User reviews

Although Lang's version is more famous,Borzage's work is not devoid of interest ,far from it:its "celestial" sequences are even better.The metaphor of the train (perhaps borrowed from the ending of Abel Gance's "la roue" ) is eventually more convincing than the "up above" heavenly world.

Borzage's tenderness for his characters shows in Marie's character and love beyond the grave is one of his favorite subjects (the ending of "three comrades" ).The amusement park seems to be everywhere: we see it even when we are in Marie's poor house.I do not think that the sets are that much cheesy,they are stylized to a fault.The fair from a distance almost gives a sci-fi feel to the movie.

Borzage never forgets his social concerns: in the heavenly train going up,the Rich cannot stand to be mixed up with the riffraff but as "chief magistrate" tells :"here there's no more difference" .

Not a major work for Borzage (neither is Lang's version),but to seek out if you are interested in the great director's career.

This is a film based on a classic story reworked elsewhere by Fritz Lang, amongst others. It's a love story set in old Budapest about a carnival barker called Liliom, and a servant called Julie (pronounced with a decidedly odd "dj" sound throughout the movie) who is smitten with him. Julie is a remarkably attractive young lady who we first see toiling amongst an exuberance of glass vases, one of the more charming shots in the movie (wasn't life better when directors composed shots like painters?).

In this film and others, Borzage sets out his stall regarding love, his "faint heart never won fair lady" principles. I can live with that though he is rather brutal on the subject, quite happy to let the Fates unravel the threads of any man even faintly milksoppish. He really surpasses himself this time though, there's a carpenter who proposes to Julie and is knocked back, seemingly every week for a decade; perhaps he carries on after the end of the film until the undertaker is measuring him, who knows? The carpenter is an honest hard-working man who however is not the exciting razzmatazz individual we see with Liliom. There's a philosophy here. Liliom is lazy and a brute, Borzage shows no distaste even at the idea of him beating a woman. But he is carefree and charming. Borzage is telling us that there is no other value for a man in life than to be a rascal, beloved of the crowd. Indeed Liliom, absolutely without precedent, is selected as the first human to be allowed to return to earth after dying. That's the level of value that's associated with his lifestyle by the filmmaker.

My opinion is that Borzage stretches his philosophy too far with this movie and ends up seeming obnoxious. Love is a prize that women dangle from on high and men must make superhuman existential efforts to leap for. There's something antediluvian about his attitudes to gender. In Lucky Star, for example, it's charming, because you have a goodie up against a baddie, and it's a feel-good story with a spunky female. But here I just feel sorry for the carpenter, a much kinder man than Liliom, who works hard at life. I get the feeling from watching a few of his movies that he has fairly skewed ideas and would have a lot of sympathy with social Darwinists and also Objectivists like Ayn Rand.

It's an exasperating movie because it really is so beautiful, the fairground set is marvellous for example, and there is some beautiful heavenly footage. On the other hand Borzage hadn't managed to come to terms with sound here, at times it's almost like the actors are being prompted, that's how leaden the delivery can be. More fairly perhaps I should say that he hadn't come to terms with dialogue, because the sound design is actually very good in all other respects, the music in the beer garden is time wonderfully well with the conversation. What's really very nice to hear is the hammer dulcimer, which has a very unusual sound.

All in all a very mixed bag. In my opinion it's still totally unforgettable though.

There is indeed much to complain about this movie version of Molnar's mystical play --Farrell looks good in his title role, but his line readings, frankly, stink. This also suffers, in large part, from this being credited as the first movie that makes use of rear projection. The sets look phony.

There are two great strengths in this show, however: although the dialogue readings limp, the visual performances are perfect. Rose Hobart, as Julie, is little remembered today: mostly for ROSE HOBART, in which Joseph Cornell cut down the programmer EAST OF BORNEO to simply shots of her: credit Melford's stylish visual direction of the original. Her great beauty and simple (although stagy) performance help repair some of the damage to the earth-bound sections of this movie.

However, one of Borzage's themes is the mystical power of love, and it is the handling of the celestial sections that make this great, from the arrival of the celestial train to the journey to 'the Hot Place'. H.B. Warner's performance here is, as always, perfect.

