Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) on Netflix
A married farmer is drawn away from his wife and child by a woman vacationing from the city. She presses him to sell the farm and suggests drowning his wife.
- Netflix4.5/5
- IMDb8.1/1057,121 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes98%
Trailer
Plot summary
A woman from the city spends weeks of the summer in a lakeside town. A married farmer slips away from his dinner and his wife to meet her in the woods, while money lenders strip the failing farm. She tells him to sell it and come to the city with her; when he asks about his wife, she suggests drowning her. He seizes her by the throat, but she soothes him and lays out bundles of reeds for him to float on. He goes home and asks his wife to come with him across the water, and she leaves their child with a friend.
Cast
- Ralph Sipperlyas The Barber
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The city street set built for F. W. Murnau's Hollywood debut reportedly cost more than US$200,000, and Fox reused it in later productions, including John Ford's Four Sons (1928).
- Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in Sunrise; the award also covered her work in 7th Heaven and Street Angel.
- Sunrise used Charles Gounod's 1872 Funeral March of a Marionette, the piece that went on to become the theme for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
- The original 35mm negative of the American version of Sunrise was destroyed in the 1937 Fox vault fire, and a replacement negative was struck from a surviving print.
- F. W. Murnau chose Fox's new Movietone sound-on-film system, which made Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects.
- In 1989, Sunrise was among the first 25 films chosen by the U.S. Library of Congress for the National Film Registry, cited as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.
- Sunrise's premiere was accompanied by the first ever talking newsreels, which attracted much of the early interest in the film.
