1995 film by Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise
is a 1995
romantic drama
film directed by
Richard Linklater
and co-written by Linklater and
Kim Krizan
. The first installment in the
Before
trilogy
, it follows Jesse (
Ethan Hawke
) and Celine (
Julie Delpy
) as they meet on a
Eurail
train and disembark in Vienna to spend the night together.
Inspired by personal experiences, Linklater collaborated with Krizan, who previously appeared in his films
Slacker
(1991) and
Dazed and Confused
(1993), to develop the screenplay. Casting was extensive; it took nine months for Hawke and Delpy to be cast with principal photography taking place entirely in Vienna.
The plot is considered minimalistic, consisting mostly of monologues and casual conversation with extended dialogue as the characters navigate Vienna. Their contrasting ideas and perspectives on life and love are detailed, with Jesse a romantic disguised as a cynic, and Celine seemingly a romantic.
Before Sunrise
also explores time, death, and self-discovery.
Before Sunrise
premiered at the
Sundance Film Festival
on January 19, 1995, and was theatrically released eight days later. It grossed $22.5 million against a $2.5 million budget and received critical acclaim, particularly for its exploration of
postmodern
romance, the screenplay, Linklater's direction, and acting performances.
Before Sunrise
also received a
rating of 100%
on
Rotten Tomatoes
, and appeared on many critics' lists of the greatest films of the year. The sequel
Before Sunset
was released in 2004, and
Before Midnight
, the third film, was released in 2013.
Plot
[
edit
]
On June 16, 1994, Jesse meets Celine on a train from Budapest, and they strike up a conversation. Jesse is going to Vienna to catch a flight back to the United States, whereas Celine is returning to university in Paris after visiting her grandmother. When they reach Vienna, Jesse asks Celine to disembark with him, saying that 10 or 20 years down the road, she might not be happy with her significant other and might wonder how her life would have been different if she had picked someone else. Alternatively, she may just realize Jesse himself is not that different from the rest. Lacking the money to rent a room for the night, they decide to roam around in Vienna until Jesse's flight the next morning.
After visiting a few landmarks in Vienna, they share a kiss at the top of the
Wiener Riesenrad
at sunset and start to feel a romantic connection. As they continue to roam around the city, they begin to talk more openly with each other, with conversations ranging from topics about love, life, religion, and their observations of Vienna.
When they are walking alongside the
Donaukanal
, they are approached by a man who offers to write them a poem with a word of their choice inside. Jesse and Celine decide on the word "milkshake” and are soon presented with the poem "Delusion Angel" (written for the film by poet
David Jewell
)?a poem that Jesse cynically claims the man had already previously written and just inserts the words people choose.
Later, while playing pinball at a local club, Celine tells Jesse that her last boyfriend broke up with her six months ago, claiming that she "loved him too much.” When questioned, Jesse reveals he had initially come to Europe to spend time with his girlfriend who was studying in Madrid, but they broke up soon after he was there. He found a cheap flight home, via Vienna, but it did not leave for two weeks so he bought a
Eurail
pass and traveled around Europe. In a
Viennese cafe
, Jesse and Celine stage fake phone conversations with each other, playing each other's friends they pretend to call. Celine reveals that she was ready to get off the train with Jesse before he convinced her. Jesse reveals that after he broke up with his girlfriend, he bought a flight that really was not much cheaper, and all he really wanted was an escape from his life.
They admit their attraction to each other and how the night has made them feel, though they understand that they probably will not see each other again. They decide to make the best of what time they have left. They then get a bottle of wine and share it together in a park and begin discussing whether or not they should have sex. Celine says that she doesn't just want to be a one-night stand for Jesse, and then Jesse explains that, if given the choice, he would marry her instead of never seeing her again. They begin kissing passionately and embracing each other, then it is heavily implied Jesse and Celine have sex in the park. The film ends the next day at the
train station
, where, just as Celine's train is about to leave, the couple decide not to exchange any contact information but instead meet at the same place in six months.
Cast
[
edit
]
Production
[
edit
]
Before Sunrise
was inspired by a woman named Amy Lehrhaupt,
[6]
whom writer/director
Richard Linklater
met in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989.
[7]
[8]
They walked around the city together, conversing deep into the night. In 2013, Linklater revealed that Lehrhaupt had died in a motorcycle accident before the release of
Before Sunrise.
