"City Girl" Review

 

by Daniel White

If he were remembered for nothing else but Nosferatu (1922), German director F. W. Murnau would be an immortal in the history of film. However, that chilling movie is just one of the several great flicks he made that survive today.

Fox Films' City Girl was his penultimate movie, released in February of 1930. Conceived as a silent picture, the studio wanted to convert it into a talkie, a move Murnau found objectionable. Preoccupied with Tabu, a film he was shooting in the South Seas, he walked away from the film, allowing the studio to make the changes it desired. Released with sound, the film flopped, but in one of the few instances where the artist prevailed over the suits in Hollywood (if inadvertently), that copy has been lost, and Murnau's silent version is the one that has survived.

Charles Farrell plays Lem, the son of a wheat farmer who arrives in Chicago to sell the family's crop. In a chance encounter at a busy diner, he meets a weary waitress (Mary Duncan) and they are quickly drawn to one another. Deciding to marry, Lem brings her back to his Minnesota farm.

It is a beautiful looking film, reminiscent of Murnau's 1927 classic, Sunrise. And it has a similar theme: soulless city life vs. the imagined peace of a rural existence. Kate, the lonely hash slinger, hopes to find the happiness that has eluded her in the crowded Chicago din she finds herself struggling to survive in. Her dreams of contentment are quickly smashed when she encounters Lem's tyrannical father (David Torrence), who resents her intrusion on the family he rules with cold authority ("I am the master here!"). To make matters worse, she's lusted after by the other farm hands who consider her a woman of easy virtue because she is a "city girl".

There is little question that Murnau would have mastered the art of "talking" films if he had lived, but he was right to resist the studio's attempt to alter City Girl by imposing sound upon it. The movie is perfect, just the way it is.

An influential artist who was revered by other filmmakers (John Ford and Howard Hawks were both keen admirers), Murnau died a little over a year after the release of City Girl. Traveling up the Pacific Coast Highway in a car with his chauffeur at the wheel, the car crashed. Thrown from the vehicle, he suffered a head injury and died the next day. Only 11 people were brave enough to show up for his funeral, Fritz Lang and Greta Garbo among them. Two fellow artists of integrity who were unafraid to pay their respects to one of the greatest figures in the history of cinema.

A giant of German film, and the creative genius behind four American classics (a copy of 1928's 4 Devils is thought to be in the possession of Mary Duncan's heirs), F. W. Murnau will never be forgotten as long as there are people who study, appreciate, and enjoy great cinema.

With a young Anne Shirley as Lem's little sister, City Girl is available on YouTube in an exquisite print with a lovely musical score to accompany it.