101 / BD 8 City Girl

[CRT]

I had seen City Girl before I got this disc recently. It's an utterly wonderful movie that I know will be making its way up my favorite films list.

But my question is in regards to something I read in a short review blurb in a home video guide regarding the film, that I hadn't read anywhere else and doesn't seem to be brought up anywhere else.

The review I read only gave the film 2 stars out of 4 because they said that Murnau was actually fired during production and didn't finish the movie. The reviewer said his disappointment stemmed from the fact that one can only wonder how much better the ending could have been had Murnau remained on the project.

I'm sorry, I never read that anywhere...Murnau didn't direct the whole film?

[triodelover]

I had seen City Girl before I got this disc recently. It's an utterly wonderful movie that I know will be making its way up my favorite films list.

But my question is in regards to something I read in a short review blurb in a home video guide regarding the film, that I hadn't read anywhere else and doesn't seem to be brought up anywhere else.

The review I read only gave the film 2 stars out of 4 because they said that Murnau was actually fired during production and didn't finish the movie. The reviewer said his disappointment stemmed from the fact that one can only wonder how much better the ending could have been had Murnau remained on the project.

I'm sorry, I never read that anywhere...Murnau didn't direct the whole film?

Murnau left the film in a dispute over the title. He wanted it to be called Our Daily Bread, which of course King Vidor appropriated a few years later for a film IMO that was much better suited to that title. It's not clear when he left the film or whether it was before completion or in the editing stage.

I'm not sure what your reviewer thought was wrong with the ending. The ending to Sunrise is one of redemption and forgiveness and that was presumably what Murnau wanted. Here Lem finds redemption, Kate is vindicated and Lem's father seeks and is granted forgiveness. Seems perfectly consistent to me and though throughout the film the possibility is left open that other outcomes are possible (which is one of the reasons I think that City Girl works better as a film than Sunrise), there's no reason to think that the ending doesn't reflect Murnau's wishes.

[CRT]

Here's the review in question:

City Girl

Friedrich Murnau, who directed the silent vampire classic "Nosferatu," was removed from the director's chair before "City Girl" was completed and it shows. But so do the marks of his inimitable camera direction. The story concerns a Minnesota grain grower who visits the Windy City and returns with a waitress as his wife. Frustratingly inconsistent, leading you to wonder what could have been had Murnau remained behind the camera (he died the following year).

[tojoed]

According to Lotte Eisner, William Fox shortened the film and gave Murnau's former assistant A.F
Erikson the job of making some scenes and adding others.
She also says that in 1971 she saw a new copy and "...there remain in it many traces of Murnau's unique visual style and lighting, mutilated as it is, with much of its nuance eliminated."
Murnau sent to William Fox some " Suggestions for changes for "Our Daily Bread" in a last effort to save the film. I can post them later if you're interested.
Murnau had dreamed of ".. a great symphony of our daily bread, a Durer wood engraving...".
"City Girl", for all its merits, is not it.
The review you quoted is, more or less, correct.

[peerpee]

It's the 1970/1971 "previously unseen" silent version find which we have issued on Blu-ray. The closest known version to Murnau's original vision.

[Cash Flagg]

DVD Outsider

[swo17]

I actually got this release early in the pre-release sale but only got around to watching it last night. (Still need to watch the commentary though.) It's really a lovely film, and it cannot be stressed enough how astounding it looks in motion (owing as much I suppose to the print quality as to MoC's stellar presentation). There was almost a disconnect for me in the sense that it was a silent film but looked as though it could have been made in the '60s. I really love how the film sort of plays like Sunrise in reverse, where instead of a girl from the city coming in and corrupting tranquil country life, we find plenty of corruption in the country to begin with. Both films also brilliantly capture both marital strife and bliss (no better visualization of this than the tumble through the wheat fields early in City Girl), though one marriage is seasoned and the other new. In this way, the two films complement each other very well.

Forum readers will also be comforted to know, I'm sure, that I checked all the math relating to the price of wheat bushels throughout the film and found no mistakes. Just in case anyone was worried about that.

[Svevan]

The first half hour of Kalat's City Girl commentary does a great job of comparing City Girl to Sunrise (perhaps there's more later on, I haven't finished the commentary). In a way, City Girl feels like a commentary on Sunrise's politics, by pointing out that neither locale is preferable. You are correct that there is "plenty of corruption in the country to begin with," but I nonetheless feel that Murnau finds more humanism and life in the country: both the city and the country are defined by the forms of work their inhabitants must take, and the mechanization of city life is dehumanizing when compared to the earthiness and individuality inherent in country life. There seems to be an inherent advantage for Kate in the city, because she is mostly independent (her work is gendered, but she lives alone); when she moves to the country, she SHOULD be less happy in that she is given more "women's" work and must exist in a much more stratified culture (not to mention all the family problems which are closely linked to this gender-division). The bounty of men working on the farm have an immediately superior place to her. Yet this aspect of the country does not seem to bother her so much as the respect she gets in the home from her male relatives. I certainly am rooting for Kate and Lem to get back together at the end of the film, even though the ending makes it clear that nothing has changed structurally, only personally. Perhaps that's enough. Having recently watched Naruse's "Repast," I find the endings somewhat similar (not sure how I feel about Repast though).

