Ranking Wheat in Films | City Girl
Wheat!
City Girl is a 1930 F. W. Murnau film about a country boy who goes to the big city, meets a girl, marries her and brings her back to the family farm where they run into some…family troubles. I have only seen one other Murnau film (I know, I have a lot of things to watch) and that is Sunrise. They’re both fairly similar films with their juxtapositions between urban and rural life and its focus on two lovers being pulled apart albeit for different reasons. I really enjoyed the front half of the film that focuses on Lem and Kate falling in love, it was light and funny and romantic, a tone Murnau really excels in and I would like to see more of that…but ultimately when the two get back to the farm things get very serious and it falls into melodrama. Which isn’t bad. I was just enjoying the lightheartedness at the start of the film that I was really hoping would continue.
The real stand out of the film, for me, and the moment that really takes your breath away is when Kate and Lem first return to the farm and there’s this beautiful shot of them running through the wheat fields. Really, everything Murnau shows involving wheat seems to have been shot with great thought and care.
I didn’t have a lot to say about the film itself and I thought, “I can’t write an entire blog about wheat.” But then I thought, yeah I can, so I looked up a list of movies with wheat in them…watched ten of them and now I’m going to rank them, not by how good the movies are but by their use of wheat in the film.
Also, let me say, these are not necessarily the best wheat films of all time, they’re just ten movies I picked at random from a random list of films that contain wheat that I found on the internet.
10) What’s With Wheat
This is wheat slander. This is anti-wheat propaganda and I won’t stand for it. Not only that, they barely show any wheat in the whole film. The science behind what they’re talking about? I have no idea. I won’t comment on that and I don’t need to because if you love bread you will hate this film.
9) Tideland
I don’t think there’s any wheat in this film. I think that’s grass. One of the more important things I’ve learned about myself during this whole process is that I don’t really know what wheat looks like. If you put a lineup of dead corn stalks, wheat and grass…I’m not sure I could pick out the wheat. Having said that, the film isn’t anti-wheat. It might be anti-Jeff Bridges after what they do to the man. It might be anti-childhood innocence. But it is neutral on the topic of wheat and therefore ranks number nine.
8) The House That Jack Built
What is going on with the wheat films on this list? If this was a list of films with (spoiler) houses made out of the corpses, The House That Jack Built would be number one. However this is not a list of films containing structures made out of dead bodies. And even though this film is surprisingly very funny with a great performance from Matt Dillon it is seriously lacking in wheat content. One scene while Jack descends into hell. It’s a nice scene where Jack reflects on his childhood. Maybe the only memory where he was happy/innocent…the meaning is besides the point, it’s about the wheat. And again, I’m not one hundred percent sure that’s wheat…
7) Superman
Now remember, this ranking has nothing to do with the film itself or in this instance the scene, it’s a fine scene of Clark saying goodbye to Ma Kent. But the wheat is too low, I want wheat in a film to be chest height. Minimum up to the waist. Richard Donner tries to fake it here with this low angle, but I ain’t buying it. It also doesn’t help that the scene does take place in the objectively worst part of the movie. Just cut the first hour of this movie. I don’t want it.
6) The Lovely Bones
Is this wheat?! Or is this grass?! She’s murdered in a corn field so if it is wheat, why is this wheat and not corn? Corn is earth and wheat is heaven? I don’t know, but it turns liquid and I like that. If you’re gonna have wheat in a film, gimme something different.
5) Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
This movie front loads its wheat, lots of wheat at the start of the film and then less so as the movie progresses. But what a way to start! We open on wheat! The whole of the opening titles are just wheat gently swaying in the breeze. And then we’re running through wheat getting chased by a man with a gun…it’s not tall enough…it’s only knee height, but it’s the perfect height for the next moment because then we’re driving through wheat! The meet-cute of our two main characters happens in the wheat field. This is a great wheat action set piece.
4) The Reflecting Skin
Wheat films are not happy films. But again we open on wheat at the perfect height (for a child). We close with a child running through the wheat field, now harvested. Childhood innocence lost. Parallels. Filmmaking. Wheat-making. There are too many beautiful shots of wheat in this film to mention. So I won’t.
3) The Host
Saroise Ronan back again in a film that has underground wheat at the perfect height grown with mirrors. Are you kidding me?! What more do you want from a film that has wheat in it?! Saroise Ronan has now been in a film with liquid wheat and underground wheat. Saroise wins the award for being in the most films with the most creative uses of wheat.
2) Gladiator
Forget carbohydrates! The only reason wheat exists is for you to lightly run your hand over the tops, open-palmed, as you meander through a field. If you’re reuniting with your wife and child who were brutally murdered by a petulant young Caesar, in the afterlife all the better, but it’s not necessary. You can be pensive, you can be wistful, you can be reflective; there’s a whole cornucopia of emotions that you could be going through while delicately caressing a lightly swaying crop of wheat and this is the movie that paved the way for us all. Thank you Ridley Scott. Thank you Russel Crowe. Yes. We are entertained.
1) Days of Heaven
Yeah, it’s kind of the obvious choice, but this is the quintessential wheat film. It’s been said that City Girl influenced or was an inspiration for Terence Malick when making this film…I couldn’t find anywhere that Malick had actually said that, but I believe it. This movie has it all harvesting wheat, bundles of wheat, burning wheat, wheat at a variety of different heights, locusts! So if you’re sitting down and saying to your partner, “You know we haven’t watched a wheat-centric movie in such a long time…” think about throwing on Days of Heaven.
What did I learn from all of this? I learned that where there is wheat, there is Saroise Ronan and despair. Let me know in the comments what great wheat moments in film I missed.
