SUNRISE (1927) Janet Gaynor Meets F. W. Murnau

SUNRISE: A Song of Two Humans, also known as SUNRISE, is a 1927 American silent film directed by German film director F. W. Murnau. The story was adapted by Carl Mayer from the short story "Die Reise nach Tilsit" ("A Trip to Tilsit") by Hermann Sudermann.

SUNRISE won an Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production at the first ever Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. In 1937, SUNRISE's original negative was destroyed in a nitrate fire. A new negative was created from a surviving print. In 1989, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. In a 2002 critics' poll for the British Film Institute, SUNRISE was named the seventh-best film in the history of motion pictures, tied with Battleship Potemkin.

In 2007, the film was chosen #82 on the 10th anniversary update of the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Movies list of great films. SUNRISE is one of the first with a soundtrack of music and sound effects recorded in the then-new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system. Much of the exterior shooting was done at Lake Arrowhead, California.