City Girl is a 1930 American part-talkie sound film directed by F. W. Murnau, and starring Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan. It is based upon the play "The Mud Turtle" by Elliot Lester. Though shot as a silent feature, the film was refitted with some sound elements and released in 1930 as a sound film due to the public apathy to silent films. While the film has a few talking sequences, the majority of the film featured a synchronized musical score with sound effects using both the sound-on-disc and sound-on-film process. The film is credited as being the primary inspiration for Terrence Malick's film Days of Heaven (1978).
Poster art for 1930 sound version of the film
City Girl ad in The Film Daily, 1929
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was a German film director, producer and screenwriter. He is regarded as one of cinema's most influential filmmakers for his work in the silent era.
Murnau c. 1920–1930
Murnau shooting a film in 1920
Murnau with Henri Matisse in Tahiti in 1930
Actor David Rollins sits unclothed in a 1927 photo taken by Murnau.