Film Concert: City Girl

Times are hard for the farmers in Minnesota, and for the Tustines the margins are so small that their youngest daughter gets told off for making a bouquet out of a few wheat stems. Grains are not a toy, every last one counts! The son in the family, Lem, is sent to Chicago to sell this year's crop, with a stern message to get a good price for it. In the big city, he meets Kate, a waitress at the local restaurant, and they hit it off. Kate is dreaming of the easy country life, which she pictures must be idyllic. But as the price of wheat falls, the smitten pair marry each other. How will things fare when they get back to the farm?

F. W. Murnau was a german director who made his last run of films in Hollywood, amongst them his most known work, Sunrise from 1927. This is a seemingly uncomplicated rural tale in which a farmer falls in love with a city girl, but the themes go deeper than that. We are treated to beautiful pictures of endless wheat fields and a few glimpses of Chicago in the early 1930s, as well as good old conflicts and drama.


ABOUT THE MUSIC:

Live music will be played by the skiffle-and-blues band The Dodge Brothers. Film and cinematic landscapes come together when they incorporate majestic Copland-esque celebrations of the broad midwestern golden fields as well as Chicago blues motifs to accentuate Murnau’s city/country themes to offer the sonic background this touching and poetic film requires.

As a live act, The Dodge Brothers have played everywhere from The Roundhouse to the Royal Albert Hall, from the 100 Club to the Cropredy festival. At the Jazz Café, they played with rockabilly legend Wanda Jackson, and they regularly sell out gigs at the Borderline and the Blues Kitchen in London. The Dodge Brothers’ music has an authentically American tang – lead guitarist/vocalist Mike Hammond was raised in Alabama and his youthful musical travels took him all over the southern and western USA – but with a strong British perspective.

The band:
Mike Hammond (guitars, lead vocals, banjo)
Aly Hirji (guitars, mandolin, vocals)
Mark Kermode (bass, harmonica, vocals)
Alex Hammond (washboard, snare drum, percussion)
Neil Brand (expert silent pianist)