# Reshuffling of lifetime topten movielist: Murnau's "Sunrise" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 16, 2003, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361 "2003-12-16T18:21:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CyberPundit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/76d3ee/32.png) [@CyberPundit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CyberPundit)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/21 "2003-12-17T18:04:36Z")
Interesting comment about “gearshift movies” though I am not sure I like them myself. An obvious example is Barton Fink and I would have much preferred that it had continued as a satire. Being John Malkovich is perhaps another example though I don’t remember if there was a single scene where the change occur. It starts off as a comedy and by the end it has become a weird melodrama. BTW Passion of Joan of Arc is available on DVD and you can rent it on [www.greencine.com](http://www.greencine.com) . Greencine has a pretty good collection of classic films in general; maybe better than Netflix. It has a nice selection of anime as well. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/22 "2003-12-17T18:55:25Z")
Interrobang, thanks for jogging my memory: _Written on the Wind_ belongs somewhere in my list too, although sometimes I waffle between that and _All that Heaven Allows._ And Eve, thank you SO much for that link! I had no idea George had done nude work! I hereby change my position on the possibility of time travel. Somebody, PLEASE! Make me a time machine! (I had a roommate in highschool who was the blond spit of young George. Oh, the memories.) ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/23 "2003-12-17T19:02:51Z")
> [@](#): > > _Written on the Wind_ belongs somewhere in my list too, although sometimes I waffle between that and _All that Heaven Allows._ I’ve seen WotW three or four times, and wasn’t as impressed with AtHA. (I was still plenty impressed, mind you.) The Sirk that challenges WotW for me is _Imitation of Life_, which I’ve only seen once but left me thunderstruck in my seat when it was over. Additional Sirk hijack: James Harvey, in _Movie Love in the 50s_, has some great chapters on Sirk, and one on IoL in particular. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/24 "2003-12-17T20:36:12Z")
IoL was my first Sirk, but it thins, for me, on repeated viewings. AtHA deepens. WotW is, I think, his most satirical and funniest, and subversively complex, but AtHA is ultimately very serious. For some reason it holds more weight for me. But faced with a desert island, I’d probly go with WotW, by a hair. It forms part of a kind of triptych for me, with The Birds and Showgirls; a trilogy of dark hysteria; extremes all around. Those three films meet somewhere in a kind of surreal exaggeration of the terrible and mysterious powers of female sexuality. Add to that the fact that Diamanda Galas is one of my favorite artists and I’d say I have some issues, n’est-ce pas? Hmm. Free associating here, I Walked with a Zombie, Sunrise, Johnny Guitar, Scarlet Empress, Oleanna, Europa 51, Sylvia Scarlet, all kind of touch on those themes, don’t they? Maybe I should look into funding for longterm therapy . . . ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/25 "2003-12-17T20:51:36Z")
Godammit, will you people stop with the initials? What the hell is AtHA? Anyone ever see the 1934 _Imitation of Life_? Completely different, 180 degrees, from the Lana Turner version. Follows the book. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/26 "2003-12-17T20:56:11Z")
All That Heaven Allows. You call yourself a film critic? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/27 "2003-12-17T20:58:47Z")
Yes, Eve, I have the Colbert on video. Very different: they’re business partners, not employer and maid. All that Heaven Allows, a Sirk weeper with Rock (throb) Hudson and Jane Wyman; a substantial source for Haynes’s _Far from Heaven._ ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/28 "2003-12-17T21:17:07Z")
Eve, did you know Gaynor? ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/29 "2003-12-17T21:20:57Z")
> [@](#): > > WotW is, I think, his most satirical and funniest, and subversively complex, but AtHA is ultimately very serious. _Wind_ (new shorthand for **Eve** ) is satirical and funny, true – gotta love the mechanical horse – but it also reaches real emotional depths by the time it’s through. But the reason I _love_ it is the almost casual way it completely reverses your sympathies over the course of the movie. You start out wanting Rock Hudson and Lauren Bacall to get together, but you end up filled with pity for poor Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack – the ones you start out disliking. As for _Heaven_, I can’t remember where I read it, but I love Sirk’s comment about the title: studio heads loved it, thinking that “all that heaven allows” is grand and sweeping, but Sirk’s take is that heaven doesn’t allow too damn much at all. ---
**Author:** ![Eve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/30 "2003-12-17T21:25:39Z")
I started another [thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=229917) for overstuffed 1950s/60s melodramas, as this one was getting a bit lopsided . . . No, never knew Janet Gaynor . . . My silent-star friendships and acquaintances have been Lillian Gish, Blanche Sweet, Anita Page, Esther Ralston and Lina Basquette. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2003, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/31 "2003-12-17T21:36:55Z")
