1-The first shot of the Wife sets the tone that FW will consistently follow for the character, tender, loving and with perhaps misguided faith in her husband.

2-The Man wakes, in his clothes, with a jolt. We are in no doubt that he has not 'slept off' the idea of drowning his wife, in fact the pace with which he awakes, when he remembers the hidden bulrushes, suggests that the plot will be carried out sooner rather than later.

3-The cutaway to the bulrushes I found confusing at first, it appeared to me that he was looking directly off camera at the now exposed bulrushes and even that his plot that been inadvertently exposed, albeit unknowingly. The camera moves into the bulrushes at great speed, mirroring the Man's panic and sudden realisation, in the full light of day, of the reality and concreteness of the plot.

1-The Man sinks into despair, unsure whether he really is contemplating the plot.

2-The Wife is presented simply, in long shot from the Man's perspective. She feeds some chickens, throughout she is shown 'connected' to her environment and happy to be so, in contrast to the Man who is presented aloof.

3/4-His mind wanders into thoughts of The Woman from the City. For me this is one of the film's most successful superimpositions, her ghostly image I think nicely conveys the Man's sudden memory of her physical and psychological presence. Today a brief flashback or voice-over by the mistress would replace such an effect in a less self-conscious manner, more sophisticated maybe, but robbing us of a remarkable image.

2/3-After his daydream reaches it's climax, we return to the Wife in the courtyard. With her distant husband awake she assumes a quiet, duty driven role on the farm and as a mother, the victim of her brutish but weak willed husband. He approaches her uneasily, clumsy and mechanical.

1-The close-up ends on this striking smile. The Man has reached out to her, perhaps he has come to his senses? Her heart visibly lifts out of despair and disappointment.

2-She takes his hand, the Man however remains ambiguous, is he simply hesitant from the humility of the shame of what has past through his imagination? He stands in the shade within the room while light pours onto the Wife.

3-She celebrates with her child and the Man's mother. Clearly brought to life again by the Man's proposal. The scenes with the baby are some of the film's most playful and are charming for modern audiences, particularly in theatres - where the film's lighter moments really reveal themselves and even the standard silent film 'comedy' sequences so anaemic to modern audiences acquire a sweet lightness of touch.

1-A very strong frame indicates the Man's continuing deterioration, he may be chastising himself for the steps he cannot believe he is taking toward the Wife. He fights himself to regain control of his fragile will.

2-But his mind is consumed with the image of the drowning, like all his fantasies they are simple minded, straight forward and naïve, he is only now coming to the terrifying realisation of the intimacy and violence of what lies before him if his 'glamourous, sexy life in the city' with his mistress is to become a reality.

3-The Wife dresses for the boat trip. This shot is interesting. We generally believe that the Man desires a bells and whistles lifestyle in the city while the Wife is happy and content in rural simplicity. And yet she here shows care in her appearance while the Man is going on the same trip, albeit with rather different expectations for it, in clothes that he has apparently walked through marshes in, made love in and then slept all night in. Like Lorenz in Phantom the Man is deluding himself with a lifestyle he is hopelessly unsuited for. His nature is in the country not the city.

1-The detail tilts up to reveal this grotesque view of the Man, unrecognisable from the fresh-faced Man we will meet later in the film.

2-Another bit of business with the baby, levelling the attention given between the Man and the Wife before the boat trip. Although the scenes are split between both figures we remain in "the shoes of the Man" principally because he is the protagonist and we recognise, through the Wife's faith in him, a goodness in his nature that has been overcome only temporarily by the influence of the Woman from the City and we desire to see him through this emotional turmoil.

3-Establishing the boat. The Man clunks his way to what in his mind is a symbol of violence and murder while carrying the bulrushes, yet another symbol of violence and murder. In a recent review Tim Dirks described the Man moving "in a heavy stupor as if the vamp (the Woman from the City) has drained him of blood." Drawing an interesting connection to a certain other Murnau work.

4-The Wife placates the barking, troubled dog chained to it's kennel with an affectionate if hurried pat.

1-The Man hides the bulrushes before noticing the approach of the Wife. The detail with which FW covers the 'execution' of the plot suggests to me that he is more interested in illustrating the Man's discomfort and confusion than he is in simply carrying out a bit of action (i.e. the Wife's murder). There is a not so subtle difference between dwelling on the mechanics of such an action to convey the turmoil and intimacy of the act as well as the inherent suspense of such a scene (the killing of the Black Hand character in The Godfather Part II or the old lady in Crime and Punishment for example) and dwelling on the act itself to convey the sheer violence of the act.

2-The Wife bounces out to the boat, full of good spirits for a new, happier chapter in the marriage.

3-The Man, finding himself deeper and deeper in someone else's plot.

4-The Wife waits for the Man to assist her onto the boat, he ignores her to fend for herself. She accepts his inconsideration with patience and understanding as she laughs it off. She may be becoming a little too perfect by this stage, we certainly wouldn't get away with it today.

1-FW plants the Man and the Wife as far apart on the claustrophobic boat as possible. The staging is careful to avoid any eye contact at all between characters. Their plain rural house looms large behind them as the Man nervously leads their departure from the lives they know.

