The Woman From The City

The Woman From The City is the unnamed main antagonist of the 1927 silent film Sunrise. She's a vamp who uses her attractiveness and good looks to attract men to her.

She was voiced by Margaret Livingston.

Appearance
The woman is dark and bobbed-haired, wearing a low-cut slip and wrap. She wears slinky black dress with shiny high-heeled shoes and stockings.

Introduction
She's introduced as one of the many people vacationing for the summer. She was holidaying in the country from the metropolis. The vamp has rented a room in one of the country houses. In her simple rustic room, she dances in and lights her cigarette at a burning candle, and then changes into a slinky black dress with shiny high-heeled shoes and stockings. She forces the elderly peasant woman in her quarters to clean her shoes with a cloth.

She then walks down the village road to the outside of one of the farmhouses where she voyeuristically spies a lighted window. There, she signals with a soft, clandestine whistle and summons a fallen, married country Man. Undecisive and hesitant for a while, he finally gestures to her from the window that he will meet her, and without a word to his good-haired Wife, he leaves without touching his dinner that is being set on the table. It's been hinted that this has been a frequent occurrence, since his wife sank into a chair with a gloomy and embittered look.

The Woman's Plan
This scene cuts to The Man, walking in the darkness of midnight under a gigantic full moon reflecting on the water and shining through the haze, the man was feeling guilty at the time since he abandoned his wife earlier, but he still wanted to see meet city woman. He stealthily trudges from his home to secretly meet and conspire with his tempting mistress on the edge of the misty, moonlit marshes.

A dark figure is then revealed (The City Woman) waiting for him and silhouetted against the moon. She twirls a flower in her hand and then tosses it away. The city woman primps in a mirror held in her purse and applies make-up. After the man appears, his quickly falls for the woman's beauty and charm, and pulls her into his arms for a passionate, fervent kiss - she steals his sanity and soul as she literally pulls him down into the swamp.

While being kissed as they lie on the grass, the City Woman tempts the man to sell his farm and move to the City with her so she could have the man to herself. The man wanted to know what would happen to his wife if he did that, so the Woman suggested the Man should drown her. The man was horrified by this idea, but the woman wasn't finished, she also wanted the man to overturn the boat, so the murder would look like an accident. This enraged the man even more, he violently struggles with her emotionally and physically, by strangling her, shaking her, and pushing her away. But the City Woman eventually overpowers him with kisses and he succumbs. She once again tried to temp the man to come to the City with her. The woman gives a brief visual of what city life was life, and it convinces the man to go along with her in the plan. Kneeling, he wraps both of his arms around her legs - and snuggles his face into her crotch. She falls into his embrace with more erotic kisses.

The two of them walk to a clearing, and the City Woman gathers some bulrushes in her hand and outlines the plan again. She states the when the boat got overturned, he should save himself with the bulrushes, which would hold him up. When he reached the shore and would tell everyone else the drowning occurred by accident.

A Day On The Water
The next morning, the Wife and the Man were going out on a trip across the water. Things were going to plan so far, and the Man was in position to drown his wife, and save himself. But the man didn't have it in his heart to drown his wife and couldn't go along with the plan. He stopped himself at the last minute, and rowed back to shore. Unfortunately, The Wife got scared, and ran away from the man fearing he would try to kill her again.

It took some time for The Wife to realize that the Man wouldn't try to intentionally harm her. Eventually, they reached a wedding sequence and watched two brides who were about to get married, the man felt more guilty than ever, and begged for forgiveness. The Wife reembraces him, and they two of them were back together. The two of them then go on a series of romantic adventures.

Selling the Farm
Meanwhile, back in the country, the City Woman was plotting to take the farmer's money, Unaware that the man changed his mind about the plan, and that his wife was still alive. While enveloped with cigarette smoke, she circles a newspaper advertisement for the purchase of farm land.

The Wife is Dead...or is she?
After the couple's adventures together, the went home in a honeymoon-like trip in a sailboat. The woman fell asleep during the ride. Suddenly, a storm kicked in. Lightning struck, and thunder rolled. The man lowered the sail and tried to row back, until one of the oars broke. The wife woke up, and clung to the man for support. The man remembered the bulrushes that he had intended to use to save himself earlier, and tied them up to his wife's body to save her. The sail mast snaps, and the boat capsizes in the turbulent water of the violent storm.

The man is washed ashore to a rocky embankment, but his wife was seemingly lost in the storm. The storm settled down, and the man drags himself out of the water onto the rocks and calls for her, but there is no answer. Neighbors are called in to begin a search for The Man's wife.

The City Woman woke up from her sleeping and overheard the news. She watched the search party from a distance thinking that the man was going along with her plan to move to the city from earlier. She removes her thin negligee and dresses into heavier clothes to watch the rescue effort from a closer distance. A search party is assembled - they search in boats with lamplights for the missing woman. From a fork in a tree, the woman watches what she thinks is the convincing act of the Man distraught with grief (The man actually thought the woman was dead). The half-mad husband searches for his wife at the bow of the first boat with a lantern extended out in his hand. In a stationary frame, the wife is pictured floating unconscious in the water - she floats into and then out of the picture (from the top left to bottom right) on the bulrushes. Again, the French horns simulate the husband's desperate calls for his wife.

Some of the bulrushes are found scattered on the water, entangled with remnants of her scarf. She is presumed drowned when there is no sign of her. The dazed husband collapses in the boat, is comforted and then led back to his farmhouse by neighbors. When he looks down at his wife's empty bed and falls weeping to his knees, the room is streaked with somber shadows. The City Woman approaches him later that night and signals him with a whistle so they could run away to the city together, but this time the man didn't fall for her beauty. The man got mad at her for trying to make him forget about his wife, and got his revenge for making him kill her earlier. At first, she thought that his emotional reaction is part of the deception, but in a sudden fury, the husband rages at her in frustration, and The City woman quickly realized his emotions were real. He pursues her - attacking and strangling her over a fence in his despair. He was about to finish her but he then hears a happy outcry from his mother announcing that his wife has been found - unconscious but alive. He releases his strangling grip around the women's neck and rushes to his wife's bedside and they are joyously reunited. She opens her eyes and smiles at him with an angelic face.

The next morning, as the sun rises, the City Woman made a hasty exit, returning back to the metropolis in a horse-drawn carriage in defeat.