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

This edition of F.W. Murnau’s first Hollywood film is virtually identical in presentation to the 2003 Fox edition noted below. For information about this boxset’s presentation of the domestic 1.20:1 frame aspect Movietone version, see our review of the Fox edition below.

However, in a big change up, this edition also contains the silent European version of Sunrise as it has survived in a Czech language print. The export versions of American films were commonly manufactured from the B-camera negative, which is composed of second-best shots taken concurrently with the A-camera and of separate takes of certain shot setups. The result is a slightly different version of the film that is here presented with the surviving Czech intertitles, with optional Spanish and French subtitles (oops! English subtitles listed in the Languages menu under the None selection). The Czech version looks as good but not necessarily better than the surviving American print, but, as the source print was not prepared for a Movietone soundtrack and therefore is not cropped on the left side of the picture, the Czech print shows all of the original 1.37:1 frame aspect framing of the B-camera’s shot (see the difference in the full-frame European version still frame above, and the pillarboxed Movietone version still frame below). There has been no digital stabilization of the occasionally jittery picture.

The European version is presented with an adaptation of the Movietone soundtrack, edited and sequenced to fit the tighter editing of the Czech print, with several shots of shorter duration than those in the American print.

The supplemental material on the disc includes the same commentary on the feature film and its outtakes by John Bailey as in other editions noted below, an option to view outtakes with text, a theatrical trailer, the original Carl Mayer scenario with Murnau annotations (images) with a clearer reset version (type), restoration notes, and a still gallery of advertising (3 images), production (29 images) and behind-the-scenes photographs (13 images). The previously available material on 4 Devils (1928) has been placed on the City Girl disc in this boxset.

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.

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 from the 35mm preservation negative prepared by NFTVA’s J. Paul Getty Conservation Center for the Academy Film Archive, the British Film Institute and 20th Century-Fox from the Museum of Modern Art’s surviving diacetate positive of the 1.20:1 Movietone sound version that was created in 1936. The original camera negative was lost to a nitrate fire in 1937. The resulting picture is slightly narrower than most silent era films due to the placement of the analog soundtrack to the left of the picture in original sound prints, but also likely represents the best footage taken from the “A” position camera — the preferred position, framing and take versions of the filmmakers.

While the original camera negative of Sunrise has not survived, and even the best of video transfers will be from duplicate preservation prints, Sunrise is well represented in those materials yet still renders a picture of slightly soft detail. This edition benefits from the greater image detail that the DVD format is capable of, over earlier editions on laserdisc and VHS, as this disc renders image quality of very-good to excellent, limited only by the detail present in the source print. In reevaluating the video transfer on high-definition equipment capable of upscaling the DVD’s standard-definition NTSC signal to a high-definition 1080p signal, we find that the older video transfer does only a moderately-good job of rendering a picture that looks filmlike in image detail and tonal ranges. The film on home video could benefit greatly from a new high-definition video transfer of the preservation negative — the practical best-available option.

The DVD offers both music soundtracks that were available on the laserdisc release: the original 1927 mono Movietone soundtrack composed by Hugo Riesenfeld, which has been digitally duplicated, restored and preserved at the closest approximation of an ideal sound-film presentation from 1927, and a digitally-recorded stereo music score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra in the 1990s.

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 4 Devils (1928), and the original 4 Devils scenario.

This increasingly difficult-to-find edition is the best available to collectors with NTSC equipment, but has been superceded by the Sunrise disc in the Murnau-Borzage boxset noted above. If you have PAL capabilities you want to consider the Eureka edition noted below.

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.