So we have here a flawed but very interesting version. I think that Lang's 1934 version is better, as well as the celestial scenes in the Henry King version of CAROUSEL, the watered-down musical remake. But I still greatly enjoyed this version and think you should give it a chance.

I can now see why this particular film directed by Frank Borzage is not one of his more famous ones. It simply isn't a very good film by today's standards. Much of this can be attributed to when it was made. Borzage was a fine director--particularly of silents. This one, however, is one of his early talking pictures--and it suffers from several problems relatively common in early talkies. The sound quality is only fair (you'll want to use the optional captions), some of the actors way over-annunciate and the dialog is, at times, poor. However, it was up to the director to re-shoot scenes where lines were flubbed--and too often they were used as-is and the film looks a bit rough because of it. A few examples are Julie's girlfriend and her often lousy style of delivering her lines (bizarre is more like it), the awkward way Farrell knocks down Hobart at 35 minutes into the film and the subsequent stilted dialog between Hobart and her male friend, the Carpenter.

As for the plot, "Liliom" is an odd film. Unlike some of Borzage's films where the nobility of the common man is demonstrated (such as in "Street Angel" and "Seventh Heaven"), here in "Liliom" the characters are poor but very earthy. Liliom is a ne'er-do-well--a leech who feeds off his girlfriend, knocks her up and hangs with low-life friends--a type plot you'd never see once the Production Code was strengthened in 1934. It's rather odd to see Charles Farrell (Liliom) in such a role--not the usual nice guy and a bit odd looking underneath his gypsy-like hair and mustache. As a result, it's harder to connect with his character and, in fact, you find yourself hating him. As for his poor girlfriend, Julie (Rose Hobart), she just seems weak and pathetic--and incredibly needy. Put in psychological terms, he seems like an antisocial personality and she like a dependent personality.

When the film begins, Liliom meets Julie and he seems taken with her but also very indifferent at the same time. As for the quiet Julie, she is clearly smitten and allows him to move in with her. He doesn't work and soon she becomes pregnant. All the while, one of Liliom's old girlfriends keeps popping in and out of the picture. When Liliom learns that Julie is pregnant, he finally tells the girlfriend to take a hike and he wants to be responsible. So, he does what such a guy would do--plans on a robbery with his friend to get cash. What happens next you'll just need to see for yourself--and I pretty much suspect that you will never guess! And does it get weird!!

While I found the plot at first unpleasant due to the annoying characters, sub-par acting for a Borzage film and disliked the sloppy scenes needing re-takes, there still was a lot to like in the film. Borzage was a master at cinematography and used black & white film in an ingenious manner--and the film's use of shadows and wonderful sets are impressive. This is something Borzage perfected in the silent years and it clearly carries over here. Also, while some noted that the rear-projected backgrounds were not very good, it was the first film to use this technique--and you need to give the film makers credit for this. I particularly loved the scene where the train came through the window--it was surreal, beautiful and impressive. And speaking of this, the plot does change and picks up considerably towards the end--and must be seen. As a result of so much good and bad, the overall film is bizarrely uneven. I cannot hate it, but I really couldn't unequivocally recommend it either (even with a cool second half). Simply put, it should have been a lot better.

By the way, it is interesting and fitting that H.B. Warner was cast as the Magistrate in the film considering only a few years before he played Jesus in "The King of Kings". And, didn't the plot seem to justify and even romanticize domestic violence?!

Molnar's dreamlike tragedy-fantasy is, as another poster said, just the meat for Frank Borzage, and he invests the material with a typically deft, warm hand. Those of us who love "Carousel" (I think it's the greatest musical ever written) will be struck by how similar they are, with nearly identical dialog in some spots, from a translation by Benjamin Glazer (though the translation is also rumored to be by one Lorenz Hart). The expressionistic, Murnau-like sets fit well, though they're illogical--would Liliom and Julie really have a picture window looking directly out on the amusement park? I'd give it a higher rating, but there's a fatal flaw: Charles Farrell, good-looking as he is, hasn't the requisite swagger for Liliom, and his high nasal voice isn't suitable. Rose Hobart is a suitably quiet, introspective Julie, and there's wonderful work from a young Lee Tracy. The Budapest setting isn't altogether realized, but there's some lovely, Kalman-like scoring, and the surviving print is, for its day, excellent.

