Murnau's "Sunrise" on DVD, and Fox's perplexing scammola

This is Fox's way of testing the waters for silent films. They have a quite remarkable back catalog of silents. The following is a partial list of silent titles still owned by Fox which Jon Mirsalis posted to the silents newsgroup:

Ankles Preferred 27
Arizona Express, The 24
Best Bad Man, The 25
Big Dan 23
Black Paradise 26
Blue Eagle, The 26
Blue Skies, The 29
Cameo Kirby 23
Captain Lash 29
Chain Lightning 27
Circus Ace, The 27
City Girl 30
Colleen 27
Country Beyond, The 26
Cowboy and the Countess, The 26
Cradle Snatchers, The 27
Cyclone Rider, The 24
Dancers, The 25
Dante's Inferno 24
Desert Outlaw, The 24
Desert Valley 26
Dick Turpin 25
Dressed to Kill 28
East Lynne 25
East Side, West Side 27
Fazil 28
Fig Leaves 26
First Year, The 26
Flying Horseman, The 26
Folly of Vanity 25
Four Sons 28
Friendly Husband, A 23
Girl in Every Port, A 28
Going Crooked 26
Gold Heels 25
Golden Strain, The 26
Good as Gold 27
Great K & A Train Robbery, The 26
Greater than a Crown 25
Hangman's House 28
Hardboiled 26
Havoc 25
High School Hero 27
Honor Bound 28
In Love With Love 25
Iron Horse, The 24
Johnstown Flood, The 26
Joy Girl 27
Kentucky Pride 25
Last Man on Earth, The 25
Last of the Duanes, The 24
Last Trail, The 27
Lazybones 25
Lightnin' 25
Love Letters 24
Loves of Carmen, The 27
Lucky Horseshoe 25
Lucky Star 29
Man Who Came Back, The 24
Marriage License? 26
Monkey Talks, The 27
More Pay--Less Work 26
Mother Machree 28
My Own Pal 26
News Parade 28
No Man's Gold 26
North of Hudson Bay 24
Oh, You Tony 24
Outlaws of Red River 27
Paid to Love 27
Painted Post 28
Rainbow Trail, The 25
Red Dance 28
Return of Peter Grimm, The 26
Riders of the Purple Sage 25
Riley the Cop 28
River Pirate, The 28
River, The 29
Road House 28
Romance Land 23
Romance of the Underworld 28
Roughneck, The 25
Sandy 26
Seventh Heaven 27
Shamrock Handicap, The 26
Sharp Shooters 28
Silent Command, The 23
Singed 27
Skid-Proof 23
Soft Boiled 23
Soft Living 28
Square Crooks 28
Street Angel 28
Summer Bachelors 26
Sunrise--A Song of Two Humans 27
Teeth 24
Thief in the Dark 28
Three Bad Men 26
Tony Runs Wild 26
Trent's Last Case 29
Trouble Shooter, The 24
Village Blacksmith, The 23
What Price Glory? 26
Whispering Wires 26
Why Sailors Go Wrong 28
Wild West Romance 28
Yankee Senor, The 26
Yellow Fingers 26

Among those films is Murnau's City Girl and a number of Frank Borzage films.

I'm sure they'll release a whole bunch of movies I'd like to own (though I'm not really a big DVD-buyer)--but what that really has to do with the market for silents is kind of beyond me.

The way I figure, some enterprising cinema buff at Fox's DVD division suggested putting some of their silent titles on DVD. The big bosses looked at sales figures (poor) for most silents released by Kino, Image, etc. and said "er, no way." Cinema buff responded, "But this is Sunrise! Lovers of classic Hollywood movies will snatch this one up!" "Oh, they will, will they...?" Do you see where I'm going? I'm guessing if Sunrise does well in this promotion it will be released to stores, perhaps followed by City Girl, etc.

It's a good thing.

It just seems a strange way to gauge popularity--how many people are really going to jump through Fox's hoops? Probably way less than would've bought it outright if they'd released it (in a limited edition, even) in stores.

http://www.imperios.com/cine/Oscar/Fotos/Actrices/Janet%20gaynor.jpg

Just can't afford those 3 discs. Here's hoping we'll see it in stores soon...

I saw "Sunrise" on a bad VHS dub a couple of months ago (I hadn't seen it in years), and was amazed by how moving and incredible it was. Whatta flick. Totally magical.

Janet Gaynor won I believe the first "Best Actress" Oscar for her work in both Sunrise and Borzage's Seventh Heaven. I think she's cutest in Henry King's State Fair (1933).

Uh, isn't this a silent movie? How else are they going to ride?

(No intertitles, mouths are not moving, etc. Despite actual silence, silent movies are full of implied sound/implied silence. P.S. If that was a joke, mark me down for excessive literalism.)

Anyway, there is a soundtrack with sound effects and music. This was actually a "transition" film rather than a pure silent.

http://www.paul-n-paul.com/nu906.jpg

What about Ankles Preferred?

My favorite is Marriage License?--anyone care to venture what that question mark might be about?

Yikes.

If you never got this, Slocki, Sunrise is available for ~$20US in a Best Pictures boxset with How Green Is My Valley, All About Eve and A Gentleman's Agreement.

THEY WERE KIND OF LIKE SCENESTER BABES OF THE 20S NO

PS I SAW THIS ON FUCKING 16 MM BITCHES

what did you think todd? it's my favorite film of all time btw.

milo yes i know. and eureka in the uk released his "michael" on dvd this month-- which is an amazing film. (eureka also has released "sunrise" if you're desperate to obtain it without buying the other fox dvds.)

at the film center in chicago right now there is a retrospective of all of murnau's extant films (12 of them i believe). on through december. i missed "the grand duke's finances," which i'm not happy about.

jon: she wasn't a flapper with that weird matted hairdo (actually, wig). but yes janet gaynor is very hott. actually she kind of looks like the girl i went out with this weekend...

yeah google image search turns up some funny stuff

amateurist do you know Robyn?
http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=18062

I have not seen any Clara Bow or Louise Brooks movies!

