City Girl (1930)

F.W. Murnau's penultimate film before his untimely death in a road accident, City Girl follows a similar style to it's more renowned predecessor Sunrise, however, in my opinion it has often been overlooked and should rightly be considered one of Murnau's greatest films, on a scale equal to, if not greater than, Sunrise itself.

I think a large part of its lack of appeal has been the fact that it has been a notoriously difficult film to actually get hold of, until earlier in this year when it was released on Blu-ray. The exemplary Blu-ray transfer does the film a lot of favours, as suddenly previously blurred grain fields look amazingly sharp, and people's expressions can be fully appreciated. It's certainly far better than I ever expected a silent film could ever look.

But what about the story itself? Murnau makes clear in the first scene that this is no Sunrise clone, by having the male lead, a country farmer named Lem, ignore the advances of a vamp as he travels to the city for the first time to sell his father's annual crop of grain. By starting the film in the exact opposite way to Sunrise, we can immediately forget any comparisons and enjoy it on it's own merits. So, while Lem is desperately trying to sell his grain for no less than the amount dictated by his father, he meets Kate, a young, beautiful girl working in a busy city cafe. After some wonderful scenes of the couple falling in love, and after Lem has managed to sell the grain (albiet for far below his father's asking price) they return together to Lem's family in the country. This is where the story kicks in proper, with Kate trying to adapt to a different life, and Lem's authoritarian, violent father.

The story then, centres around Lem (played by Charles Farrell), and Kate (played by the wonderful Mary Duncan, who Murnau had also involved in his previous film, the now-lost 4 Devils). Though it happens quickly, their relationship is a believable one, and the scene with the two deliriously happy as they run through the country, newly married, towards Lem's family home, is one of my favourites in any silent film. David Torrence, who plays Lem's intimidating father is well cast, and the character progression is interesting, though without giving too much away, I find the ending the both weak and hard to credit after what has gone before. Depite the slightly limp ending, the film as a whole works well, mainly due to the quality of the actors, and small touches throughout, such as Kate's mechanical bird she takes to the country with her, leading to a nice little scene with the famliy playing with the device. It's these little things that elevate the story well above average.

By 1930, silent films were already quickly becoming extinct, as audiences rolled up to see 'talkies'. Because of this, City Girl was filmed with what was known as a 'Movietone Soundtrack', with much of it in speech. However, Murnau also made a silent cut, and this now is the only one that survives. Though I have of course only seen this version, I still think it's far better that we're left the silent film, as by this time Murnau really was a master of the silent cinema, whilst at such an early stage of sound films the majority of them were drastically inferior to what had gone before as producers were just beginning to get to grips with the new media.Murnau himself was unwillling to make the move to sound, but Fox Studios insisted on the soundtrack, to make it more commercially viable.

In 1926 Murnau had been swayed to move to Hollywood by Fox Studios, on the condition that he was given complete creative control. This, combined with the greater budgets his films could command, made up his mind, and led to Sunrise. However, after a couple of years he was finding more and more Hollywood executives were wanting to give input to his films and he was becoming unhappy. Though he was tied into a contract, and was therefore obliged to produce further films, it seems that by the time of City Girl Murnau was becoming disenchanted with the Hollywood filmmaking process, further exemplied by his final film, Tabu. Despite this, and the troubled production that stemmed from this, City Girl comes across as a quality film, which though not breaking any new ground cinematically, continues Murnau's tradition of making silent films of a very, very high quality.