[9]
Originally, in the screenplay, who the two people were and the city they spend time in was vague. Linklater realized that because the film is so much a dialogue between a man and a woman, it was important to have a strong female co-writer. He chose
Kim Krizan
, who had small roles in his two previous films
Slacker
and
Dazed and Confused
.
[7]
According to Linklater, he "loved the way her mind worked ? a constant stream of confident and intelligent ideas".
[10]
Linklater and Krizan talked about the concept of the film and the characters for a long time.
[10]
He wanted to explore the "relationship side of life and discover two people who had complete anonymity and try to find out who they really were".
[11]
He decided to put Jesse and Celine in a foreign country because "when you're traveling, you're much more open to experiences outside your usual realm".
[11]
He and Krizan worked on an outline. They wrote the actual screenplay in 11 days.
[10]
Linklater spent nine months casting the film because he had trouble finding the right actors for the roles of Jesse and Celine.
[12]
When Linklater first considered casting Hawke, he thought that the actor was too young for the part.
[13]
Linklater saw Hawke at a play in New York City and reconsidered after talking to the actor. For Celine, Linklater met Julie Delpy and liked her personality. After they did a final reading, Linklater knew that Delpy and Hawke were right for the roles.
[13]
Once Delpy and Hawke agreed to do the film, they went to Austin and talked with Linklater and Krizan for a few days.
[10]
Authorship
[
edit
]
In 2016, Delpy told
Creative Screenwriting,
"Ethan and I basically re-wrote all of it. There was an original screenplay, but it wasn't very romantic, believe it or not. It was just a lot of talking, rather than romance. Richard hired us because he knew we were writing and he wanted us to bring that romance to the film. We brought those romantic ideas and that's how I wrote something that actually got made, without really getting credit for it. But, if I had written
Before Sunrise
and been credited, then I doubt it would have been financed".
[14]
In 2019, credited screenwriter Kim Krizan disputed Delpy's claim that the actors re-wrote the entire script.
[15]
Linklater and Krizan are credited for writing
Before Sunrise
, while Delpy and Hawke are credited for co-writing the sequels and Krizan credited with story credit for
Before Sunset
and characters created by credit on
Before Midnight
.
[
citation needed
]
Themes
[
edit
]
Before Sunrise
revolves largely around the twin themes of self-fulfillment and self-discovery through a significant other, charging the concept through the introduction of a twelve-hour time constraint in which the goals implicit to the two themes have to be realized. They are underlined by the poem "
Delusion Angel
", which evokes a longing for complete and unifying, possibly even redeeming, understanding between two partners in a world which is itself unknowable, and over which one can exercise no control.
An important role is played by the theme of spontaneous and uninhibited response to one's environment. It is reflected by the actions of Jesse and Celine, whose joint
stream of consciousness
, initiated by a previously unmeditated decision to leave the train together, allows them to temporarily detach themselves from the world, and enter a realm where only the other's company is of importance. Come morning, Jesse remarks that he and Celine have again entered "real time".
[16]
It could be argued that
Before Sunrise
subsumes its main themes under that of life. In one scene, Celine and Jesse visit the Friedhof der Namenlosen, the Cemetery of the Nameless in
Simmering
. The people buried in the cemetery have found anonymity in death; by learning to know and understand one another, Celine and Jesse experience and embrace life, suspending their own mortality.
[17]
The film leaves audience members to decide for themselves whether Jesse and Celine will meet again in six months. Critic
Robin Wood
has written that, after he published an essay on the film (in a 1996 issue of
CineAction
), Linklater wrote him to say that "neither he nor the two actors ever doubted that the date would be kept."
[18]
The film takes place on June 16,
Bloomsday
.
[19]
Release
[
edit
]
Before Sunrise
had its world premiere at the 1995
Sundance Film Festival
.
[7]
It was released in the United States on January 27, 1995.
Critical reception
[
edit
]
The film was entered into the
45th Berlin International Film Festival
where Linklater won the
Silver Bear for Best Director
.
[20]
MTV Movie & TV Award nominated Hawke and Delpy for the Best Kiss award.
[21]
Rotten Tomatoes reported that
100% of critics have given the film a positive review
, based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The site's critics consensus reads "Thought-provoking and beautifully filmed,
Before Sunrise
is an intelligent, unabashedly romantic look at modern love, led by marvelously natural performances from Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy."
