City Girl (1930)

                                      
                                                       
One of the least interesting (and most mainstream) of F.W. Murnau’s films is this one about a poor but honest wheat farmer from Minnesota who goes to the Big City (Chicago) to sell the family's wheat crop. Lem Tustine (Charles Farrell) has been inexplicably entrusted with this task by his father (David Torrence)—inexplicably because old man Tustine doesn’t think his son can do anything right. He’s instructed Lem to take nothing less than $1.15 a bushel, but while the young man is in Chicago the price of wheat drops and he accepts a price of $1.12.

To make him even more nervous on his return home, he’s bringing a bride with him. Kate (Mary Duncan) was a waitress in the diner Lem ate at; conversation led to flirtation. Kate hated the life she was living and longed for a romantic escape.

Murnau lets us know that the young woman is rushing from one frying pan into another. The farm house’s interior is just as empty and soulless as her Chicago room. 

Pa Torrence hates Kate on sight, believing her to be a gold digger. When he finds out about the drop in wheat prices, he gets even madder and determines to make her life a living hell.

When a monster storm from Canada approaches the farm, Torrence hires a group of harvesters to help bring in the crop. These roughnecks are not the finest examples of young American manhood and fire off a series of leering insults in the direction of the newlyweds. One of the men (Richard Alexander) tries to force Kate to run off with him. Lem sees Kate struggling with him and gets the wrong idea.

Will they save the wheat? Will Lem discover that Kate loves only him? Will old man Torrence realize what a gem Kate really is?

This is one of Murnau’s American films for Fox. The director is said to have walked away from the project before completion because William Fox insisted on changing the title from the original “Our Daily Bread,” which Murnau preferred over City Girl. Either is better than the title of the source material by Elliott Lester, The Mud Turtle. The script was by Marion Orth and Berthold Viertel. Ernest Palmer shot it with a minimum of Murnau’s patented camera movement.

Featured in the cast are Edith Yorke as Mrs. Tustine, Roscoe Ates, Jack Pennick, and Guinn “Big Boy” Williams. Baby boomers may remember star Charles Farrell as Gale Storm’s father in the early 1950s TV sitcom “My Little Margie.” Silent film buffs know him as Janet Gaynor’s co-star in a series of romances.