For his last studio film, although it was not known to be so at the time, F.W. Murnau chose a simple, rural love story focusing on a disenchanted waitress who leaves behind her empty urban life on the spur-of-the-moment for what she dreams will be an uncomplicated rural lifestyle with her new farmer husband. What she, Kate (Mary Duncan), and her husband, Lem (Charles Farrell), does not forsee is the conflict with his dominating and emasculating father (David Torrence), and with simpleton farmhands (among them, the great Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams and future John Ford crony Jack Pennick) who envy and disrespect Lem and leer after Kate.

Originally completed by Murnau as Our Daily Bread (1929), the film was recut and rereleased with a synchronized Movietone soundtrack by Fox Film Corporation as City Girl in January 1930. It is the silent version of that 1930 release that has survived and from which all modern prints originate.

Not generally seen or discussed among silent film enthusiasts, this film is better than its apparent current standing in film history. — Carl Bennett

This edition of F.W. Murnau’s final studio film is now available in a gorgeous DVD edition, long over due, after years of collectors forced to make due with home video editions prepared from substandard 16mm reduction prints. The viewer who is familiar with the film from these blurry editions will be blown away by the high-definition pillarboxed video transfer from the excellent 35mm source print that is available in this large boxset, which looks great on both standard-definition and high-definition monitors. The print itself is only lightly speckled, with nearly nonexistant dust and vertical emulsion scratches, and features a wide gamut of graytones with excellent image details. While the transfer speed is slightly faster than natural pacing, it is not distressingly so. Given a natural-speed video transfer, the film’s running time probably could have approached 95 minutes.

As enthusiatic as we are about the visual quality of the disc, we are lukewarm about the six-piece musical accompaniment composed and conducted by Christopher Caliendo, presented in both 5.1 surround and stereo. We acknowledge the attempt to convey diverse moods ranging from the lighthearted mirth of the city restaurant to the folkishness of the downhome country farm, but some moments of the musical arrangements are trite to our ear and others are outright hokey.

The disc is supplemented with visual materials on the lost Murnau film 4 Devils (1928), including a loose reconstruction of the film, Murnau’s 4 Devils: Traces of a Lost Film, from studio records and still frames, narrated by Janet Bergstrom, the 4 Devils story treatment, the 4 Devils scenario, and a City Girl stills archive (52 images).

Given the low quality of previous home video editions of City Girl, we highly recommend this boxset edition for its excellent visual quality.

USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com.
Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca.

This edition has been mastered from a 16mm reduction print, yielding only good but acceptable viewing results. The full-frame video transfer, with its occasional video master playback glitches, is augmented with windowboxed insert shots to minimize the amount of visual information lost to overscan. The cropping of the source print itself loses picture information at the top and bottom when compared to surviving 35mm 1.20:1 frame aspect prints.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack of theater organ music that may originate from the 16mm source print and does, at least, convey and accompany the film’s action and emotional status.

Revisiting the disc on high-definition equipment is both a positive and negative experience. While the image details of the source materials and the video encoding are smeary soft, the grayscale ranges are good and the film remains watchable on HD systems from this DVD-R that isn’t as bad as we remember it to be. That being said, we recommend the 20th Century Fox edition noted above, not this one.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc is available directly from Grapevine Video.

This edition may have been mastered from a 16mm reduction print. The packaging touts color-tints and restored intertitles.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc is available from Vintage Film Buff.

Collections and boxsets that include F.W. Murnau films:
The F.W. Murnau Collection (1925-1932)
Murnau, Borzage and Fox (1925-1932)

About F.W. Murnau:
The Way to Murnau (2003)