"pandora's box" is good but the whole moral comeuppance stuff gets pretty heavy

so simplistic and heart breaking. beautiful. shows the versatility of the great john ford.

Tonight:

Laugh, Clown, Laugh

- Event Description -
The great Lon Chaney stars as an itinerant Italian circus clown who finds himself falling in love with Loretta Young, a girl he adopted at a young age who is now growing into adulthood. Unlike Chaney’s equally ingenious He Who Gets Slapped, this film bypasses the lurid possibilities of its plotline in favor of good old-fashioned silent melodrama. It is one of Chaney’s best (and most moving) vehicles.

- Event Details -
Dryden Theatre.
Live piano by Philip C. Carli.

- Film Specs: -
(Herbert Brenon, US 1928, 74 min.)

ihttp://jackperr.free.fr/louise_brooks1_f19.jpg

http://library.pittstate.edu/spcoll/img/lbrooks3.gif

the first image didn't embed. click on the link and be happy.

Philip Carli accompanied his first silent film at age 13, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). During college, he programmed and accompanied an annual summer silent series near his home. Since then, he has continued his studies of the film, music and culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a doctoral student in musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

Carli has toured extensively as a film accompanist throughout North America and Europe, performing at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal, the National Film Theatre in London, and the Berlin International Film Festival. He is the staff accompanist for the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, and performs annually at several film festivals in the United States as well as at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy.

this is him. i see him pretty much every week

I saw him play along to Keaton's "Seven Chances" and "One Week" last week.

http://www.imperios.com/cine/Oscar/Fotos/Actrices/Janet%20gaynor.jpg

http://www.ediscountwholesalers.com/tin_signs/personalities_betty_boop/PD_906_LG.jpg

Sunrise is a great movie!

Hey SDAYSA- is that at the eastman House? I really want to see some movies there!!!

clara bow

-- n/a (nu...) (webmail), November 9th, 2004 1:08 PM. (Nick A.) (link)

Ha!

http://www.born-today.com/Today/pix/young_loretta2.jpg

SO CUTE

http://i.cnn.net/v5cache/TCM/Images/Dynamic/i12/LaughClownLaugh2_FF_300x225_091020031708.gif

Youtube, haha:

1/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6t0DCtIOBA

2/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zbEoyG02Hw

3/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwUNbSZD-vs

4/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbheYmGX3k

5/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_BBf_bP16A

6/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeYqMzAjttc

7/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDFYOi0RzSM

8/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQoU_-IZNTQ

9/9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1PpFELH4O4

Even their crappy video compression cannot ruin this film. The bit where they get jealous of each other in the barber's shop is adorable.

Blu-ray out now

...with the Fox music-and-effects print, AND a Czech print that has different takes! (not rare in international versions)

man, Janet Gaynor's wig is a hoot in this. and George O'Brien, what a stud.

so read this

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/sunrise

Curious about the differing Czech edit. This movie is all-time...

It was pretty common for an international version to be made from a different negative. Also, the Czech print was 1.33:1, while the Fox Movietone version is 1:20 bcz the music-and-effects track had to go on the print, narrowing the image. So presumably Murnau framed most of it differently, knowing a silent version wouldn't use the same ratio.

(Fox Movietone had a true soundtrack on the reels, whereas Warner Vitaphone used separate synchronized sound discs.)

Vitaphone was on 78's no?

No, they were big magnetic sound discs I think!? Not conventional vinyl records.

Knew the difference once. The Story of Sound by Scott Eyman is a good source for reading about this stuff.

Arg,The Speed of Sound

I'm about 80% sure I saw this in a silent-film class 45 years ago. Only noticed today there was a rep screening in Waterloo, with (as is usual these days with silent films, I think) live accompanment.

Sacrilege, but just not for me. I sat there thinking "interesting shot, that's kind of nice, George O'Brien is so hammy, interesting shot," etc. I was hoping the cinematography would sweep me away and I'd love it this time, but I didn't. I guess I just haven't grown enough as a filmgoer since I was 19.

I never even heard of this film until a couple of years into film school, when I found a book in the library (probably from the early 70s) which polled a large number of critics, and this was very highly ranked (even maybe number 1?). I haven't encountered that kind of acclaim for it since. I'd assume that Nosferatu fits our modern sensibilities better, and I preferred the bitterness of The Last Laugh.

Nosferatu, definitely--I can watch that and get caught up in the creepiness. The Last Laugh, same thing--haven't seen it since university (a German film course for that one, which is what got me onto Wenders and Herzog; was already seeing Fassbinder films), so I don't know.

This was the first part of a series: will try to see Wings, primarily because I've never seen it.

I never even heard of this film until a couple of years into film school, when I found a book in the library (probably from the early 70s) which polled a large number of critics, and this was very highly ranked (even maybe number 1?). I haven't encountered that kind of acclaim for it since. I'd assume that Nosferatu fits our modern sensibilities better, and I preferred the bitterness of The Last Laugh.

Although I wouldn't rank Sunrise so high, I'll take it over Nosferatu.

My review from the film club thread

the tone was just wildly all over the place, the whole fairground sequence was so out of place, and then "I know I tried to drown you this morning but let's go sailing at night!" think I could easily write pages about how bad it was and how much I hated it, but in truth it was wonderful and I absolutely loved it.

You just have to shrug the bat shit plot flimflammery of silents, especially Murnau's.