Sound is a fundamental aspect of film form. As Richard Barsam and David Monahan write ‘sound helps the filmmaker tell a movie’s story by reproducing and intensifying the world that has been partially created by the film’s visual elements’ (Barsam & Monahan 2013: 414). Even during the silent era, sound was essential to the integrity of the cinematic experience, to the extent that one could argue that ‘the silent film never existed’ (Melinda Szaloky 2002). In fact, most silent movies were accompanied by a piano and some also had a narrator. As early cinema developed, so did the proficiency of sound, reaching an always higher level of sophistication, so that in 1927 Fox Film Corporation was able to produce Sunrise: A Song of two Humans (F.W. Murnau),
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On the narrative level Sunrise can be classified as a romantic drama: the story of a married countryside farmer (played by George O’Brien) who has an affair with an elegant city woman (Margaret Livingston) but ultimately falls back in love with his wife (Janet Gaynor). The Man and The Wife’s reconciliation takes ironically place in the City, the same locale the woman who had driven them apart had come from in the first place. ‘Purged through suffering and reunited by forgiveness, love and the strength of their marriage vows’ (Szaloky 2012) the lovers cross together a road bustling with cars. As they walk embracing one another they seem to magically shift from an urban setting to an idyllic bucolic one. The melody that accompanies their stroll through this utopic meadow is sweet and romantic, composed by two distinctive timbres. While the rhythm of this score is harmonious and matches the visual rhythm of the …show more content…
It is in fact in the country that the protagonists’ love keeps being challenged and put in jeopardy. Firstly when their happy marriage is disrupted by the arrival of the seductive Woman From the City, later when the Man agrees to kill his wife, and finally when the Man and the Wife, happy once again after having renewed their marital vows, end up being dragged into a storm on the lake and are ultimately
On the narrative level Sunrise can be classified as a romantic drama: the story of a married countryside farmer (played by George O’Brien) who has an affair with an elegant city woman (Margaret Livingston) but ultimately falls back in love with his wife (Janet Gaynor). The Man and The Wife’s reconciliation takes ironically place in the City, the same locale the woman who had driven them apart had come from in the first place. ‘Purged through suffering and reunited by forgiveness, love and the strength of their marriage vows’ (Szaloky 2012) the lovers cross together a road bustling with cars. As they walk embracing one another they seem to magically shift from an urban setting to an idyllic bucolic one. The melody that accompanies their stroll through this utopic meadow is sweet and romantic, composed by two distinctive timbres. While the rhythm of this score is harmonious and matches the visual rhythm of the …show more content…
It is in fact in the country that the protagonists’ love keeps being challenged and put in jeopardy. Firstly when their happy marriage is disrupted by the arrival of the seductive Woman From the City, later when the Man agrees to kill his wife, and finally when the Man and the Wife, happy once again after having renewed their marital vows, end up being dragged into a storm on the lake and are ultimately