I might be going off on a tangent though. Perhaps "structures" aren't Murnau's primary concern. The Last Laugh toys with some allegorical commentary on the elderly, but most of that is in the sarcastic epilogue. The way we've been talking, saying words like "city" and "country," is the way people always seem to respond to Sunrise and City Girl, and I feel an "institutional analysis" is a major part of Murnau's light/dark good/bad polarities (and their inevitable ambiguities).

[swo17]

I nonetheless feel that Murnau finds more humanism and life in the country: both the city and the country are defined by the forms of work their inhabitants must take, and the mechanization of city life is dehumanizing when compared to the earthiness and individuality inherent in country life.

This is an interesting point. Let's not forget that, though there is corruption and temptation in the country, all of the characters there are essentially redeemed in the end. Whereas, for all we know, the inhabitants of the city continue on in their daily bustle, largely indifferent to one another's problems or certainly to the concerns of a family of farmers many miles away (from that distance, their very human concern for livelihood only finds form in the plummeting stock price of a bushel of wheat, traded on an exchange like any other faceless commodity). Also, note how the diner's patrons ogle Kate's supple 1080p legs in exactly the same fashion as do the harvesters in the country. Perhaps the lesson here is that temptation is present in both worlds, but that because life is slower in the country, everything seems more magnified there--the indiscretions seem more scandalous but the chance for redemption is also more real. In any case, this is all in contrast to the treatment of Kate, who is a strong and well-meaning female presence regardless of her environment (though her "666" curls are an interesting touch!) and who serves as a kind of fleshing out of the "girl from the city" archetype established in Sunrise.

[tojoed]

Don't forget that Murnau's original intention was to show the production of "our daily bread" from the cornfields to the mechanical slicer in the restaurant, although this is only hinted at in the film we have. I think there's no doubt that he loved the countryside more.

[Michael Kerpan]

I would say that this BR release is as close to perfect as I could possibly imagine. Perhaps for the first time ever, I re-started the film as soon as it was over -- and watched it again all the way through (this time with the excellent commentary).

One thing I wondered was if Boris Barnet would have had a chance to see this. CG's amazingly lyrical presentation of nature really strikes me as prefiguring Barnet's later work (such as Bluest of Seas -- which could also have drawn some inspiration from Tabu, of course).

[HerrSchreck]

I had always understood that when Fox started recutting the film, they left the reshoots to Alfred Werker (who also did the major reshoot for Stroheim's Walking Down Broadway/Hello Sister! which really IS a butchered movie.) There are undoubtedly other hands at work in the pie as well.

Werker's hand is very diificult for me to pick out from what Murnau left behnd at this point - I suspect a lot of the contretemps between the father and Mary is shot by him - Werker - the angles and cutting look too direct and uninvoled with a moving camera for anything other than blocking for decoupage. And possibly the end as well including the big climactic riding scene at night. If he Werker- has shot that, then what remains are Murnau's CUs or outtakes and some notion at least of Murnau's positioning of actors for staging, probably in rehearsal.

Certainly I dont doubt that it's a highly compromised film, and maybe half of it is really dircted by M. But so what? It still belongs to M. For US!

Isnt what's there, esepcially those first twenty minutes in the cafe really important to us?

This is completely accurate-- the differences go far beyond a dispute over the name of the film. I see Murnau's hand strongly in evidence running just up to the arrival at the farm. The blocking and the use of the camera just wilt after that point, and the mise en scene (and the tale itself) sort of deteriorates into the commonplace melodrama, and loses the sparkling insight of Murnau's deployment of Everything. For me the film gets hokey as soon as Kate gets slapped and Lem walks around looking like a wrung out wet blanket-- monotone straight into the end.

Ever see Guinn Big Boy in THE PHANTOM? A really bad, super obscure early talkie? He was a funny kid-- he probably shoulda stuck to football, but I always love seeing him nontheless.

[HerrSchreck]

Pilgrimage is a sheer mindblower in all depts-- one of the primary pearls of discovery in the great FORD AT FOX box. It's really after his exposure to Murnau that Ford-- and so many American filmmakers-- learned thru the great German's stellar example the art of subtext, and how to depict it with art, nuance and sophistication.

