frank Borzage, why, you'd have the perfect director.