Charles Farrell stars as the titular Liliom, a no-good 'barker', enticing people - especially pretty young ladies – to ride the carousel at the fairground. Along come servant Julie (Rose Hobart) and her colleague Marie and, to cut a long story short, Lil' and Jules find themselves unemployed, drinking in a beer-garden. Thus begins a not quite beautiful relationship. Liliom, being an 'artist', has trouble turning provider and Auntie-in-(common)law is running out of patience for the loafer on the sofa. Furthermore, Lil's former employer/lover, the sultry carousel owner Louise, wants him to come back to the fair, and his 'friend', 'The Buzzard', is never far off with his easy-money schemes… If you haven't had someone spoil the film for you, you're in for one hell of a surprise up ahead.

This is an early sound film and by jiminy it shows. The line readings are like children's TV – you know, sort of wooden and VERY clearly pronounced just in case the wee ones are still learning to understand their native tongues. BUT this film should be enjoyed as a sort of fairy tale anyway, so that isn't quite the problem here that it might be in a more conventional drama. The characters all come across intensely as living souls here and I found myself deeply affected by them. Visually it's other worldly, German expressionist, with the lights of the seemingly omnipresent carnival twinkling through the night and beautiful use of lighting throughout, bringing out the delightful faces of the leads. Some have objected to the film's offensive, out-dated gender politics – there's a possible reading that spousal abuse is fine if it was done for the right reasons; and that 'boys will be boys' and that's fine, even good! – but this wasn't the way I chose to read it. For me this was far from a moral/message film; more like an unforgettable surrealist's dream. Later remade in 1934 by Fritz Lang, and then again in 1956 by Henry King, as Carousel. Highly recommended.

Before the years of television and travel made easy by commercial aircraft, movie newsreels and feature films were the live action windows on the rest of the world for most Americans. Most of the films with Eastern Europe locales were based on novels or plays written by writers from those countries, or were made by directors and producers who came from there.

"Liliom" is one such film, based on a 1919 play of the same title by Hungarian author, Ference Molnar, known mostly by his professional name, Franz Molnar. This 1930 film is the first movie made of that play, with a screenplay by S.N. Behrman and Sonya Levien. The story takes place in Molnar's Budapest. Frank Borzage directed the Fox film with Charles Farrell in the lead role. Just four years later, Fox would remake the film with a major rewrite of the story, though still set in Budapest, and starring Charles Boyer.

The next major production of the story would be the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1956 musical, Carousel, again with a major revision of the story. It starred Gordon MacRae in the lead role and was directed by Henry King.

As the original play on film this is a good strory of love and drama, set around a carnival atmosphere. As it's a very early sound film, most of the cast seem somewhat wooden, probably due to the early sound techniques with stationary microphones. The sets also seem quite stagy. Still, itt's a fair film for a look at the original story as written by Molnar for his Austro-Hungarian stage of the time.

With the rudimentary production equipment and settings, this would probably not interest many movie goers of the 21st century.

For those posters who wondered about the quality of the new (Dec. 2008) DVD release of LILIOM, which is part of the over-stuffed, badly packaged Murnau and Borgaze at Fox set, the actual quality of this disc is unbelievably good. I don't know where they found their source elements, but this is a beautiful print, with only occasional flaws. The black and white photography is detailed and beautiful, allowing the best look we've had at the elaborate sets and interesting production design. Even Charles Farrell's voice, which is not ideal for this hyper-masculine role, is much improved on this newly restored print.

There is no commentary, but an impressive collection of still photos is included as an extra.

The film is still the stilted, downbeat, badly paced film it was before, but for "Carousel" aficionados, or fans of early talkies, this is a very interesting movie, which can now be experienced in a much more pleasurable manner. I would give the movie a 5-star rating, and the print 8 or 9. Amazingly good for its vintage!

I was attracted to the film because of the lead, Charles Farrell. I enjoyed watching him as the wonderful father in the 1950s Gale Storm sit-come "My Little Margie." Watching him here was a total delight. I loved how he humanized and made us feel sorry for a character whom was meant to be a perfect bastard. He is vain, dumb, arrogant and egotistical, but we instantly understand why Julie (Rose Hobart) falls in love with him. He is a loser and a dreamer, but Farrell plays him as a lost kid. The sets are terrific and it was wonderful to see a good print from 1930. I saw it on Youtube, where most of the pre-code films are barely watchable because of the bad transfers. This still has the striking cinematography by Chester Lyons that rivals "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". Sadly Lyons died only six years (nine films) after this film at the age of 51.

