City Girl (1929) Murnau

[Ann Harding]

On Sunday night, French TV broadcast the brand new restoration of Murnau's City Girl which will certainly be featured in the new Murnau & Borzage boxset in December.

As you can see, the image quality is stunning. It looks like a brand new print made from the original negative. Let's hope the rest of the box will look as good.

Kate (Mary Duncan) is a waitress in a big Chicago restaurant. She dreams of escaping the city. She meets youthful and naive Lem (Charles Farrell) who came to the city to sell his father's wheat crop. They get married and come back the family farm where his father (David Torrence) gives them an extremely cool reception....

Ernest Palmer's cinematography is superbly displayed in this new restoration. The new music score by Christopher Caliendo is good alternating jazz themes for the city scenes and folk tunes for the countryside ones. Duncan and Farrell make a very attractive couple like in The River (if only we could have such a superb image for this one!). David Torrence is brilliant as the tyranical father. Wonderful picture!!!!

[coopsgirl]

That is just beautiful!! I can't wait to get this set; should only be around 3 weeks now.

I really enjoyed City Girl a lot. Charles Farrell makes the perfect kinda naive, sweet country boy and Mary Duncan was spot on as the girl fed up with city living. The scenes where they meet in the diner where she works were very well done and had a real, natural feeling to them and you believe that these two strangers are falling for each other.

The score sounds interesting too and I hope all the films in this set got as good a treatment.

[MissGoddess]

I'm definitely renting all the discs, and look forward to City Girl the most as I've never seen it before.

[MissGoddess]

I don't know where else to post this, but Variety has an article on the new scores Fox commissioned for the Murnau/Borzage set here:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR111799 ... =1236&cs=1

[Gagman 66]

I sure hope Christopher Caliendo's scores to CITY GIRL, and LUCKY STAR are good. While I loved his score to Norma Shearer's A LADY OF CHANCE, I far prefer the vintage Erno Rapee-Lew Pollack, Maurice Barron Movie-tone track to John Ford's FOUR SONS. To me it is just not the same film without the that score. "The Little Mother Theme", was critical to the film as were a few others. While Mr. Caliendo's score to THE IRON HORSE was solid, it was definitely no improvement over the John Lanchbery score on the Photo-play Productions edition, Region 2 DVD releaase. I still I'm not sure why Fox didn't use that score?

I'm just ever so thankful Fox didn't make the same mistake twice, like they did with FOUR SONS last year. Keeeping the vintage Rapee-Pollack scores and Fox Movie-Tone tracks to both 7TH HEAVEN, and STREET ANGEL. Those are in mind indespenseible to the film. I can't imagine SEVENTH HEAVEN without "Diane". and STREET ANGEL minus "Angela Mia".

Here is a link that pertains to the John Lanchbery score and 2001 Brownlow-Stanbury Photo-play Productions restoration of D. W. Griffith's ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1921) with the Gish Sisters. This version as I said will be receiving it's North American Broadcast Premier this Sunday (really Monday Morning) on TCM Silent Sunday Nights program. So you will see a brand new NTSC broadcast master, just made up in the past month or so from Photo-play of the edition, originally produced in Britain back in 2001. Furthermore, it has not been released on DVD anywhere either. What's more I have never seen it, so I am pretty pumped for this event!

http://www.photoplay.co.uk/indiv%20film ... storm.html

My sincere thanks to TCM Programmer Charles Tabesh for inking the pact with Photo-play for this version of ORPHANS. It figures to be superior to any other made avalable to the public either on Televison, or even DVD to date.

[charliechaplinfan]

I'm so glad this great film has had proper restoration.

[feaito]

Thanks to Christine I had the opportunity of watching a truly gorgeous, pristine print of this masterful film directed by Murnau and I loved every minute of it. Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan are very good as the leading couple and David Torrence is impressive as the authoritative father. This poetic picture is a work of art; a testament of Murnau's incredible sensitivity and talent. Cannot praise it enough!

[phil noir]

A few days ago, I saw the restored version of City Girl too, and I thought it was such a beautiful film. How poignant these late silent masterpieces are with the talkies snapping at their heels just as the art form was reaching its peak.

I was keen to find out more about it, so went to the library and looked at Lotte Eisner's book on Murnau. It seems that Murnau did not quit the project until he had shot a 'working copy'. He showed it to William Fox who complained that it was 'too long and the peasants were not at all American'. According to Eisner, 'gag men' were then set to work devising comic scenes. Murnau terminated his contract, and Fox shortened the film and gave Murnau's assistant, A.F. Erikson, the job of rewriting some scenes and adding others. Further scenes were apparently shot for the talkie version (now lost).