The art of saying what is not spoken or depicted directly-- who was better at this than Herr Plumpe? Whether depicting the world of dreams, or his operatic deployment of actors requiring no subtitles to unfold a narrative... or illustrating with outright blatancy the speed and tenor and scale of the ratcheting urban world of dog eat dog overtaking the old doorman of Jannings (via the literal depiction of a leaning, almost attacking skyscraper looming and bending at the protagonist) in LAST LAUGH, or the subtle visual touchstones in CITY GIRL (the mechanical bird, the wheat in the bible, the Hopeful Geranium redux, etc) the man's craft never seemed to fail him.

Of course he owed a lot to Carl Mayer in the development of these conceits, but that's another conversation. The man remains my favorite director, unshakable despite his newfound popularity on DVD (which might cause a knucklehead to move on to something more Avant or Obscure). The finest director the medium has ever known... incredible all these wonderful films were produced in 10 measly years-- from neophyte to looming master.

[matrixschmatrix]

Having just watched this for the first time in any format- gosh. It's difficult to believe it's generally considered minor or even counterfeit Murnau- though the underlying story has some sort of humdrum melodrama elements, the overall effect is powerful enough that I kept watching the movie while there was a great deal of melodrama about whether my roommates and I would be kicked out going on in real life.

I'm going to admit something shameful: often, with silent movies, I watch them with the commentary on first and then go without training wheels. I was planning on doing that here- I really love Kalat- but the movie was so engrossing in the first ten minutes or so that I went back to the beginning and turned the commentary off. That didn't happen to me with Nosferatu, and I don't know if it is because it is played at camera speed, untinted, or just more American, but I found this to be far the more physically beautiful movie, at least when it was firing on all cylinders.

[Cash Flagg]

According to Michael's Movie Mayhem, City Girl has been discontinued.

[Michael Kerpan]

I loved this release so much that I watched it w/o commentary and then watched it immediately afterwards with commentary. As far as I can recall, this is the first and only time I have ever done this.

[zedz]

Duplicate post, please delete.

If that duplicate post was about this going out of print, it's probably important that that information stays in this thread (if it's correct).

And if it's correct, snap this up as soon as you can: a revelatory transfer of a great film.

[Oedipax]

I loved this release so much that I watched it w/o commentary and then watched it immediately afterwards with commentary. As far as I can recall, this is the first and only time I have ever done this.

Ha, I did the same thing. Didn't need much excuse to look at that glorious (and gloriously transferred) film again.

[Minkin]

Did MoC change their mind about retroactive dual-format releases? This is scheduled for DVD for April, so I can't see any reason it would be pulled (although Ran/Contempt come to mind but so does the mis-label of the Lubitsch set).

[peerpee]

The CITY GIRL BD is not going OOP. No idea why that site says it is. It's out on DVD in April though.

[knives]

Everyone should buy it as if it was going anyways. I was only introduced to the BD a few weeks ago and it's one of the best. That booklet put down all of my thoughts better than I ever could have.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

I just want to stir away from the false news of the film going out of print to my praise of the film. I bought it along with There's Always Tomorrow when they were first released, but for whatever reason, I didn't view either one until this week. What a mistake I did with both! I should've seen hem long ago!

City Girl isn't, what I feel, minor Murnau as it's more subdued Murnau. The crazy false perspectives, fantastic title cards, double exposed images and is focusing on character and narrative more (let's admit that with all it's beauty, Sunrise isn't a very plot oriented film). I think with a film like Sunrise, he has to establish himself in Hollywood and intimate everyone with a film that extravagant. By the time he gets to City Girl and after the financial failures of both other Fox films, he maybe wanted to make something certainly more melodramatic and smaller as a team-player for Fox. Anyways, as history has it, the success of this didn't really happen either, but that might be in part due to the rise of sound cinema and not the quality of the film. It really doesn't seem like bastardized Murnau. Even the ending which apparently wasn't shot by him, still has some amazing expressionistic moments like when a single light from the sky shines on the returning carriage or the documentary like shots of the wheat being rounded up.

The print is fabulous too. I try to see 35mm prints of silent films weekly at a local cinematheque and a lot of DVD's misrepresent the way the films look like in transfers, but this is as close as an actual 35mm silent print looks like without being covered in mold or having pieces of the frame unfortunately stick to each other resulting in darkening of certain portions of the frame.

And I have to say that the David Kalat commentary is among the best commentaries I've heard in a while. He's among the most insightful and interesting film scholars to talk this side of Tad Gallagher. Plus he's the first scholarly commentator in a film to use the word "sucky" which deserves something special for that alone.

[peerpee]

Tad Gallagher:

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Sorry. I meant Tab:

[CorstenoftheFunk]

I bought this on Blu-ray and I am very disappointed with the picture quality. The amount of lines running throughout the film is unacceptable and distracting. There doesn't seem to have been any digital remastering done on the picture. It is very dirty. I probably should have gone with the DVD and saved some money. I can't imagine it looking much worse than the Blu-ray.

Thanks for reading.