[22]
On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
[23]
Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
[24]
Film critic Roger Ebert gave
Before Sunrise
three out of four and described Delpy as "ravishingly beautiful and, more important, warm and matter-of-fact, speaking English so well the screenplay has to explain it (she spent some time in the States)".
[25]
In her review for
The New York Times
, Janet Maslin wrote "
Before Sunrise
is as uneven as any marathon conversation might be, combining colorful, disarming insights with periodic lulls. The film maker clearly wants things this way, with both these young characters trying on ideas and attitudes as if they were new clothes".
[26]
Hal Hinson, in his review for
The Washington Post
wrote "
Before Sunrise
is not a big movie, or one with big ideas, but it is a cut above the banal twentysomething love stories you usually see at the movies. This one, at least, treats young people as real people".
[27]
In his review for the
Los Angeles Times
, Peter Rainer wrote "It's an attempt to make a mainstream youth movie with a bit more feeling and mysteriousness than most, and, in this, it succeeds".
[28]
Marjorie Baumgarten, in her review for
The Austin Chronicle
, wrote "
Before Sunrise
represents a maturation of Linklater's work in terms of its themes and choice of characters".
[29]
In his review for
The New Yorker
, Anthony Lane wrote "Just once, for a single day, Jesse and Celine have given life the sort of shape and charge that until now they have found only in fiction, and may never find again".
[30]
Entertainment Weekly
gave the film an "A?" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote "Small movies can be as daring as big ones, and Linklater, in his offhand way, is working without a net here.
Before Sunrise
may be the closest an American has come to the discursive talk gamesmanship of
Eric Rohmer
".
[31]
Online film critic James Berardinelli has cited the film as "the best romance of all time".
[32]
Entertainment Weekly
rated
Before Sunrise
#25 on its Top 25 Modern Romances list.
[33]
In a 2008
Empire
poll,
Before Sunrise
was ranked as the 200th greatest movie of all time.
[34]
In 2010 British newspaper
The Guardian
ranked
Before Sunrise
/
Before Sunset
#3 on its critics' list of 25 best romantic films of all time, and #2 in an online readers' poll.
[35]
[36]
Box office
[
edit
]
The film grossed $1.4 million in 363 theaters on its opening weekend and grossed $5.5 million in the United States and Canada and $22.5 million worldwide, nine times its $2.5 million budget.
[4]
[5]
Sequels
[
edit
]
Before Sunset
was released in 2004 with Linklater, Krizan, Hawke, and Delpy to equally positive reviews, and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 95% "Fresh" rating.
[37]
Before Midnight
was released in 2013.
Jesse and Celine also had a brief scene together in Linklater's 2001 animated film
Waking Life
.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Before Sunrise: Production Credits"
. Movies & TV Dept.
The New York Times
. 2010. Archived from
the original
on June 20, 2013
. Retrieved
June 5,
2013
.
- ^
a
b
"
BEFORE SUNRISE
"
.
British Board of Film Classification
. March 10, 1995
. Retrieved
January 23,
2020
.
- ^
a
b
"
Before Sunrise
"
.
AFI Catalog of Feature Films
. Retrieved
January 23,
2020
.
- ^
a
b
"
Before Sunrise
"
.
Box Office Mojo
.
Archived
from the original on March 3, 2009
. Retrieved
February 11,
2009
.
- ^
a
b
Klady, Leonard (January 22, 1996). "Big clicks from little flicks".
Variety
. p. 1.
- ^
Youtube profile of Lehrhaupt by Jeff Rowan uploaded 15 Feb 2015
- ^
a
b
c
Thompson, Ben (May 1995). "The First Kiss Takes So Long".
Sight and Sound
.
- ^
Wickman, Forrest (May 30, 2013).
"The Real Couple Behind Before Sunrise"
.
Slate
. Retrieved
February 15,
2015
.
- ^
Borrelli, Christopher (May 24, 2013).
"Richard Linklater finishes trilogy with 'Before Midnight'."
Chicago Tribune
. Retrieved February 3, 2020.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Linklater, Richard; Kim Krizan (March 1995). "
Before Sunrise
". St. Martin's Griffin. pp. V.
- ^
a
b
Donahue, Christina (April 1995). "Love in the Aftermath".
Film Threat
.
- ^
Hicks, Alice M (April 12, 1995).
"Richard Linklater's All-Nighter"
.
