7.8 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
During a brief stay in Chicago, innocent farmer’s son Lem falls for and weds Kate, a hard-bitten but lonely waitress. Upon bringing her home at the start of harvest time, the honeymoon soon turns into a claustrophobic struggle as they contend with the bitter scorn of his father and the invasive, leering jealousy of the farm’s labouring community.
Starring: Charles Farrell (I), Mary Duncan, David Torrence, Edith Yorke, Guinn 'Big Boy' WilliamsDrama | 100% |
Romance | 35% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.19:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.2:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Among the German directors who emigrated to—or were poached by—Hollywood in the 1920s and 30s, F.W. Murnau is a tragic figure. Not only did he have a falling out with the studio system that Fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch eventually embraced and worked prolifically within, his genius was also abruptly extinguished when he died in an automobile accident shortly before the premiere of his final film, Tabu, in 1931. Best known for proto-horror nightmares like 1922’s Nosferatu and 1926’s Faust, Murnau was invited to Hollywood by studio head William Fox and made Sunrise, a cautionary romance about the perils of urban life that largely dropped the grotesqueries of German Expressionism while keeping the movement’s surreal dreaminess. With Sunrise, Murnau was granted unprecedented freedom by Fox, and the film was celebrated at the inaugural 1929 Academy Awards, winning in the short-lived “Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production” category. Three additional films followed, though with each, Murnau’s working relationship with Fox deteriorated, mostly because the studio was feeling pressured to move away from silent films and invest in “talkies.” 4 Devils is notable for being one of the greatest of the lost silent classics—film historians to this day are scouring archives and private collections, hoping to find a print—and Tabu found the director leaving Hollywood to work in Bora Bora with early documentarian Robert Flaherty. Sandwiched between the two is City Girl, an underappreciated companion piece to Sunrise that serves up an unexpected thematic reversal. It’s also one of the most beautifully shot American pastorals ever.
Lem and his City Girl...
Here's what the included booklet says about the transfer:
"For this 2010 Masters of Cinema Series Blu-ray edition we encoded the HD master in 1080p AVC
format on a BD25. Heartened by Fox's U.S. release of this master without any heavy-handed
digital restoration, we decided against HD-DVNR, MTI, other forms of digital restoration, or grain
removal, after tests revealed noticeable disruption of the tonal quality belonging to the film image
in many scenes. We used the same hands-off approach with our release of Carl Theodor Dreyer's
Vampyr: The Strange Adventure of Allan Gray and F. W. Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of
Two Humans, and we feel it more respectful to the filmmakers and the patina of the image.
The level of damage still present is exactly what you would see if you were to project this same
35mm film restoration theatrically."
Put quite simply, City Girl looks brilliant on Blu-ray, and I applaud both Fox and Masters
of Cinema for their commitment to presenting this and other films in the purest form possible.
There's no trace of any unnecessary filtering or overzealous edge enhancement, and the film's
grain structure has a fine texture that's beautiful in motion. Clarity, for a film now 80 years old, is
often staggering. You can make out Charles Farrell's fingerprints as he holds his fortune; you'll
notice the knobby woolen texture of his overcoat and marvel at the crispness of blades of wheat
as they get shuffled through the thresher. The monochromatic gradation is equally vivid, with
perfectly balanced contrast and lots of depth. Blacks are deep and defining, whites are bright but
not overblown, and the gradient of gray is rich and smooth. As expected, the print isn't exactly
pristine, but the damage—which mostly consists of mild vertical scratches and occasional flurries
of white specks—is rarely, if ever, a distraction. You'll be too busy appreciating Murnau's expert
framing and evocative use of light and shadow to mind. From the architectural claustrophobia of
the city to the wide open, Days of Heaven-inspiring landscapes, the film is truly a joy to
watch in high definition, and should whet silent film fans' appetites for other influential titles set
to be released later this year.
Do note that this release of City Girl is region-free and import-friendly, as it doesn't
contain any PAL or 1080i/50-encoded data.
Unlike Sunrise, which survives with its original Movietone score intact, City Girl's orchestration has been lost to time. In 2008, composer Christopher Caliendo was commissioned to write and record a new score, which is presented here via a warm and detailed DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. To be completely honest—and I'm sure many of you will feel differently— I'm not the biggest fan of Caliendo's score. It's certainly well-timed, accentuating each of the plot's dramatic moments and romantic yearnings, but it often feels too grandiose, as if it's trying to compete with, rather than compliment, City Girl's inherent emotion. The music also sounds bright and clean and new, which isn't really a fault, per se, but grafted to a weathered image from 1930, it does feel slightly anachronistic. That said, perhaps I'm being too sensitive. More objectively, and from a strictly audio-centric perspective, the score is dynamically balanced and has a fantastic sense of clarity and separation between instruments, from the crisp and breathy timbre of flutes to aching strings and briskly strummed guitars. This is a 5.1 mix, but the rear channels are really only used to fill out the sound space with reverb and ambience. Overall, the mix sounds great, but I'd love to hear something appropriately old.
Audio Commentary by Film Historian David Kalat
Some commentaries are off-the-cuff and others meticulously prepared, and this one definitely
falls
into the latter category. David Kalat often sounds like he's reading from one of his essays—the
way
he speaks would work a lot better on the page—but he makes up for his heavily scripted tone
with a
wealth of information, most of it concerned with Murnau's increasingly troubled relationship with
Fox. There's a lot to be learned here, but Kalat sometimes seems overly enamored with his own
cleverness.
Booklet
The 28-page booklet is filled mostly with photographs, along with a brief essay by Adrian Danks
that
was originally published in Senses of Cinema.
If this Masters of Cinema release of City Girl is any indication, I have a feeling 2010 is going to be a banner year for silent film cineastes. As we've seen with MOC's release of Sunrise and Kino International's release of Buster Keaton's The General, silent films have the potential to look phenomenal on Blu-ray, and this year holds promises of several Chaplin films, Metropolis, and The Battleship Potemkin, among others. If you're a fan of early cinema, don't pass up City Girl. Non-U.K. residents should also note that this title is very import-friendly. Highly recommended.
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