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In this master shot, the marsh is revealed through the darkness by the light of the full moon. The first image of the marsh sequence is a long dolly shot following the Man walking to the Woman (Fig. In the marsh sequence the mise-en-scene reflects the psychological states of the Man and the Woman’s murderous affair. The mise-en-scene of Sunrise employs a mixture of expressionism and realism. For Murnau, it seems the expressive and the real compliment each other. For theorists, expressionism and realism are oppositional. This combination of German style with American production creates a film that transcends classification of expressionism or realism. The film was financed, produced, and photographed by Americans. The film was directed, written, and designed by Germans. The production of Sunrise itself blurs the boundaries between German and Hollywood cinema. This is true for the film’s dialectics as well as the mixture of expressionistic and realistic aesthetics. Lucy Fischer suggests many elements of the film defy classification, “ Sunrise is a text marked by fluid boundaries – junctions that trace the subtle connection between entities rather than their clear demarcation” (8). Can a film produced by German artists and financed by American capitalists be singularly identified? Classification is a form of boundary and a means of separation. It also produces a problem when attempting to classify Sunrise as expressionist or realist.
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This meeting of German expressionism and Hollywood realism produces Sunrise. Murnau was brought to Hollywood by William Fox and given total access to the Fox studio (Allan and Gomery, 97).
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To “enhance the prestige” of the Fox studio F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh is arguably the peak of the German Kammerspeil genre and paved the way for Murnau’s arrival in Hollywood (Allan and Gomery, 94). The combination of realism and expressionism allows an audience to believe in the film’s story and characters. The film contains realist elements like the moving shot through the hotel lobby and expressionist elements like “The Drunken Dream” sequence.
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In Murnau’s The Last Laugh (1924) an aging doorman faces the bitterness of life. These films seek to ground their narratives in objective reality while externalizing the subjective reactions to that reality. Kammerspeil films react against and extend expressionism by retaining “the morbid psychological themes…but cast them in realistic form” (Cook, 117). Murnau surpassed the cinema of pure expressionism to that of the Kammerspeilfilme. Acting, cinematography, production design, and editing are expressive and abstract in these films. These expressionist, often fantastical films use cinematic technique to portray the psychological states of the film’s characters. Murnau’s early films, like Nosferatu (1922), are seen today as being aesthetically, “almost exclusively” expressionistic (Cook, 115). Murnau originated from the expressionist Weimar cinema of 1920’s Germany. Joining expressionism and realism was familiar ground for Murnau by the time Sunrise was produced. In this moment, Murnau uses the cinema to project the film’s meaning and conviction to an audience. “The marsh sequence,” as I will term it, at the film’s start is when the Man (George O’Brien) leaves the Wife (Janet Gaynor) to have an affair with the Woman from the city (Margaret Livingston). One sequence in particular typifies this use of the expressive and real. This allows an audience access to the subjective experiences of the characters while preserving the reality of the film. Murnau employs this aesthetic mixture within the mise-en-scene, the en-framed images, and the montage of Sunrise. In Sunrise – A Song Of Two Humans (1927) Murnau’s seamless blend of expressionism and realism creates a picture that is able to transcend the screen and affect its audience. Murnau defy hasty theoretical classification because they are constructed from a mixture of expressionistic and realistic aesthetics. Sunrise on YouTube (part 2) sequence described in essay begins at 00:03Įxpressionism and Realism in Sunrise – A Song Of Two Humans