CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--Sunday night, January 26, 2020, was one of those Only In LA things that are hard to describe but worth mentioning for the historical record. In this case, it was a significant work of art that had never been experienced before.
Strangely enough, our story begins close to a century ago – 1927 to be precise. The German director F.W. Murnau had come to Hollywood and was given a chance to make a movie for Fox. He was already famous for making the 1922 vampire movie Nosferatu. At Fox, he made a film which is the subject of this essay: Sunrise, A Song of Two Humans (usually referred to simply as Sunrise). If you read about Murnau in any of the usual places, you will find Sunrise referred to as one of the greatest films ever made.
Sunrise was a silent film that was released at a moment in film history that was just a few weeks prior to the advent of sound films. Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer is lightweight compared to Murnau’s masterpiece, but was the new revolution in the artform. That’s probably why everyone has heard of Jolson and The Jazz Singer, while few in the current generation know of Sunrise.
So here’s the important point: Silent films were not really silent. They were made to be accompanied by some form of music – the accompaniment could be anything from a kid playing on a slightly out of tune piano to a tune-fest built up by a professional organist or, in big city movie palaces, it would be an entire orchestra. In practice, therefore, the silent film experience could differ strongly depending on where it was shown and who the musical performers were. It’s curious to contemplate that all over the country, different versions of the same film were being performed, because the music could be very different from one theater to another.
The marriage of the projected image with the musical accompaniment together resulted in the creation of – sometimes – a work of art that vastly transcended the merits of either the image or the sound alone. I’ve experienced silent films accompanied by fairly flat sound textures, and I’ve experienced glorious combinations of compelling actors moving onscreen to the accompaniment of masterful musicians. In the latter case, the emotional effect is analogous to the experience of grand opera or, in some cases, like the effects that modern sound-film can achieve when accompanied by a grand-ole musical track like we heard in the original Star Wars film.
Sunrise was originally released with a newly introduced technology that added music and sound effects, but did not include speech. Critics have not been kind to the original sound track. Over the years, this film has been performed by organists and pianists who developed their own musical scores.
So what would happen if you combined the film Sunrise with an original score developed for one of the world’s great choral groups that includes its own orchestra?
We found out Sunday evening.
The Los Angeles Master Chorale performed a score written by Hollywood film composer Jeff Beal, combining the Beal score with words written for the singers and also collected (from, among other sources, Greek mythology) by Joan Beal. These two spouses together developed a choral piece that was stunning in its beauty and intensity. When combined with the film, the result was overwhelming for a large audience at Disney Hall.
What is Sunrise about? A man and a woman (left nameless by the filmmaker) live on a farm alongside a body of water. As the film opens, we discover that the husband has been carrying on with a woman from the big city. The wife – played by the pixie-ish Janet Gaynor, is understandably distraught. Meanwhile, the city woman concocts a scheme in which she suggests that the husband drown his wife – the film offers us an imagined flash-forward in which the husband would throw his wife overboard from his small boat and blame it all on an accident.
The husband (George O’Brien) actually makes an attempt to go through with the plot, and when he gets out on the water with his wife, he approaches her – the shot of him hulking over her with his hands outstretched in menace is one I still remembered even now, after first seeing this film 18 years ago. But at the moment of crisis, he can’t bring himself to do it. The wife is justly terrified, but she is stuck in a small boat with her big, strong husband. What can she do? They proceed into the city, him consumed with guilt and remorse, and her in fear of what he may do.
What follows in the film is one of the most remarkable character evolutions we are privileged to see on the stage or on the screen. They gradually, through a series of experiences, remember and relive their earlier love for each other, becoming more boyish and girlish as the minutes go by. My sentences can’t explain what Murnau and his actors manage to accomplish, but that’s why we fall back on words like art. This section of the film is masterful and touching and truly a work of art that was not possible before the development of the motion picture. By the time they have had a lot of big city fun and are heading home full of love and not a little wine, they have become two entirely different people.
One of the characteristics of Sunrise is that it is not predictable. Just when they are madly in love and romantically making their way back home on their little boat, a massive storm breaks out, the boat sinks, and the audience is left to worry and self-identify with the characters as the final minutes of the film expire.
Lots of composers have written storm music. I suspect that it would be hard to write a piano score that works to the full effect that is possible with an orchestra. Suffice it to say that Beal’s storm music, making use of the Chorale and a well conducted orchestra, was chilling (pun intended) and frightening at once. And – tragic irony was never concocted more effectively – the husband drags himself ashore with the realization that his wife, the one he now loves madly and hopelessly, has probably drowned.
As the sun rises over the water, one weary fisherman, sticking with the search for the wife, finds her and brings her home alive. At sunrise, the orchestral sound and audience emotions rise to a proper not-quite-Hollywood ending.
When I referred at the beginning as this being an only in L.A. experience, I was actually borrowing the words of the composer, who spoke to the audience prior to the presentation. I’m not entirely sure what Beal meant, but to me it refers to the fact that this is a film that was conceived of and made right here some 93 years ago, a chorale group that is justly world-famous, and a composer-librettist couple who were willing and able to carry this project to fruition. It wasn’t going to happen in Des Moines, at least not at the level of musical quality that was shown on Sunday.
We ought to celebrate the conductor Grant Gershon, who once again delivered a clean and clear performance that brought forth powerful emotion when it was time.
And that is what film music is about, after all.
This commentary would not be complete without tribute to the three soloists, including tenor Michael Lichtenauer (filling in for the absent Dermot Kiernan), and sopranos Holly Sedillos and Suzanne Waters.
As to the film, Janet Gaynor is justly lauded for her performance. She was actually the first actress to win an academy award at the inaugural awards ceremony at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood in 1929. The movie also won an award for being the best in a category called Unique and Artistic Production (essentially serious art films) that has never been given again. It also won for cinematography, a well deserved win. Although George O’Brien is not credited for the husband at the same level as Janet Gaynor for the wife, he should also be remembered. O’Brien was recognized by John Ford and starred in Ford’s epic western The Iron Horse. Lastly, we should remember the writers Carl Mayer and Hermann Sudermann.
Epilog
Sunrise is also a part of my life story. On January 17, 1997, I was in attendance at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax boulevard. A friend and fellow silent film aficionado had mentioned that he and several friends were coming to the theater to see Murnau’s Sunrise that Friday evening, and we should join them. I never got to see the film that night, because during the short features, the theater owner Laurence Austin was murdered by gunfire at the front of the theater, directly behind us. For the next four years, Sunrise was just a word linked to that horrible event. Along about 2000 or 2001, the new owner decided to redo the original performance, interrupted so long before. I remember that performance of Sunrise as being up to the usual high standards of the theater, but my mind was elsewhere.
It took Sunday’s performance to remind me what is actually in the film, and how silent film accompanied by wonderfully talented musicians performing a powerful score can, together with the long-gone hand of Murnau’s direction, George O’Brien’s performance as the husband, and Janet Gaynor’s academy award winning performance as the wife, can bring true art to fruition.
Hoping for future success
There are not a lot of new scores composed for silent film classics nowadays. I’m hoping that this score will be performed elsewhere, particularly in the major film festivals in Europe, and that the film will be reproduced with this musical accompaniment on high fidelity medium so that readers of CityWatch can have the same experience.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
