This is a long delayed blog entry. Back at the beginning of the summer, Madison, Alicia, and I watched Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. We found the movie on VHS at Drexel’s Library, and had to watch it at my parent’s house because we did not have access to a VHS player anywhere else.
To spice up the event, we busted out a bottle of tequila and some fruit mixers. Once we had the cold drinks ready to go, we sat down on the couch and started watching the olympics. Track and field was on, and all three of us had trouble turning it off. When we finally got bored it was time for the movie.
Sunrise, the second movie on our list, won the 1927-1928 award for Most Artistic Quality of Production. This, like the award for Most Outstanding Production given to Wings, was only presented during the first year of the Academy Awards and is regarded as the equivalent of best picture.
This time, Madison and I knew what we were getting into, watching another full-length silent film. Alicia thought it was strange and took a while to get used to it. Madison and I settled right in. She did fall asleep toward the end, but I managed to survive this one.
The story was a lot more bizarre than the first. A man and his wife live a simple life in the countryside, but a sexy visitor from the city shakes things up the husband starts having an affair with her.
Lets just say 1927 silent film sex scenes are bizarre to say the least. The husband could use some lessons in romance and treating women better. The scene was pretty funny though.
So, being the she-devil that she is, a tramp from the city, convinces the husband to kill his wife so he can be with her. He decided this is a good idea. He will convince her to go on a boat-ride with him and he will drown her! PERFECT PLAN! Kill your wife and run off with the hot girl!
As soon as he decides to kill his wife, his demeanor changes, and he starts to move around eratically and avoid eye contact — he looked a lot like Frankenstein.
I don’t want to spoil the movie, but it is really not a suprise that he decides not to kill his wife. Instead, after an awkward attempt at killing her which he bails out on, he takes her to the city. They have a wonderful time filled with taking pictures with eachother, going to a carnival, dancing, and getting into a lot more humorous situations — such as chasing a pig around the fair.
Then, at the end of the day, it starts storming and they have to take the boat back accross the lake (drunk) and run into trouble. Here, I will not spoil the ending, as it was not something I expected at all.
Overall, the movie was far more entertaining than Wings. Wings was too much of a feel good pro-America war movie to fully entertain me — Sunrise on the other hand, was darker with a more interesting story line.
There were obvious fable-like morals being broadcast throughout the movie, the kind of simplicity and moral fortitude you would expect from something filmed in 1927. Overall it was a better movie than Wings, but I am glad that from here on out there will be sound!