Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans Trivia Quiz

Answer: Summertime

The film is set in "Summertime, Vacationtime". A group of tourists comes to a small rural village, including a certain "Woman from the City" who sets the plot in motion.
"Sunrise" was the biggest film Fox Studios produced during the silent era. While it was widely praised for its technical mastery, the film failed at the box office. It came out only weeks before "The Jazz Singer" and it got lost in the excitement surrounding talking pictures. Since that time, it has been hailed as one of the great masterpieces of the silent era, and is regularly named on "greatest films" lists.

Answer: Janet Gaynor

Janet Gaynor would win the very first Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in "Sunrise" as well as "Seventh Heaven" and "Street Angel".
Her character in "Sunrise" is a long-suffering wife, whose husband cheats on her and puts their farm into threat of bankruptcy.
Gaynor (1906-1984) got her big break in "The Johnstown Flood" (1926). Within a year, she would be a major star for Fox Studios. She appeared in a variety of films from 1927 to 1938, including "The Farmer Takes a Wife" (1935), Henry Fonda's first film. Her last film was with Pat Boone, "Bernadine" (1957).
Margaret Livingston played "The Woman from the City". Jane Winton plays the Manicure Girl who flirts with The Man at the barbershop.
Bessie Love (1898-1986) was a prominent actress of the silent era. She was the type of ingenue who would have been a good fir for The Wife. Love continued working until she was 85; her last film was "The Hunger" (1985).

Answer: Drinks Alcohol

Drinking alcohol would definitely have been wicked in 1927, as Prohibition was still the law of the land. (Actually, it is never established what country the story takes place in, so drinking might have been legal.)
We don't see the Woman from the City drink, but she does smoke a great deal, she dresses in lingerie and skimpy dresses, and wears makeup.
Margaret Livingston was The Woman. She started her film career in 1916, and appeared in around 50 films during the silent era, and another 20 during the sound era. Livingston was married to Paul Whiteman, the big band leader. She retired from acting in 1934. Livingston died in Pennsylvania in December 1984.

Answer: Drown her

"Sunrise" has a great credit card reading "Couldn't she get ... drowned?" that includes watery effects. The Woman comes up with an elaborate plan for taking the wife out on the lake, sinking the boat, and the man saving himself with bulrushes.
At first he is resistant, but the wicked Woman sells him on the plan with a vision of life in the big city. The bulrushes show up several times as a symbol of the evil plan; never before has a pile of weeds been so sinister. At the end of the plotting scene, they are traipsing through the muck of the swamp - a wonderful metaphor for their moral decline.
The Man actually comes close to killing his wife - there is a great scene with George O'Brien looking at Janet Gaynor with homicidal rage. But in the end, he cannot go through with it. They row to the other shore, and The Wife runs away in fear.
The scenes on the lake were shot at Lake Arrowhead, California, in the San Bernardino mountains northwest of Los Angeles.

Answer: A wedding

The Man and The Wife reconcile in the city and attend a wedding. When the priest tells the groom he should love his bride, The Man realizes how much he loves his wife, and begs her forgiveness for all the horrible things he has done. George O'Brien is absolutely fantastic in the wedding scene, displaying a man in genuine pain and guilt.
There is a scene in a restaurant, where The Man buys his wife some cake. And there is a lengthy scene at the amusement park later in the film.
O'Brien was a successful boxer before he went into acting. He was mainly a stuntman before John Ford picked him to star in "The Iron Horse" (1924). O'Brien did make the transition to sound pictures, starring mostly in western films.

Answer: Winged Victory

It is the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a marble sculpture of the goddess Nike. The Wife knocks the statue over, and when they pick it up, they notice it has no head. The couple desperately search for the head, eventually putting a tennis ball in its place. The joke, of course, is that the Winged Victory is headless.
The Winged Victory was carved in the 2nd century BC. The sculptor is unknown. Since 1884, it has been one of the crown jewels of the Louvre in Paris.
The Venus de Milo is also marble, also Greek and at the Louvre, but has a head.
The second half of "Sunrise" is largely played for comedy, with many jokes at the barber, the photographer and the amusement park.

Answer: Pig

A pig escapes and a great deal of mayhem and hilarity ensues. In one of the strangest shots in silent film (not just this film, all films) there is a point-of-view shot of a wine bottle showing the pig drinking the wine. The Man captures the escaped pig and is hailed as a hero.
The pig sequence is part of the "Luna Park" section of the film, which features the couple at an amusement park, including fireworks.

Answer: False

That would be a major downer of an ending, wouldn't it? And it would have been a bit too real even for a German realist.
In the actual ending, The Wife is rescued by a local fisherman. The Maid stops The Man as he is in the process of strangling The Woman, telling him his wife is alive. The Woman from the City is sent packing, and The Man and The Wife are reunited and kiss happily. Finis.

Answer: Charles Rosher and Karl Struss

Rosher and Struss won the very first Academy Award for Cinematography for their work on "Sunrise". The Academy cited their "skillful use of superimposition, effective employment of imagery and symbolism, and [the film's] poeticism".
And the film is remarkable visually - it contains a huge number of effects that would be impressive today, much less in 1927. Rosher and Struss created camera techniques that would be important in future films, including "Citizen Kane" (1941).
The scene of The Woman from the City walking through the town is a remarkable tracking shot. The film also relies heavily on superimposition and forced perspective shots. It is highly creative in its use of light, especially the night scenes.
Reisenfeld and Rapee did the music for the film. Mayer wrote the screenplay based on a short story written by Sudermann. Hilliker and Caldwell were responsible for the creative title cards used in "Sunrise".

Answer: F.W. Murnau

Murnau came to Hollywood in 1926, where he was signed by Fox Studios and made "Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans". He only made four films in Hollywood. His last was "Tabu" (1931), a story about south seas islanders. Tragically, Murnau died in a car accident in March 1931; he was only 42. Murnau is buried in Stahnsdorf, near Berlin.
Murnau is probably most famous for his 1922 film "Nosferatu", an adaption of Bram Stoker's "Dracula". It was ranked 21st in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.
Fritz Lang did not come to the United States until 1936. He is best known for the science fiction masterpiece "Metropolis" (1927) and the crime drama "M" (1931).
Von Sternberg was not strictly speaking a German expressionist, as he moved to the US when he was 14. His first film was "The Salvation Hunters" (1925).
Leni (1885-1929) emigrated to Hollywood in 1927. His first American film was "The Cat and the Canary" (1927).