Newhart Shows and City Girl (Silent Film)

Catchy Comedy Channel (previously Decades) each weekend has a marathon (binge) of a single sitcom and at times a group (they had Blondie movies and episodes from one of the television offshoots). 

Over the weekend, it was Bob Newhart time, with the Bob Newhart Show, Newhart, and Bob. He had one more comedy with Judd Hirsch of Taxi fame but it did not have his name in it. So, guess that's why it was not included!  Newhart had sitcoms in three decades with a short-lived variety show in the 1960s too.  He popped up in guest star roles into the 21st Century and still comments a bit on Twitter today.  

I know two people who like his first show the best but Newhart is my show, especially once Stephanie and Michael (and of course LDD) are on.  (Kirk is an annoying character.)  I don't only say this because it is the one I watched when it was first aired.  The ensemble cast is very good, including his wife, who not only looks good in sweaters but often has a chance to be amusing too.  It also had an amusing sense of the absurd at times.  

His third short-lived show (two seasons) was amusing and had Lisa Kudrow in a small pre-Friends / Mad About You role (and not a blonde!).  A nebbish who works at the cartoonist's office also popped up in a guest star role in Friends when Joey did his robot t.v. show. 

TCM on Sundays (into Monday morning) often shows silent films. I recall watching one such film.  I basically watched the first half of City Girl and checked out a bit of the second half.  It's very good and quite watchable. Some old films seem slow-paced.  This one mostly seems normal speed.  

There is a lot of interesting backstory and details related to this film.  F. W. Murnau directed.  He is one of the elite directors of early cinema, including his vampire classic, Nosferatu, and Sunrise, which were among the films first honored at the Academy Awards.  Many of his films have been lost. 

A German filmmaker, Sunrise was one of his few Hollywood films along with City Girl.  He clashed with the new owners of the film studio involved, who had a different vision for the film (their version had sound and is now lost)  and left before the film was created.  He died shortly afterward in a car accident in his 40s.

City Girl's cast is also notable.  The father made lots of films before and after.  The male lead, Charles Farrell, later was in a 1950s sitcom.  The small role of the young sister was played by an actress who later took the name of a later role, Anne Shirley of Anne Of Green Gables fame.  Mary Duncan, the female lead, did not have a long film career, her last role (Morning Glory) was Kathleen Hepburn's first Academy Award (1933).  

The film involves a young son of a stern (he yells out at his young daughter for playing with a bit of the wheat crop) Minnesota farmer being sent to sell the wheat crop in the big city.  (The farm scenes were filled in Oregon.)  His good boy bona fides is shown when a tart of a woman tries to engage him on the train.  He falls in love with a city girl, a waitress, tired of the hard and dull life of the city.  She falls in love with his kindness and goodness. 

The contrast between the two places is shown at one point by a scene of the father cutting bread (Our Daily Bread was the original name of the film, suggesting the director's focus on the farm), and then the film cuts to bread being sliced by a machine at the diner. The film has excellent cinematology work, showing us farm life, the train, and a crowded diner in the city.  

Farm life is the main concern of the film, especially in the second half, which gets to be melodramatic. The mother and young daughter are welcoming of the son's wife but the stern father distrusts the outsider. The son at first seems ready to defend his wife but is scared to challenge his father.  The wife then has to handle the uncouth farmhands, especially one in particular who gives her unwanted attention.   

[The farmhands, including the boor trying to turn them against the farmer as a means to get the girl, might also seem topical given that today's Labor Day.  It is probably apt that we are in the middle of a major writer's strike.]

I was not really interested in these scenes but there are again some good stuff there.  The sight of the workers on the farm, including Kate serving them in the field (her husband sulking), is well done.  Kate eventually decides to go away, snapping her husband out of his funk.  He tells his father that he is going after her and that they will move away so they can have a happy wife.  The father realizes he was wrong and things end happily.  

It is well worth a look even if you are not the type to watch silent films. There is an instrumental soundtrack in this version and the usual title cards that keep us abreast of what is happening.  The current use of closed captioning would have been an interesting tool during the silent movie era. I wonder if they would have used the same restrained amount of scripted dialogue or if the use of CC would have allowed basically full dialogue.