2/3/4-As the Man prepares to set sail he hears the excitement of the Dog, who senses danger. But ignoring this domestic plea to recant he sets off.

1-The boat slowly drifts out, the drama is now completely confined and our sense of dread increases with our awareness that the situation must now come to a head.

2/3-The Dog continues his desperate bark and manages to break free of his leash, he bounders over the gate heroically he for a split second we wonder if FW is going to do a horrible, phoney Lassie Come Home rescue. I recall on my first viewing this horrifying thought that Lassie would do his thing and the rest of the movie would follow the Man's foiled attempts to kill his Wife. Luckily the movie was rather less predictable.

4-Spectacularly, the dog races down to the pier, jumps off and swims to the Wife on the boat. I think the whole business with the Dog is a bit silly and wasteful and I suspect was only left in for this amusing and memorable shot. But it is rather distracting from the ominous tension on the boat. I would prefer a simple close-up of the Dog, resigned from raising alarm as the boat drifts out to the water.

1/2/3/4-The Man is pissed to see the troublesome mutt who jumps into the boat to the Wife as the Man turns the boat to return to land. Is he aborting the plot for a genuine reason, has this domestic plea to recant finally touched his conscience, or has he bottled out and found a convenient excuse to call it off? The Wife's kind hearted devotion to animals is by now surely beyond reproach.

1/2-The boat pulls up to shore. The Man takes the Dog from the Wife's arms, imposing his will automatically in standard brute fashion. He calmly and peacefully removes her one defence and ally in the world at this moment.

3-Again the house looms large as the Man walks the Dog back out of the way.

4-This is a very odd, extremely long shot (in duration), the Wife's instincts are beginning to sense something wrong, uncomfortable. She is almost out of the boat at one point but remains to await her husband's unpredictable return. Briefly here her faith in him is shaken. Increasingly now she will be framed against pure water.

1-The Man emerges from the house. He has subdued the Dog from who we hear no more. The Dog has been calm since climbing into the boat but the presentation of the Man here has a suggestion that some cruelty was involved in the Dog's restraint.

2/3/4-The Wife is shaken, the woodeness and automation of the Man's behaviour must be troubling even her, so used to bearing his inconsideration. Again the lumbers onto the boat and sets off. The Dog episode is finally behind us, it's a bit of business that extends the sequence and the suspense, re-enforces the Wife's passivity and attitude to her environment in contrast to the Man's and adds to the scene's unease but it is clumsy to have the boat return all the way back to shore.

1-The Man's strength leads the boat out. We get our first proper view of the water.

2-The Wife looks back ominously to shore.

3/4-Alone at last. These two medium shots illustrate the ultimate confinement of the drama with the Man concentrating on the activity of rowing, trying to work himself into a trance that will allow him to do the deed without having to suffer the moral torture of the act; while the Wife looks to begin some communication of some kind, a glance, a pleasantry about the weather…..

1-The Man is focused.

2-The Wife, with this charming little beam of a smile, reaches out to the Man for a glance, a simple connection that can begin to re-establish the marriage they once enjoyed.

3-Closer. The Man is focused.

4-The Wife has failed.

1/2/3/4-The Man is focused, the Wife, looking around, grows bored and uneasy.

1/2/3/4-As above

1-The Man slows the row to a crawl, to a stop.

2-The Wife, framed by water, can only brace herself.

3-The Man rises his bulk on the meagre boat. His avoidance of eye contact is increasingly threatening.

4-The Wife creeps almost out of the frame, the water becomes more and more prominent as she shrinks down with terrified curiosity.

1/2-The Man raises his eyes to finally look at his wife. This is quite the closest shot on the Man so far in the reel and certainly the first with such a powerful eye line. I wouldn't be surprised if a young Stanley Kubrick caught a showing of Sunrise some time in the New York Museum of Modern Art and noticed George O'Brien's powerful early prototype of the famous Kubrick stare.

3/4-The Man lumbers across the flimsy boat, inching his way across it's landscape to the Wife. FW weighed down George O'Brien's boots by twenty pounds to achieve the strain and sense of physical effort with which he moves here.

1/2/3-The Wife recoils as the Man looms over her. Her framing is perilous. She finds the calm to appeal to him, putting her faith in his good nature.

4-He stops, the trance he has been working himself up into looks to be breaking.

1-The last appeal, the frame is now entirely the Wife against the water.

2/3/4-As the church bell chimes the Man throws his outstretched hands up to his hand in hysteria. The spell is broken. In his book "Film: An International History of the Medium", Robert Sklar identifies this moment as a highly significant development for sound in film - "This sequence poses significant issues of interpretation, particularly because the film's production history suggests that it was completely shot and edited, and Murnau had returned to Germany, before sound was added. To what extent is a religious motif apparent in the images? In the image-sound relationship, do the bells stop the husband's murderous intent, or are they a symbolic confirmation of his internally directed moral choice? As one of the earliest recorded music and effects tracks that still survives, Sunrise calls attention to the strong influence sound can have on shaping spectator response to the image."

