Believability of Wife's Reactions***Spoiler** ******

That sort of forgiveness is difficult to swallow if one views this as a realistic film, but it isn't: it's an allegory ABOUT forgiveness. As such these characters (who aren't even given names) are representatives of types rather than 3-D depictions of personalities. The "wife" is a symbol of forgiveness, as the "Husband" is a symbol of waywardness and loss of faith. And so on... As an allegorical symbol, the "Wife" cannot do anything BUT eventually forgive. That's her symbolic position.

I agree with dmh7-1 about the wife being a symbol for forgiveness. This is a story about redemption, and that message is quite hard to get across if the wife doesn't completely forgive her husband by the end of the story.

Also, I would argue that he didn't actually attempt murder. He plotted murder, and came very close to attempting it, but he never actually harmed her. Plotting murder isn't exactly easily forgivable either, but I do think that it makes a huge difference. When she forgives him for almost carrying out a plan to kill her, viewers may be skeptical. However, if he had, say, thrown her overboard and THEN suddenly had a change of heart and rescued her from drowning, it would be quite different. Many people plot to murder those close to them (people are emotional and quite fickle), but rarely does anyone go through with an imagined murder plot. Of course, the husband did PREPARE to go through with it (the boat trip), which is quite awful, but this can be partially be attributed to the fact that he had someone egging him on to murder his wife. Mot to mention that the story would be quite short if he'd only thought about killin ghis wife, and did nothing about it. Anyway, if he had even laid a hand on his wife to try and kill her, it would be a lot harder to believe that she could forgive him. So, considering that he only actually plotted murder, the wife forgiving him is still questionable, but not completely unbelievable.

Besides that, the story is meant to be very artistic and symbolic, and therefore, characters' actions were often exaggerated so that the story could be told without having to sacrifice what is meant to be the meaning of the story.

The film's a pure fairy tale set in the modern day of its time. It's not meant to be believable in a realistic sense.

If the wife wasn't going to be forgiving, would there have been a point to the movie? It could have been written that way, but would it have been as striking as it was?

I like to remind people who watch Sunrise, to accept it for the beauty that it is. Don't think about what you would have done. Let it move you, if you can be moved.

In all honesty, I understand less the motives of the wife in The Excursion To Tilsit, than I do in Sunrise. And I might be about to spoil it, so if you don't want to be spoiled, avert your eyes.
The wife some how finds out that she's going to be killed, and goes right along with it. She treats it as a death sentence that she's willing to accept. Even getting the dress that she's going to be buried in ready. In addition to this, the husband hit her while drunk, and he would drink often. The mistress was living with them. The wife and all the neighbors knew what was going on. As for the drowning part, in the book the husband never goes through with any of it. He doesn't even so much as get near her. During most of the trip, she waiting for it. Expecting it. Eventually, she makes him repent. He doesn't do it on his own. He doesn't show remorse, until asked about the green rushes. In my opinion, the whole thing about her knowing about being killed before hand, and going along with it, is more far fetched than the forgiveness of the wife in the movie.