(1995)
directed by Richard Linklater
When I first saw “Before Sunrise,” I had no idea there would be two more films which would continue the story of Jesse and Celine. Just by itself, “Before Sunrise” is extraordinary. In this film, the director, Richard Linklater, captures the exhilaration of discovering a conversational intimacy with another person. My happiness knew no bounds, however, when the story of Jesse and Celine continued in the films “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight.” Taken together, these three films are Linklater’s gift to the world!
In “Before Sunrise,” Jesse (played by Ethan Hawke) and Celine (played by Julie Delpy) meet on a train. They are both in their twenties. They start talking and quickly discover a rapport. Jesse is an American, on his way to Vienna to catch a flight home. Celine is French, a student at the Sorbonne, returning to Paris. In the dining car, they have coffee and continue talking.
Jesse suddenly has an idea. Would Celine consider getting off the train with him in Vienna so they can explore the city together until time for him to catch his plane? Jesse suggests that they think of their time together as a sort of “time travel” and envisions a future in which Celine is with her boring husband and wonders, “What would some of those guys be like that I knew when I was young?” Jesse suggests that Celine think of their night in Vienna “as a favor to your future husband.” Celine answers, “Yes!”
They wander the city of Vienna from mid-afternoon until sunrise. They talk about former romantic partners, music, and reincarnation. They are clearly attracted to each other. There is a wonderful scene in the listening booth of a music store where each one looks at the other and then looks away quickly. This scene perfectly captures their glances and their resulting embarrassment.
Vienna is filled with art, music, and poetry. Jesse and Celine meet amateur actors, fortune tellers, street poets, and friendly bartenders. They drink wine in a park. They discuss making love, thoughtfully weighing the arguments for and against. Jesse and Celine’s lives stretch out before them, filled with promise and mystery. There’s a sense that life holds infinite possibility. They promise to meet again in Vienna in six months. Their promise recalls the movie, “An Affair to Remember.”
Here are excerpts from the New York Times article “Before Sunrise: The Making of an Indie Classic.” Ashley Spencer interviews Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke on the 25th anniversary of “Before Sunrise.”
The idea for the movie came to Linklater during a night spent with a woman he met in a Philadelphia toy store. Years later, he would learn that she had died in a motorcycle accident shortly before “Before Sunrise” began filming.
LINKLATER This girl was flirting with me while I waited for my sister to finish shopping, so I wrote a little note like, “Hey, I am in town for one night if you want to hang out.” Somewhere in the night I said to her, “I want to make a film about this. Just this feeling.” That’s really all it was trying to ever capture, that rush of meeting someone and that undercurrent of flirtation and romance.
HAWKE Meeting Julie was like meeting a character from a novel, like Anna Karenina or something. She’s a very deep person. I’d never felt so American and so dumb in my life.
DELPY He was like a puppy, so young and sweet. He hates that, but really he had a beautiful naive quality about him. I mean naive in a good way, naive but very smart at the same time.
Delpy, Hawke and Linklater headed to Vienna for a three-week intensive workshop ahead of the shoot and continued revising the script throughout twenty-five days of filming.
HAWKE Revising is way too mild of a word. Rick wanted to make a movie about living in the moment. And to do that we were all going to have to live in the moment together to create the movie.
DELPY It was intense, and a lot of my personal feelings went into it. I was an extremely romantic person, very pure and full of dreams. The writing was very organic. The guys would listen to me as I was really the only woman in the room, especially when we got to Vienna.
When the pair almost kiss while listening to Kath Bloom’s “Come Here” in the record store booth, Delpy and Hawke’s reactions were authentic.
LINKLATER That’s the only time I withheld anything from the cast. The lyrics were in the script, but they had never actually heard the song. So you can see them really listening because they’d never heard that yearning, creaky thing in Kath Bloom’s voice that’s so moving.
HAWKE It’s probably my single favorite take of anything I’ve been involved with.
DELPY That was really special. It was like magic, each time I felt Ethan looking away, I would look at him and vice versa. I almost fell in love with him right there but then Rick said cut.
Jesse and Celine’s first kiss takes place on Vienna’s Prater Ferris wheel at sunset, but was difficult in more ways than one.
LINKLATER We tried to shoot it at sunset, but they would only stop the Ferris wheel for ten minutes, and then we’d have to go around and do it again. We had three different light levels by the time we finished. So we went back a week later and reshot that in the morning when they let us stop it for an hour. When you see their first kiss, that was shot in the morning.
HAWKE Julie is afraid of heights. Try making out with somebody who’s absolutely petrified. It was challenging, and I don’t think she was terribly impressed, she’d been with a lot more interesting men than me.
DELPY I’ve never been on a Ferris wheel since. When you act, you have to get over your fears constantly. I’m also shy with men, and I had to kiss someone who was a friend at this point. It was scary.
HAWKE I remember laughing a lot because Julie just kept making fun of me, “That’s the look you give girls? You’ve got to do better than that!”
Linklater intentionally left several elements of the film up to the audience’s imagination, namely did Jesse and Celine have sex?
LINKLATER Technically, you could see it any way you want. If you look closely, she’s dressed a little differently. So if you really do the math, you go OK, that dress had to come off to get that shirt off. Something happened. I think all the hints are there.
If you would like to learn more about the real life girl that Richard Linklater met in the Philadelphia toy store, be sure to watch the deeply moving YouTube video “Amy Lehrhaupt: The Girl Who Inspired Linklater’s Before Sunrise.”