Listen to our full discussion of this piece of shit on our podcast series Mysterium Pictorum! Available on any podcasting app you like!
Seriously: Fuck the canon!
“Timeless classic”? “Masterpiece”? “Perfect film”? “One of the best movies of all time”? What the fuck!?
Not only is “Sunrise” a hateful, deeply misogynistic piece of filmmaking, it’s also unbearably cheesy, inexcusably boring, simplistic in its storytelling and devoid of believable characters. “Sunrise” shows a dangerously askew view of the world. A murderous psychopath (who always, unfailingly behaves like a dangerous, violent piece of shit, all through to the end) and an unbelievably stupid “sacred mother wife” fantasy are at the core of this non-story about how it’s charming, forgivable and the fault of some evil woman from the city anyway, when a guy tries to murder his wife. The wife and their baby will survive maybe one more month, max, before he will murder them both, that much is perfectly clear when the credits roll.
It looks nice, sure, but it doesn’t even have anything interesting to show in those nice images, so all the craft and effort go to waste and do nothing.
It makes me sick to see this piece of garbage so uncritically hailed by just everyone. Can’t you guys think for yourself or do you really have no objections against this nasty, boring, misanthropic propaganda movie?
None of my complaints can be excused by time and medium. Even Murnau himself has made several films far better than this one. Carl Mayer has written scripts that weren’t just worthless, joyless, hollow trash. Silent films CAN be timeless, glorious masterpieces. “Sunrise” isn’t that.
Not even close.
(Bonus round: Fuck that myth about the countryside being pure and the city full of sin and evil! I grew up in a village, left as soon as I could, and later moved back to a small town to study - And I have not had one good experience in those provincial backwater hell-holes! Country klutzes aren't charming, sweet and innocent - country folk burn down refugee homes on a regular basis! Small towns are evil places and whoever can escape to a city should do so as soon as possible!)