Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

City Girl (1929)

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 nearly-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 (formatted to a 1.20:1 picture ratio) that has survived and from which all modern prints originate.

Not generally seen or discussed among silent film enthusiasts, although recent high-quality home video editions may help, this film is better than its apparent current standing in film history.

— Carl Bennett

The film is accompanied by the same six-piece musical accompaniment composed and conducted by Christopher Caliendo from the Fox DVD edition noted below.

Among the supplementary material is full-length audio commentary by film scholar David Kalat, which was recorded for this edition and is very informative and entertainingly presented, and a 28-page booklet featuring an essay by Adrian Danks.

This is our recommended edition of City Girl on home video. This disc will play on North American Blu-ray Disc players that support the AVC video format.

United Kingdom: Click to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc / PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Purchase supports Silent Era.

This Blu-ray Disc edition has been mastered from 20th Century Fox’s 2008 1080p HD video master created for the 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment DVD edition noted below.

The video transfer is highly-detailed — to the point of capturing a fine stippling of dots in the middle greytones that one might assume is capturing film grain in the source print. We wonder if this is true, as slow frame-stepping reveals that the stipple pattern in static areas of the picture remains pretty much the same for seven frames then changes slightly as the picture is entirely resampled, which indicated a standard digital picture compression technique. Our expectation of a high-definition picture is smooth greytones resolution (as much as is possible given the coarser film grain size of vintage nitrate filmstock) and not the technological introduction of stippling dots that may make the full-movement picture look sharp but introduces a stipple dot pattern that is not in the source print. This may be the result of post-transfer digital sharpening, as the stippling is not as pronounced in some shots and is more pronounced in others. We have seen this stippling in a number of recent high-definition transfers for Blu-ray and DVD, and we have to wonder whether the technology can be revised to render an even more filmlike picture rather than one of digital pointilism.

That being said, the high-definition picture is impressive, with a broad range of greytones and sharp image detail. The source print is relatively clean, but there are sections of moderate emulsion wear, a sprinkle of speckling and dust, and an occasional vertical emulsion scratch through the frame.

The film is accompanied by the same six-piece musical accompaniment composed and conducted by Christopher Caliendo from the Fox DVD edition noted below.

Among the supplementary material is full-length audio commentary by film scholar David Kalat, which was recorded for this edition and is very informative and entertainingly presented, and a 28-page booklet featuring an essay by Adrian Danks.

It now comes down to format and cost; if you have a DVD player and want a great-looking edition of City Girl you will need to fork over a lot of cash for the Fox boxset noted below, but if you have upgraded to a Blu-ray Disc player, this is the best option for visual quality and price. This disc will play on North American Blu-ray Disc players that support the AVC video format.

This edition has been replaced by the Blu-ray Disc/DVD combo edition noted above.

United Kingdom: Click to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This DVD edition of F.W. Murnau’s final studio film is now available in a gorgeous 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 greytones 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 DVD boxset edition for its excellent visual quality.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

The film is accompanied by the same six-piece musical accompaniment composed and conducted by Christopher Caliendo from the Fox DVD edition.

Among the supplementary material is full-length audio commentary by film scholar David Kalat, which was recorded for this edition and is very informative and entertainingly presented, and a 28-page booklet featuring an essay by Adrian Danks.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

This edition has been discontinued, having been replaced by Eureka’s Blu-ray Disc/DVD combo edition noted above.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.c0.uk. Support Silent Era.

This DVD-R 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 greyscale 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 for North American collectors, not this one.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

Even sight unseen, this edition is not recommended as TeleVista home video releases are usually atrocious.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The edition is now out-of-print and not worth searching out.

VINTAGE FILM BUFF has discontinued business and this edition is . . .