Then, after a dinner break, F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, accompanied by Dennis James at the Wurlitzer organ, preceded by Alice Guy's Falling Leaves at 6:30. And finally at 9:30, early Universal Horror film the Cat and the Canary with Dennis James behind the organ and local foley artist Mark Goldstein providing live sound effects, preceded by a fourth Guy short the Pit and the Pendulum (the first known film version of Poe's classic tale). Each attendee of the festival gets a program guide that includes five substantial essays on the selected films (one covering each of the features, and a fifth on Alice Guy.) I wrote the essay on Sunrise that appears in the program, and I also prepared a slide show on the origin of the Academy Awards and the first awardees, a group that included Janet Gaynor (Best Actress) and Charles Rosher & Karl Struss (Best Cinematography) of Sunrise. The film also won the Academy's first and only "Unique and Artistic Picture" award- for more detail on that particular award, you can read my contribution to the 1927 Blog-a-Thon.
Not everything I researched and wrote about Sunrise made it into the final version of the essay. In fact, a lot had to be left out for space reasons. I began my research focusing on the director Murnau, a fascinating figure who is making his first appearance at the SFSFF with this program (not literally, of course- he died just as the silent era was coming to a close.) Some of the first and best sources I consulted were Lotte Eisner's still-unsurpassed biography and the articles and DVD extras of UCLA scholar Janet Bergstrom.
But as I delved deeper into the project, I found myself becoming particularly fascinated by the studio mogul who made the uniqueness of Sunrise possible, William Fox. Upton Sinclair's biography of the man became a fascinating starting point for a totally new direction of research that culminated in a viewing of the new Murnau, Borzage and Fox documentary upon its DVD release, that played as confirmation and review of information and perspectives I had already become familiar with (at least when it came to the Murnau and Fox material.) I felt like I really began to understand how Fox's nickelodeon operation in Brooklyn transformed into a successful if generally unambitious movie factory in the late teens and early twenties, and then into one of the most, if not the most prestigious and powerful motion picture studio by the late 1920s. And what a spectacular fall from grace for Fox himself! Hopefully some of that comes across in the essay.Anyway, I better get my rest for the big day now. If you go to the festival (or if you watch Sunrise or another festival selection at home) and have a free moment to leave a comment here, please do so!
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