1/2/3/4-As above.

1/2/3-With the attempt over and the Man's murderous thoughts exposed FW must get his characters back to land as quickly as possible. The confinement of the boat has served it's dramatic purpose and there is little the characters can do face to face at this point.

4-The Man rows for his life.

1/2/3/4-The Wife takes her hand in her hands, retreating from the nightmare she cannot believe around her. This is the fourth time a character has done this in the reel; the Man on the bed after waking up, as he fantasises throwing his wife into the water and when he retreats from her on the boat; but here for the first time the Wife is shown with a comparable emotional intensity. The Man continues his frenzied rowing, FW builds a very powerful sense of movement here, not just to move the action onto land as quickly as possible but as a visual way to convey something about the characters and their emotional situation.

1/2/3/4-The frenzy of the boat's movement continues.

1/2-The boat pulls into shore. We see an unusual view of the Wife, for the first time on the boat from the back, exhausted from the sheer sense of motion and the Man's physical efforts, she could almost be asleep.

3/4-The Man misjudges the Wife, he wants to extend his assistance to the weak woman and see she is taken care of but at his first advance she darts past him to land and races away. He hesitates, tired and confused, the viewer is unsure, based on what he's seen, whether this clunking hulk can even manage anything but a stomp.

1-The Wife runs for her life over rocky terrain.

2-The Man begins to run after her, bounding out of the boat.

3-We view the Man following the Wife over the rocky terrain and the Wife stumbling.

4-The Man catches the stumbling Wife and makes a pleading, desperate grasp for the Wife.

1-A pathetic plea.

2/3-The Wife resumes her footing and again dashes away from her dangerous husband.

4-The Man picks himself up and continues the chase instinctively, he must in some way impart to the Wife his good nature despite the 'temporary insanity' of the boat trip.

1-The Man chases.

2/3-The Wife races to the foreground, the camera pans right to reveal an approaching tram, he desperately waves it down and gets on.

4-The Man follows close behind.

1-The Wife safely departs on the tram.

2/3/4-The Man darts up to the tram.

1-The Man jumps onto the tram.

2-Out of breath he gathers himself on the tram and notices, sitting quietly, the Wife.

3/4-Gently, the Man approaches the Wife, his body language is caring and humble. The tram stately sweeps through the countryside carrying the Man and the Wife. Here we return almost to the confinement of the boat though in a more public area after the desperation of the chase. The Man is unable to find words of reconciliation or explanation and the Wife is resistant to his pressures though she is at least outwardly tolerant of his close, emasculated presence.

1-A more intimate view. The Man seeking eye contact. The Wife lost in her own thoughts. Both moving through the countryside.

2-The Wife avoids all eye contact, on a journey with the Man chosen out of desperation, at random.

3/4-The Man pays the conductor as the tram moves through increasingly built up city outskirts.

1/2/3/4- The tram moves through a city. To those of you who've seen the film well presented it's just possible that these stills don't quite do this sequence justice. Andrew Sarris described this passage as "one of the most lyrical passages in the world cinema. It is also a prophetic passage in that it heralds the cinema of the future as the art of the traveller". And reflecting on Murnau's mise-en-scene he commented- "Murnau's influence on the cinema has proved to be more lasting than Eisenstein's. Murnau's moving camera seems a more suitable style for exploring the world than does Eisenstein's dialectical montage, and the trend in modern movies has been toward escaping studio sets so as to discover the real world".

1/2/3/4-The Man and Wife prepare to disembark as the tram pulls into the city centre. The Man attempts to assume the role of calm patriarch. The city promises infinite possible paths for the Man and Wife. The Man, faced suddenly with the 'glamourous' city must turn it from a decadent, sexy environment into the place where his real marriage to this real woman must be sensitively attended to and reborn.

1/2-The Man, ignoring the bustle of the city behind him, again begs the Wife for understanding, this time more gently and sincerely. He takes the lead out of the tram, protectively offering her his safekeeping in this alien environment, still he looks for eye contact.

3-The Wife meekly looks down to the Man, looking in his face for some clue, some sign that will tell her how to proceed in this predicament.

4-The Man's pose here is like someone asking for divine guidance, his face declaims an individual unable or unwilling to help himself and relying on the charity of a 'moral superior' for salvation.

1-But the Wife charges out of the tram past the Man into the rush of the pulsing city with its intersecting hordes and traffic.

2-The Man finds his way blocked.

3-This stunning high angled tracking shot follows the Wife's near sleepwalk across the terrain of the swarming city street. She is utterly vulnerable in this exotic environment.

4-The Man, himself disconcerted in this foreign metropolis runs instinctively to the Wife to protect her from the very immediate danger of the traffic.

1/2/3-The gorgeous shot continues as the Man catches up with the Wife and leads her to safety on the pavement.

4-The Man and Wife have reached the safety of the pavement, the Man has a moment to take in the bewildering tempo and scale of the city. The Wife remains in her own world, accepting the Man's protection but unwilling to initiate or take part in any kind of dialogue.

1/2/3-The Man decides his first step in the city.