Dir: F.W. Murnau | Cast: Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan | Drama
Reviewed by Richard Chatten
For his Hollywood debut, ‘Sunrise’ (1927), F.W.Murnau famously had built an enormous set depicting a city to emphasise the impact of its size upon his visitors from the country. In ‘City Girl’ we see Chicago as experienced by a native inhabitant: rushed, hot and cramped. It’s the country that seems vast when she steps off the train with her new husband; her first view of her new home resembling a painting by Andrew Wyeth.
Unfortunately there’s also her ghastly new father-in-law to be reckoned with, played by one of the terrifying Torrence brothers, David; an ornery old brute, who quickly clashes with the new arrival, leading the viewer to wonder who will murder who.
The storyline is pretty basic and resolved suspiciously abruptly, but as one would expect from Murnau, the film looks magnificent, moves along lickety split, and the acting is first class (it’s interesting to see among the youthful farmhands later western perennials Guinn Williams and Jack Pennick). The mood and milieu recalls Victor Seastrom’s ‘The Wind’, and both call upon the elements to resolve their plots with a bang; in the case of ‘City Girl’ with a gathering hailstorm that contrives to make the bruising human conflicts that have preceded it seem trivial by comparison.
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