Sunrise (1927) on

Considered by some to be the greatest film of the silent era, Sunrise (1927) is at very least a combination of artistic triumph and artistic enigma. Perhaps the finest example of the melding of German visual design with American studio production techniques, Sunrise is an oddly disconnected story that still manages to reach its audience with its tremendous emotional undercurrent. — Carl Bennett

We suspect that this DVD has been prepared from the video masters created for the 1997 laserdisc edition, as prepared for home video by David Shepard. The DVD offers both music soundtracks that were available on the laserdisc release: the original 1927 mono Movietone soundtrack composed by Hugo Riesenfeld, and a digitally-recorded stereo music score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra in the 1990s.

Also note that the original camera negative of Sunrise has apparently not survived, and that even best video transfer will be from duplicate 35mm prints. In its laserdisc edition, Sunrise is well represented but renders a picture of slightly soft detail. This DVD benefits from the greater image detail that the format is capable of, as this disc renders image quality of very-good to excellent, limited only by the detail present in the source print.

The supplementary section includes audio commentary by ASC cinematographer John Bailey, outtake footage with optional John Bailey commentary, the original scenario by Carl Mayer with annotations by F.W. Murnau, an original trailer, a section on Murnau’s lost film Four Devils (1928), and the original Four Devils scenario.

Sunrise is being offered for retail sale only in a Fox Studio Classics box set along with All About Eve (1950), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) and How Green Was My Valley (1941). The box set became available 14 October 2003.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This remastered edition, from a high-definition video transfer that has been progressive-scan encoded, should be a visual improvement over Eureka’s 2004 edition (noted below), and also contains the original Sunrise scenario by Carl Mayer with Murnau’s handwritten annotations (PDF in CD-ROM section), the original English-language intertitles, a commentary track by ASC cinematographer John Bailey, outtakes with optional commentary, Janet Bergstrom’s 40-minute documentary Murnau’s 4 Devils: Traces of a Lost Film — an examination of Murnau’s lost 4 Devils (1928), stills gallery, original theatrical trailer, restoration notes and a 40-page booklet that includes Sunrise writings by R. Dixon Smith, Robin Wood, Lotte Eisner, Lucy Fischer and David Pierce.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 PAL DVD of this edition from Amazon.co.uk.

This edition also contains the original Sunrise scenario by Carl Mayer with Murnau’s handwritten annotations, original English intertitles, commentary track by ASC cinematographer John Bailey, outtakes with optional commentary, documentary by film historian R. Dixon Smith, 4 Devils (1928) reconstruction treatment and scenario, stills gallery, original theatrical trailer, and restoration notes.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 0 PAL DVD of this edition from Amazon.co.uk.