F. W. Murnau's next-to-last film, produced under the title Our Daily Bread, was cut and re-shot as a part-talkie for its 1930 release. Until the late sixties, it was considered a lost film, but when it was found, film scholars were amazed to see not a mutilated version but Murnau's own, complete silent version. The ambitious Murnau actually bought an Oregon farm on which to film the story of a wheat grower's son (Charles Farrell) who meets a city waitress (Mary Duncan) and brings her back to the farm, only to have her abused by his father. But, as in Sunrise, Murnau's piece de resistance in City Girl is his depiction of the city through the eyes of the innocent farm boy and his slightly more sophisticated wife. On the film's rediscovery, British Film Institute's John Gillett wrote, “It reveals new facets of Murnau's magisterial style. As in Sunrise, we have a marvelously stylized city with its overhead railways, hot, crowded bars and little apartments, contrasted here with the spaciousness of the countryside and wheat fields caught in those winging tracking shots which were Murnau's secret. And Mary Duncan's playing of the wife is remarkably detailed and modern.”