!?, that’s hilarious: the mechanical horse is my single favorite moment in Wind. That was my first glimpse into the sublayers: it was hollow shallow camp for me the first time I saw it, but the second time, that horse just totally threw me for a loop-de-loop, and I had to watch it all over again from an entirely different perspective. The same thing happened to me with Showgirls: shallow hollow camp, then WHAM! the knife blades suddenly showed through the flesh and sparkle, and it was an utterly new experience the second time through. And yes, the third or fourth time through Wind I realized that Sirk’s sympathies lay with the “bad guys” rather than the “good guys,” and again, wham, new movie experience. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/32 "2004-01-02T03:06:03Z")
So, the “badness” in _An Affair To Remember_ is intentional? ---
**Author:** ![Gadfly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gadfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadfly)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2004, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/33 "2004-01-02T04:03:38Z")
I’m sorry - I just can’t take F.W. Murnau films seriously since I saw Shadow Of The Vampire. I keep trying to guess which actor is secretly a vampire. SOTV is a great film, by the way. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2004, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/34 "2004-01-03T00:04:36Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gadfly \* > \*\*I’m sorry - I just can’t take F.W. Murnau films seriously since I saw Shadow Of The Vampire. I keep trying to guess which actor is secretly a vampire. SOTV is a great film, by the way. \*\* Are you serious? ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2004, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/35 "2004-01-03T21:14:24Z")
Okay, in no particular order (Though the bottom ones are nearer the bottom): [ul] [li][Breakfast At Tiffany’s](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054698/)[/li][li][The Phantom Of The Opera](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016220/)[/li][li][Nosferatu, eine Symphonie Des Grauens](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013442/)[/li][li][Notorious](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038787/)[/li][li][Blackmail](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019702/)[/li][li][The Birds](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/)[/li][li][The Night Of The Hunter](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048424/)[/li][li][Ladri Di Biciclette](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040522/)[/li][li][Number 17](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023285/)[/li][li][Noz W Wodzie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056291/)[/li][li][Det Sjunde Inseglet](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050976/combined)[/li][li][City Lights](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0021749/)[/li][li][Force Of Evil](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0040366/)[/li][li][The Lady From Shanghai](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0040525/)[/li][li][Vertigo](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/)[/li][li][Sullivan’s Travels](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0034240/combined)[/li][/ul] I’ll probably be adding Sunrise and The Passion of Joan of Arc when they get here. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2004, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/36 "2004-01-03T21:27:27Z")
Aaah, I forgot [After The Thin Man](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0027260/combined). ---
**Author:** ![ECJones29](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@ECJones29](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ECJones29)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/37 "2004-01-04T16:29:23Z")
_Sherlock Jr._—Buster Keaton (1924) _The Wind_—Victor Seastrom (1928) _I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang_—Mervyn LeRoy (1932) _Nothing Sacred_—William Wellman (1937) _The Lady Eve_—Preston Sturges (1941) _Detour_—Edgar G. Ulmer (1945) _The Best Years Of Our Lives_—William Wyler (1946) _Sunset Boulevard_—Billy Wilder (1950) _Johnny Guitar_—Nicholas Ray (1954) _Diabolique_—Henri-Georges Clouzot (1955) _Baby Doll_—Elia Kazan (1956) _Lolita_—Stanley Kubrick (1962) _In Cold Blood_—Richard Brooks (1967) _Point Blank_—John Boorman (1967) _The King of Marvin Gardens_—Bob Rafelson (1972) _The Conversation_—Francis Ford Coppola (1974) _Chinatown_—Roman Polanski (1974) _The Year of Living Dangerously_—Peter Weir (1983) _Prizzi’s Honor_—John Huston (1985) ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2004, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/38 "2004-01-04T16:50:58Z")
\*\*lissener[/B[, I’d like to reiterate: > [@](#): > > So, the “badness” in An Affair To Remember is intentional? ---
**Author:** ![Gadfly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gadfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadfly)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2004, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/39 "2004-01-04T16:59:37Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by Ilsa\_Lund \* > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Gadfly_ > **I’m sorry - I just can’t take F.W. Murnau films seriously since I saw Shadow Of The Vampire. I keep trying to guess which actor is secretly a vampire. SOTV is a great film, by the way.** > \*\*Are you serious? \*\* Almost. I can take them seriously, but I keep guessing which actor’s the vampire throughout the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Gadfly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gadfly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadfly)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2004, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reshuffling-of-lifetime-topten-movielist-murnaus-sunrise/219361/40 "2004-01-04T17:02:42Z")
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