8 / 10
score
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The Disc

Extra Features
In terms of supplementary material, the solitary extra feature on the disc is a commentary by David Kalat who provides his usual exhaustive audio essay, quoting widely and bringing his extensive knowledge about Murnau and cinema to the table in what is a wonderful listen that provides a great deal of information.

As is customary for Masters of Cinema releases, this comes with a weighty booklet with an interesting essay by Adrian Danks and a number of production stills. This isn’t the best that MoC have ever produced by is still a good read.

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The Picture


This fully remastered DVD presents the film in 24fps (so it has the same runtime as the Blu-ray) and in the original aspect ratio of 1.19:1. This would usually indicate an NTSC-PAL encoding, but there are no major issues to suggest this is the case. The image quality is extremely good with excellent contrast which fully shows off the wonderful cinematography and direction. Some of the wheat harvest scenes were apparently filmed for a documentary and they certainly have an authenticity to them that backs up the assertion. The film will never be pristine as it is 80 years old but the amount of detritus is minimal.

Although this is a pretty atypical Murnau film, there are still some trademarks of his and a couple of undisputedly expressionist moments that suit the scenes perfectly.

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The Sound


The score, a recent composition by Christopher Caliendo, is a wonderful effort, really evocative and suiting the material perfectly. It is extremely well presented by the Dolby Digital 5.1 track and, whilst the surrounds and subwoofer are rarely troubled, the score is very clear.

It’s probably worth mentioning that this is the silent version as envisioned by Murnau, with Fox’s talkie lost in the sands of time.

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Final Thoughts


Eureka Entertainment and The Masters of Cinema really lifted the bar for silent films with their stellar Blu-ray release of Sunrise which was one of, if not the best, releases of 2009 so it is only natural that City Girl would fail to live up to those standards. 4 Devils is a ‘lost film’ so, with Sunrise and City Girl now given the Blu-ray treatment, Tabu shouldn’t be far behind to complete the Murnau/Fox Collection. This was released on Blu-ray in February 2010 so it's good to see Eureka catering for those who have yet to make the jump to HD with this DVD release. However, the best way to watch City Girl (and Sunrise) is on Blu-ray so it is worth upgrading your home cinema setup.

City Girl is no classic, certainly not the best film F.W. Murnau ever made, and not up to Sunrise’s immensely high standards but is a terrific cinematic achievement and the set is very good, but not great.

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