MovieMaker
. Archived from
the original
on January 22, 2009
. Retrieved
February 26,
2009
.
- ^
a
b
Griffin, Dominic (April 1995). "Slack Jawing".
Film Threat
.
- ^
Swinson, Brock (May 4, 2016).
"
"As a woman you have to assume it won't get made, but keep writing anyway." Julie Delpy on Lolo"
. Creative Screenwriting
. Retrieved
May 10,
2016
.
- ^
BEFORE SUNSET Writer Kim Krizan & The Life of Anais Nin - The Film Scene with Illeana Douglas
, retrieved
November 24,
2022
- ^
Intertextual references highlight, and potentially expand, the notion of spontaneity. While on the train, Celine and Jesse read books that are suggestive of behavior patterns in which experience takes precedence over rationality. Celine reads a
George Bataille
anthology:
Madame Edwarda
,
Le Mort
(The Dead Man), and
Histoire de L'Oeil
(The Story of the Eye); Jesse reads
Klaus Kinski
's autobiography
All I Need Is Love
.
- ^
Cf.
James Berardinelli's 1995 online review
, and
Jonathan Romney's comments
[
dead link
]
on the sequel
Before Sunset
in the
Independent
of July 25, 2004.
- ^
Wood, Robin
(1998).
Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond
. Columbia University Press. p. 324.
- ^
Syngle, Erik.
"Before Sunrise"
.
Reverse Shot
. Retrieved
May 1,
2011
.
- ^
"Berlinale: 1995 Prize Winners"
.
Berlinale.de
. Archived from
the original
on August 8, 2017
. Retrieved
December 30,
2011
.
- ^
Before Sunrise, Nominations and Awards.
"Internet Movie Database"
.
IMDb
.
- ^
"Before Sunrise (1995)"
.
Rotten Tomatoes
. Fandango
. Retrieved
March 23,
2024
.
- ^
"Before Sunrise Reviews"
.
Metacritic
. CBS Interactive
. Retrieved
July 21,
2019
.
- ^
"Cinemascore"
. Archived from
the original
on December 20, 2018
. Retrieved
July 21,
2019
.
- ^
Ebert, Roger (January 27, 1995).
"
Before Sunrise
"
.
Chicago Sun-Times
. Archived from
the original
on September 29, 2012
. Retrieved
February 11,
2009
.
- ^
Maslin, Janet (January 27, 1995).
"Strangers on a Train and Soul Mates for a Night"
.
The New York Times
. Retrieved
February 11,
2009
.
- ^
Hinson, Hal (January 27, 1995).
"
Before Sunrise
"
.
The Washington Post
. Retrieved
February 11,
2009
.
- ^
Rainer, Peter (January 27, 1995). "
Before Sunrise
".
Los Angeles Times
.
- ^
Baumgarten, Marjorie (January 27, 1995).
"
Before Sunrise
"
.
The Austin Chronicle
.
Archived
from the original on February 1, 2009
. Retrieved
February 11,
2009
.
- ^
Lane, Anthony (January 30, 1995). "Up All Night".
The New Yorker
.
- ^
Gleiberman, Owen (January 27, 1995).
"
Before Sunrise
"
.
Entertainment Weekly
.
Archived
from the original on February 18, 2009
. Retrieved
February 26,
2009
.
- ^
Berardinelli, James.
"Review: Waking Life"
. ReelViews.net
. Retrieved
June 1,
2011
.
- ^
"Top 25 Modern Romances"
.
Entertainment Weekly
. February 8, 2002. Archived from
the original
on December 2, 2008
. Retrieved
February 26,
2009
.
- ^
"Empire Features ? 500 Greatest Movies of All Time"
.
Empire
. Archived from
the original
on January 6, 2010
. Retrieved
January 25,
2010
.
- ^
Gilbey, Ryan (October 16, 2010).
"Before Sunrise/Before Sunset: No 3 best romantic film of all time"
.
The Guardian
. UK
. Retrieved
January 12,
2011
.
- ^
"The romance 25: do you agree with our rankings?"
.
The Guardian
. UK. October 16, 2010.
Archived
from the original on February 15, 2011
. Retrieved
January 12,
2011
.
- ^
"Before Sunset"
.
Rotten Tomatoes
.
Archived
from the original on February 9, 2010
. Retrieved
March 23,
2010
.
External links
[
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]