Eisner reproduces a memo from Murnau suggesting changes to his film (presumably before Erikson took over). She can't say how many new scenes were shot - one of Murnau's suggestions, that Lem's father not slap Kate until he catches her with Mac on the night of the hailstorm, was obviously not acted upon, since in the film as it stands, he slaps her the day she arrives. I found it interesting that Murnau wanted to change this - I think it might have made for a more subtle, less melodramatic second half.

Nevertheless, it's difficult to quibble when what we have - which might easily have been lost forever - is such a beautiful work of art.

[charliechaplinfan]

I think there is so much sweetness, innocence and hope in this film, I could watch the sequences in the cafe again and again, I love the atomosphere that Murnau creates. I know Charles Farrell is better known for starring with Janet Gaynor, I love his pairings with Mary Duncan.

[silentscreen]

It's sad that Murnau had a fall out with Fox and left before the movie was completed though. He left to do Tabu in the South Seas, and died before the debut.

[phil noir]

I think there is so much sweetness, innocence and hope in this film, I could watch the sequences in the cafe again and again, I love the atomosphere that Murnau creates. I know Charles Farrell is better known for starring with Janet Gaynor, I love his pairings with Mary Duncan.

I agree - I think the cafe scenes are so beautifully acted with Mary Duncan as the hard-boiled city girl susceptible to the gentleness of Charles Farrell's character. The other waitress points out Farrell praying over his meal and laughs, but Duncan can see a promise of redemption and rescue for herself in his unselfconscious goodness. They only meet twice before they decide to marry, and yet watching them and the mood they and Murnau conjure up, this detail barely registers.

It's sad that Murnau had a fall out with Fox and left before the movie was completed though. He left to do Tabu in the South Seas, and died before the debut.

I will have to add Tabu to my rental list. I might add Tartuffe as well, but I'm not very keen on Emil Jannings.

[silentscreen]

Tabu is a beautiful film! The Image DVD is very well done. The film deservedly won a 1931 Oscar© for Best Cinematography. You won't regret adding that to your list!

[charliechaplinfan]

I can understand you saying that about Emil Jannings, I have enjoyed some of his performances Faust and The Last Command spring to mind. I didn't mind him in The Blue Angel either.

[Gagman 66]

Alison,

This month the BFI released it's own DVD versions of SEVENTH HEAVEN and LUCKY STAR in Region 2. Has anyone heard if there is anything different about them from the Fox Murnau and Borzage Box set editions? SEVENTH HEAVEN has more scenes from the Road Show print surviving. And I was hoping on a much better score for LUCKY STAR. Unfortunately, I have not heard a thing about additional content, or the scoring either?

:-[ Despite Fox claim that the best surviving elements were used on it's 7TH HEAVEN DVD, that just is not the case. The Museum Of Modern Art print is purportedly in much better condition and some 15 minutes longer according to those who have seen it screened. Any details on the BFI release would be appreciated.

[phil noir]

I can understand you saying that about Emil Jannings, I have enjoyed some of his performances Faust and The Last Command spring to mind. I didn't mind him in The Blue Angel either.

Maybe I'm not being fair to Jannings, I've only seen him in Faust and The Last Laugh. I liked him well enough in Faust, because if you can't be over the top as Mephistopheles, when can you be? But in The Last Laugh, he almost spoilt the film for me. I mean, I can see he's a very skilful and imaginative actor, but it was all too much - he was slicing the ham far too thickly for me!

Alison,

This month the BFI released it's own DVD versions of SEVENTH HEAVEN and LUCKY STAR in Region 2. Has anyone heard if there is anything different about them from the Fox Murnau and Borzage Box set editions? SEVENTH HEAVEN has more scenes from the Road Show print surviving. And I was hoping on a much better score for LUCKY STAR. Unfortunately, I have not heard a thing about additional content, or the scoring either?

:-[ Despite Fox claim that the best surviving elements were used on it's 7TH HEAVEN DVD, that just is not the case. The Museum Of Modern Art print is purportedly in much better condition and some 15 minutes longer according to those who have seen it screened. Any details on the BFI release would be appreciated.

Just to stick my nose in here, I've been intermittently emailing someone at the British Film Institute for the last eighteen months or so about the region two releases of Seventh Heaven and Lucky Star. (Originally there were rumours that Street Angel was also on the cards, but nothing came of it.) The last time I heard anything was that the BFI were negotiating to use the scores from the Murnau/Borzage box set. If they weren't able to, then they would have to commission their own scores and the releases would be delayed. Since then, the release dates have been delayed - several times - and according to amazon.co.uk, they are both now due to come out on 14th September this year. Whether this means that the scores will be different, I don't know.

Fortunately, someone has been kind enough to let me have a copy of Seventh Heaven, but I cannot wait for Lucky Star to come out - I've been wanting to see this film for a very long time.