Summary A Level Film Studies Sunrise (1927) Complete A* Notes
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Course
FM1 - Exploring Film Form
Institution
WJEC
This is a complete set of in depth notes for component 2, section c in A-Level film studies. Here is the structure of the notes and topics covered:
1. INTRODUCTION TO SUNRISE (F.W. MURNAU, 1927)
- Brief summary of the film's plot
- Historical context of the film's release
2. SILENT CINEMA
- T...
,1. INTRODUCTION TO SUNRISE (F.W. MURNAU, 1927)
- Brief summary of the film's plot
- Historical context of the film's release
2. SILENT CINEMA
- The argument for cinema as primarily a visual medium
- Use of intertitles in silent films
- Importance of performance
- Transition to sound in the late 1920s
3. CULTURAL, SOCIAL & HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
- German Expressionism's exploration of tradition and modernity
tension
- The Roaring Twenties and cultural anxieties of the era
- The film's influence on later film movements
4. THE REALIST-EXPRESSIONIST CRITICAL DEBATE
- The origins of the debate in early French cinema
- Definition and examples of cinematic realism
- Definition and examples of expressionism in cinema
- Realist and expressionist elements in Sunrise
5. CINEMATOGRAPHY
- Light, montage and metaphors
6. MISE EN SCENE
- Symbolism, Oppositions, and Forced Perspectives
7. EDITING:
- Long Takes, Rapid Montage, and Dissolves
8. SOUND
- Bells, Music, and Meaning
9. AESTHETICS
- Camera Movements and Subjectivity
10. REPRESENTATIONS
- Flappers, Decadence, and Marriage
, Sunrise ( F.W. Murnau, 1927)
Section C – Film movements – Silent cinema
● Social contexts
● Critical Debate: The realist and the expressive
The story of a husband's betrayal of his wife with a city girl, moving between a fairytale-like
depiction of rural life to a dynamic portrait of the bustling modern city.
Sunrise is a ‘super-production, an experimental film and a visionary poem’ (Martin
Scorsese). The film is unique in that it is a German Expressionist film made with German
talent for a Hollywood Studio (Fox). It reflects silent film at its peak as an art form, released
just days before the premiere of the first ‘talkie’, The Jazz Singer
SILENT CINEMA
Years before sound came to films, the art of motion pictures grew into full maturity before silent
films were replaced by talking pictures. The argument of those who concur with this view is that
cinema should be regarded as primarily a visual medium. By the mid-1920s filmmakers had
developed ways to tell film stories visually with great skill and ingenuity.
INTERTITLES
Since silent films had no synchronised sound for dialogue, onscreen intertitles were used to
narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the
cinema attitude.
- The ultimate goal of great silent filmmakers such as Eisenstein and Murnau was to
make films with no intertitles at all.
- The argument is that the lack of recorded dialogue draws the spectator into a much
more active engagement with the film.
- Even when we have intertitles, these rarely do more than provide a summary indication
of what is being spoken about by characters.
- A film becomes a visual canvas on which the spectator could project their own
imagined detail.
PERFORMANCE
The medium of silent film required a great emphasis on body language and facial expression so
the audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen.
TRANSITION TO SOUND
Filmmakers and critics despaired with the coming of sound at the end of the 1920s as the unique
dimension of film had been discarded.
- Transition to sound took place between 1926 and 1930
- Cameras and sound equipment were noisy and difficult to operate as they had to be
isolated in soundproof booths.
- Dialogue driven narrative was perceived as dragging cinema backwards as a form of
theatre rather than the innovative and artistic form of visual expression it had proved
itself to be.
CONTEXT
CULTURAL CONTEXT
Many German Expressionist films explore tension between tradition and modernity. The younger
generation recognized the excitement and technological spectacle of the cities seen in Sunrise.
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