You and other people mention redemption. Is this something I am missing because he doesn't redeem himself. She does the redeeming for him.
Exactly. She does the redeeming for him. Murnau is not celebrating the Man's ability to overcome his own frailty and redeem himself, he is celebrating the Wife's ability to redeem her husband through the strength and constancy of her love for him.
This is also the theme of
Nosferatu. In it, as in
Sunrise, a man falls prey to a vampiric figure (though in the former, the man is simply trying to earn his living and in the latter, he's distracted from doing so). In both, the man is saved by "the love of a good woman".
By the way, in
Sunrise, the Man does not, as you claim, try to kill his wife, he only plots to kill her. It is her essential goodness--and his recognition of it--that prevents him. The Man does not botch the murder, he turns away from committing it. So obviously, Murnau did not intend for us to view him as irredeemable. That point may seem minor or even nitpicky to you but I believe the censors of the day made a distinction between the two, as does the law.
In an era in which the individual reigns supreme, this essential dependence of one human being on another might seem strange. And to those who do not understand the elasticity and malleability of marriage, the 180 turnaround in
Sunrise must also seem strange.
You are obviously an intelligent person who has put a lot of yourself into observing and analyzing this movie. I personally think that's a wonderful tribute to a masterwork. I'm just sorry that the cynicism and judgmentalism so prevalent today keep you from enjoying this as fully as I do.
Group hug for Ahma!
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17 years ago
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blue-7
17 years ago
The best response to the ending of this film can be found in Dorothy B. Jone's essay, SUNRISE: A MURNAU MATERPIECE which was published in the Spring, 1955 issue of Hollywood Quarterly of Film, Radio and Television. This is actually one the best essays ever written about a film -- one that I have read over and over. I'll quote a few of her conclusions:
"But inevitably in evaluating SUNRISE in these terms, we come to the crucial matter of the happy ending itself. . . Before answering this question it may be well to point out that the short story on which the film is based did have a tragic ending. In the story, however, the man is drowned while his wife survives; he could have saved himself, but instead, in his efforts to save her life, he loses his own. This tragic ending appears to be completely correct for the story as it is developed by Hermann Sudermann, for in it the man is shown to be far more villainour than in the picture. . . Thus, Murnau has two possible tragic endings from which to choose. On the one had, had the wife been drowned, the film could have been a tragedy in the modern sense of the word, carrying with it a sense of finality, of heroic grandeu, of exaltaion. Actually, neither of these endings would have provided a convincing or satisfying conclusion for the motion picture which Murnau made, for his entire developement of the story makes the ending which he chose the possible one for this picture. Murnau rejected both these tragic endings because either one of them would have negated the film's underlying mood and theme and destroyed the remarkable unity of his work. For Murnau did not want to make us feel either purged of emotion (in the Aristotelian sense) or exalted (in the manner of the more modern tragedy). From his film in its entirety, he wanted above all else simply to make us feel the wonder of human relationships--the complex motivations which govern the lives of human beings (even the lives of a simple peasant and his wife), the nuances as well as the quiet depths of understanding which exsist between a man and a woman who love one another, the subtle moods which color the days of our lives. For the theme of the picture is that not events themselves, but their meaning to human beings and the use to which we put them is what matters. . . Thus in SUNRISE, Murnau tells us that good and evil are both part of living, that our mistakes and our suffering need not ruin us, but that what these events mean to us and what we do with them is what matters, for they may indeed become the very means by which our tomorrow may prove to be a better day. Life goes on, Murnau tells us, and bitter or sweet is essentially good, for there is always the promise of the sunrise and another day."
The film has the right ending!
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davejc1886
17 years ago
I have to disagree with Ms. Jones. Murnau had no problem negating a film's underlying mood. Ms. Jones probably never saw The Last Laugh.
I believe this was Murnau's first film with an American studio. And I believe the very American ending was the studio's, not Murnau's. But regardless of who influenced who, when the lights come up, audiences are left to ponder this ending, after having witnessed a man cheat on his wife, then come very close to murdering her, and then come even closer to murdering his mistress. It's problematic, to say the least. I doubt this happy ending would have passed the Hayes code a decade later.
In my mind a better ending would have been: wife drowns, floozy turns in husband for murder, husband gets convicted, floozy gets baby, which is all she was after in the first place.
But i don't think my ending would have passed the Hayes code either.
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