tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post3398253179673540310..comments2011-04-19T08:48:35.576-07:00Comments on 52 Movies in 52 Weeks: Sunrise: A Song of Two HumansRobinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-65642119682104786432011-03-10T18:41:54.844-08:002011-03-10T18:41:54.844-08:00We agree that would have been a great way to do it...We agree that would have been a great way to do it. It fits nicely with the return boating trip, which mirrors the originally intended events so well. Murnau used that for the ironic inversion of it, but it could then become the transition point back to reality. Perhaps it could be uncertain whether or not it was a dream - his side of the story is all there is to go on, and maybe it's true, or maybe he's lying, or maybe he wants the lie so badly he himself believes it to be true.<br /><br />Btw, that "it was all a dream" device IS used almost exactly as you describe for the finale of Terry Gilliam's <i>Brazil</i>.Robinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08848223540932915650noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2391733479848081309.post-41476860603023464312011-03-10T08:08:20.412-08:002011-03-10T08:08:20.412-08:00Mandie is shy about spoiling the ending. I'm n...Mandie is shy about spoiling the ending. I'm not. I assume anyone following this blog has either already seen the movie, or won't be watching it with the plot much in mind.<br /><br />Our idea, as we watched Sunrise, was that the plot might take the same twist as a curious foreign short that I remembered seeing long ago. That short was La rivière du hibou, a French film directed by Robert Enrico, produced by Marcel Ichac and Paul de Roubaix, and released in 1963. It was based on a short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, by Ambrose Bierce. As the film begins the main character is about to be hanged from a bridge. Miraculously, the rope breaks, he falls into the river and...escapes! The rest of the film follows his frantic flight, his return to freedom, etc. But, the end of the film returns us to the bridge, where, as it turns out, the miraculous breaking of the rope was merely wishful thinking during the last few seconds of the character's life. It was a powerful film. We should find a copy to watch as a "bonus film" in this series. <br /><br />In any case, there came a moment in Sunrise when we thought that, perhaps, the husband REALLY DID kill his wife, and that the whole going to town and falling back in love was just in his imagination. The sequence certainly had all the markings of overly-romanticized imaginary happenings, and it would have made the whole implausible I-forgive-you-for-trying-to-kill-me thing much more plausible. But...well, that wasn't the story that Murnau wanted to tell.<br /><br /> Filmed in black and white, it later went on to win the award for best short subject at the 1962 Cannes film festival and 1963 Academy Awards.[1] In 1964 La rivière du hibou aired on American television as an episode of the anthology series The Twilight Zone.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07311680362957886250noreply@blogger.com