City Girl

A Minnesota farm boy goes to Chicago to sell the wheat crop, falls for a tired waitress who dreams of open sky, and brings her home to a father who treats her like a thief. F.W. Murnau’s last finished American film — made at Fox after the triumph of Sunrise — inverts that earlier masterpiece: here the city girl is the innocent, and the country is harsh, patriarchal, and beautiful. Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan play the newlyweds as the harvest crew arrives, jealousy flares, and a hailstorm threatens the grain. Murnau, the German Expressionist who taught Hollywood how a camera could float, fills the wheat fields with the same visual rapture he once gave city lights. Studio recuts and a half-sound release dimmed it for years; the silent version is the one that survives as his late, clear-eyed American pastoral.