Multiple Soundtrack Versions on DVD: Scoring Modern City Life and Pastoral Countryside

Abstract

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, F. W. Murnau) begins with a train leaving the station followed by a series of juxtaposed shots of more rapidly moving trains, a passenger ship leaving the harbour, and a day at the beach before the sequence ends with an overall shot of a peaceful village. The citizens of the city are leaving town for their summer holidays, and the passing images contrast the hectic modern city life with the calmness and stillness of the countryside. This is further highlighted on the two different soundtracks that can be found on the DVD version of the film released by EUREKA! in their Masters of Cinema series in 2005. The DVD comes with the original Movietone soundtrack produced in 1927 and with a new score written by Timothy Brock and performed by the Olympic Chamber Orchestra. Both soundtracks convey the feeling that the city people are overtaking the peaceful countryside defined by its calmness, but they approach the above sequence slightly differently and thus give two alternative beginnings and two alternative suggestions of how to read the film emotionally. The original score also utilizes sound effects in a rudimentary manner characteristic of early sound film in order to augment the impact of certain aspects of the visual images. In comparison, the new soundtrack uses only music to comment on specific features in the image.