Movies at East Sydney - City Girl (1930)

With live music accompaniment on grand piano (Mauro Colombis) 90 minutes.

General seating.
(T 0419 267 318)
Stephen Robertson, cinephile and loyal supporter of the sessions, will introduce the classic.

“After the visual fireworks of Sunrise, F.W. Murnau turned his attention to this vivid, painterly study of an impulsive and fragile marriage among the wheatfields of Minnesota.
Sent by his stern father to sell their annual wheat crop, a naïve young farmer falls for a disenchanted but lonely waitress in her empty urban life and brings her back home as his wife. She anticipates an uncomplicated rural lifestyle with her new farmer husband. Their troubles are only beginning, as they encounter, in a claustrophobic struggle, intolerance, envy, and a fierce hailstorm that nearly destroys their harvest.
Tenderly romantic and tough-minded in equal measure, this simple, rural love story focuses on a disenchanted waitress who leaves behind her empty urban life on the spur-of-the-moment for what she dreams will be an uncomplicated rural lifestyle with her new farmer husband.
Murnau is sometimes called the ‘first great poet of cinema’ and with good reason and, in this classic, he explores the tension between urban and rural lifestyles. With his genius that still speaks to the 21st century, he categorically rejects the utopianism of either the urban or the rural allure but instead with balance portrays the deep challenges facing both lifestyles. This leaves much for past and current audiences to weigh up and consider.”