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Live-Recording by Wilfried Kaets
Short and Sweet:
“Farmer’s son Tom from Minnesota meets a beautiful woman in the city who dreams of country life. Against his father’s wishes, Tom brings the girl as his wife to the farm. However, Tom’s father treats the beauty as an intruder, and an increasingly unbearable atmosphere leads to an inevitable catastrophe. The penultimate film of the great master Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (‘Nosferatu’) once again captivates with the suggestive power of its imagery, contrasting rural life with the alienation of the modern metropolis.”
Action:
In Murnau’s last film made in Hollywood, *City Girl*, a young woman working in a diner falls in love with one of her customers, a young farmer. She moves to the countryside with him, hoping to begin a true life there. However, she soon incites the wrath of her father-in-law and the envious resentment of the farmworkers. It is only after a near-catastrophe, the son’s emancipation, and her attempted escape that a happy ending is achieved.
The frenetic hustle of the city is satirically highlighted, with one diner displacing another from a stool as soon as they finish their meal. In contrast, the life in the small farm cottage, surrounded by vast wheat fields, is depicted as a primitive state of society. The film acknowledges that the idyllic world of the farming class is a dream, especially cherished by city dwellers, but it also grants a touch of reality to this dream.
Music:
New Piano Music by Wilfried Kaets
The music combines the (sometimes deliberately over-stylized) vision of the simplicity of rural life from the perspective of city dwellers with the thematic drama of the film and the development of its protagonists. Much of what initially seems “harmonious” and “positively simple” becomes distorted, hollowed out, and proves to be a deceptive and fragile imagination, revealing itself to be harsher, more immobile, and entrenched in familiar idioms as the film progresses.
Wilfried Kaets’ piano composition employs—especially at the beginning of the film—a juxtaposition of simple American folk songs from the pioneer era with harmonically complex 1930s jazz pieces by Billy Holiday and others, creating a distinctive atmosphere when the farmer’s son meets the waitress.
The film score describes spaces and imbues them with emotion (e.g., the vast wheat fields surrounding the farm). It uses dramatic accents and dimensions characters to hint at or foreshadow their internal and external developments.
In this way, the music organizes scenes by altering a recurring motif over a coherent narrative sequence or by using a recognizable timbre to create cohesion across multiple scenes.
Register:
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (also F. W. Murnau, *December 28, 1888, as Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in Bielefeld; †March 11, 1931, in Santa Barbara, California) is considered one of the most significant German film directors of the silent film era. His work, influenced by Expressionism, his psychological visual style, and his revolutionary camera and editing techniques opened entirely new possibilities for the young medium of film.
In 1919, Murnau returned to Berlin and began working in film. With the film The Hunchback and the Dancer, he started a highly productive collaboration with screenwriter Carl Mayer, who went on to write scripts for six more of Murnau’s films. His most famous film from this period is Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), featuring Max Schreck in the title role. This adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula had to be renamed due to licensing issues.
For UFA, he directed The Last Laugh (1924), in which Emil Jannings plays a hotel porter who is demoted to a lavatory attendant and breaks down as a result. The “unleashed” or “flying” camera used by Murnau and cameraman Karl Freund freed the camera from its static position, allowing for entirely new perspectives (e.g., Freund attached the camera to a fire ladder to follow cigarette smoke).
Additionally, Murnau introduced the “subjective camera” in this film, presenting events from the perspective of a character. Murnau’s ability to narrate a story using purely cinematic means is also demonstrated by his near-total avoidance of intertitles in this film, which was highly unusual for the silent film era.
Murnau concluded his German film series with Tartuffe (based on Molière) and Faust – A German Folk Legend in 1926.
Murnau’s successes in Germany, particularly the American version of The Last Laugh in 1925, attracted Hollywood’s attention. He received a contract offer from American producer William Fox, who promised him complete artistic freedom. Murnau’s first film made in the USA, Sunrise, won three Oscars at the very first Academy Awards in 1927 but did not meet commercial expectations. Due to this, and the increasingly difficult economic situation of Fox’s company and Hollywood’s transition to sound films, Murnau had to accept increasing interference in his artistic vision with his subsequent films. For City Girl, he was even replaced as director, and a sound version was added post-production without his input.
Disillusioned by Hollywood’s constraints, Murnau terminated his contract with Fox in 1929. After an unsuccessful attempt to return to Berlin with UFA, he bought a sailing yacht, determined to make his next film solely according to his own vision. He traveled to Tahiti to make Tabu with director and documentary filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty. During production, there were significant issues with the film material financing company. Murnau eventually parted ways with Flaherty, who had stronger documentary ambitions, and financed the film himself. Tabu, filmed on Bora Bora with only local amateur actors, became a groundbreaking blend of documentary and melodrama. Paramount, impressed by the film, offered Murnau a ten-year contract. However, Murnau did not live to see the premiere of the film on March 18, 1931, due to a car accident.
Films by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
A selection performed live with music by Wilfried Kaets:
- 1921: Schloß Vogelöd
- 1922: The Burning Soil
- 1922: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
- 1922: Phantom
- 1924: The Finances of the Grand Duke
- 1924: The Last Laugh
- 1926: Tartuffe
- 1926: Faust – A German Folk Legend
- 1927: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
- 1930: City Girl
- 1931: Tabu