The film's plot follows a married farmer (O'Brien) who falls for a woman vacationing from the city (Livingston), who tries to convince him to murder his wife (Gaynor) in order to be with her.

While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Movietone sound-on-film process.

[3][4] Murnau chose to use the then new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, making Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects soundtrack.

The film incorporated Charles Gounod's 1872 composition Funeral March of a Marionette, which inspired its use as the theme for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–1965).

In 2016, the Dallas Chamber Symphony commissioned an original film score for Sunrise from composer Joe Kraemer.

The Man is torn, but finally departs, leaving his wife with the memories of better times when they were deeply in love.

When she suggests that he solve the problem of his wife by drowning her, he throttles her violently, but even that dissolves in a passionate embrace.

Emerging back on the street, they are touched to see a bride enter a church for her processional, and follow her inside to watch the wedding.

He gathers the townspeople to search the lake, but all they find is a broken bundle of reeds floating in the water.

The Man and the Wife kiss, while the Woman from the city's carriage rolls down the hill toward the lake, and the film dissolves to the sunrise.

Full of cinematic innovations, the groundbreaking cinematography (by Charles Rosher and Karl Struss) features particularly praised tracking shots.

Titles appear sparingly, with long sequences of pure action and the bulk of the story told in Murnau's signature style.

The site's consensus reads, "Boasting masterful cinematography to match its well-acted, wonderfully romantic storyline, Sunrise is perhaps the final—and arguably definitive—statement of the silent era.

[3] A reviewer for Time, however, called its story "meagre" while writing that the film overall "manages to remain picturesquely soporific for a long evening".

Academy Award wins (1929)[20] Academy Award nominations (1929) Other distinctions 20th Century Fox originally released Sunrise on DVD in Region 1, but only as a special limited edition available only by mailing in proofs-of-purchase for other DVD titles in their "20th Century Fox Studio Classics" line, or as part of the box set Studio Classics: The 'Best Picture' Collection.