'Opening session of the new film and talks programme Um Filme Falado: Oliveira e a História do Cinema (A Talking Picture: Oliveira and the History of the Cinema), conceived and moderated by Anabela Mota Ribeiro. This programme, dedicated to the relationship between various significant moments and trends in the history of cinema and the work of Manoel de Oliveira, kicks off with the theme Silent Film, with a screening of the F.W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). After the screening, there will be a conversation with writer José Gardeazabal and theater director Nuno M. Cardoso, moderated by Anabela Mota Ribeiro.

SILENT FILM

SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS

F.W. Murnau | USA | 1927 | 95'

Made during the Golden Age of silent film, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is one of the most celebrated films by German director F.W. Murnau. Recognized for his expressionist cinema in the Weimar Republic, Murnau was able to make use of the entire technological and production arsenal of the Fox studios - courtesy of a carte blanche granted to him by its founder William Fox. The effabulatory and simple plot concerns the life of a humble couple who suffer a serious threat when the man is seduced by a woman from a higher social class. Despite the melodramatic nature of its narrative, Sunrise's mise-en-scène combines expressionist technical spectacularity with a more subtle, naturalistic sensibility. At the first Academy Awards in 1929, Sunrise won the Oscar for Best Picture (with the designation “Best Production of Artistic Quality”), as well as Best Actress for Janet Gaynor, and Best Cinematography. Sunrise was also a landmark film for Manoel de Oliveira, who saw it repeatedly when it premiered in Porto, and even surveyed its film blocking, an exercise that would allow him to understand in depth the structure of this timeless film, “a film with no age, time nor place” (Manoel de Oliveira in an interview with Jacques Parsi and Antoine de Baecque, Conversas com Manoel de Oliveira, p. 138).