This summer I should like to make a picture named: 'OUR DAILY BREAD'--a story that will tell a tale about 'WHEAT'--about the 'sacredness of bread'--about the estrangement of the modern metropolitans from and their ignorance about Nature's sources of sustenance...

Murnau to William Fox, 22 December 1927 (1)

Suggestions of changes for 'OUR DAILY BREAD': I would suggest the following changes which I would have made myself if I had worked longer on the picture ... If talk should be added to the picture, I would suggest it start at the beginning of the final night sequence.

Murnau to William Fox [circa late February 1929] (2)

'If I Had Worked Longer on the Picture ...'

1928, the year that separates the first of these statements from the second, was the critical period for Murnau in America. Between chapters devoted to Sunrise and Tabu, Lotte Eisner, in her invaluable study of Murnau, assigned the equivocal title 'Compromise in Hollywood?' to the chapter on his second and third American films, 4 Devils (3) and Our Daily Bread. Was Murnau forced to compromise to such an extent on Our Daily Bread that he left the production even before the silent version--the only version that survives today--had been completed? In July 1926, Murnau's arrival in New York from Germany, on his way to Hollywood and Sunrise, was publicised in grand style. William Fox held a banquet in his honour on 7 July at the Ritz Carlton Hotel that was 'attended by one hundred members of Manhattan society and broadcast to thousands of others over radio station WNYC'. (4) Fox's journal for exhibitors reported:

Mr. Murnau will have his own technical staff and cameraman and all the vast facilities of the Fox company at his command.... He is a recognized genius, placed by many capable critics at the very top of the directorial field, and his innovations are certain to go far in bringing something distinctly new to the Fox programme and in establishing new standards in the American Studios. (5)

For Sunrise, William Fox authorised Murnau freedom from studio constraints that became legendary. In January 1928, at the time he began shooting his next film, 4 Devils, Murnau wrote with confidence:

Everything is subordinated to my picture, and just as I do not permit myself to be influenced away from what I think is the right thing to do and the right person to use, I will not do a picture that is based on a theme not to my liking or conviction. (6)

But only one year later, Murnau's situation had reversed. Changing a film's title before release was routine practice in Hollywood. Re-titling Our Daily Bread to City Girl, however, coincided with Murnau's departure not only from that project, but from Fox and from Hollywood. City Girl was finished while Murnau was in Tahiti working with Robert Flaherty on the film that would become Tabu.

Although we are not able to see 4 Devils--it remains a famous lost film--and the status of the...