This movie is a fairy tale, but of the pre-Disney, "Match Girl" Brothers Grimm kind. It is not nice, but shows the awful side of life for the poor. There is a hands motif throughout the film. People express themselves with their hands. Julie's friend Marie tells her about passionate love. She explains that it is when your lover holds your hand and swings it back and forth. Notice how the seductive Buzzard (Lee Tracy) uses his hands in his scenes. Notice too how his hand is held in the climatic scene by the man he attacks. Finally, it is the hand of Liliom slapping the face of his daughter that ends his second chance.

There is also a neat train motif. Notice that Liliom dreams of taking a train to get to his dreamland of America. He yearns to be one of the fine gentlemen who rides on those trains. It is also on trains that he finds his destiny. Some feminist critics were upset that Liliom was an abusive lover and mentioned that the movie promoted domestic violence. That is nonsense. The movie makes clear that Liliom's violence occurs because Julie is smarter than him and he can't answer her. In other words, it explains his actions, but certainly doesn't justify or promote them. Even Julie's statement that you can love somebody so much that you don't feel the pain when somebody hits you, just means that love is more powerful than violence, a beautiful message, which does not at all excuse or promote domestic violence. It simply offers insight into it.

The movie is a religious fantasy promoting a neo/pseudo-Christian world-view, but it is done with style, so like Cecil B. Demille's "Ten Commandments," you hardly notice the theological lesson being promoted.

One of the funniest jokes in the movie is when the Chief Magistrate tells Lilliom that he is going to hell on a train called "the Red Express," He then adds parenthetically that no political message was intended. Of course, that the name of the train was the Red Express and it was going to hell would have been taken by most of the audience to be a political attack on the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union. It seems that a political message was intended.

The movie is fascinating and a beautiful work of art from the period that still moves us emotionally.

I'll have to watch more of the director Frank Borzage's work with this film in mind.

LILIOM (Fox Films, 1930), directed by Frank Borzage, stars Charles Farrell in the title role taken from a famous play by Fernec Molnar. With some silent screen adaptations based on this material, including A TRIP TO PARADISE (Metro, 1921) starring Bert Lytell, LILIOM became its first sound edition. Popularized years later as the Broadway musical, CAROUSEL (1945), later adapted as a 1956 motion picture, this early screen edition offers romance and sentiment in the Frank Borzage tradition, and often hailed as a motion picture of great promise weakened by the performance by its leading actor.

Opening title: "This play is the love story of Julie, a serving maid, and Liliom, a merry-go-round barker. Liliom gropes and struggles through life and death, and even beyond death, ever seeking escape from himself, while Julie's love for him endures always." Set in Budapest, Hungary, Julie (Rose Hobart), works as a servant girl accompanied by her friend, Marie (Mildred Van Dorn). As much as Julie turns down dates with a caring young carpenter (Walter Abel), Julie's sole interest is Liliom Zadowsky (Charles Farrell), an amusement park merry-go-round barker and ladies man. Although their union on the carousel is innocent, Liliom stirs up jealousy from his domineering employer, Madame Muskat (Estelle Taylor). She soon warns Julie to stay away from Liliom, who enters the scene by telling Madame Maskat that he does what he pleases. Losing his job, Liliom walks away with Julie to the pub where he drinks away his sorrows. Three months later, Liliom and Julie, now married, struggle through life's hardships. Liliom, still unemployed and having the reputation of being a lazy loafer by neighbors, turns down offers to return to Madame Muskat in favor of joining forces with Buzzard (Lee Tracy) to commit a robbery and use the stolen money for a better life in America, especially after learning that Julie is going to have a baby. Their plot of robbery fails. With Buzzard captured by the police, Liliom chooses the easy way out by taking his own life. On a train bound for Paradise, the soul of Liliom meets with the Chief Magistrate (H.B. Warner) who offers him a second chance in life to return to Earth. After serving ten years "in the hot place," he is given temporary freedom to visit with his daughter (Dawn O'Day). What Liliom does should determine his fate with destiny. Also in the cast are Lillian Elliott (Aunt Hulda); Bert Roach (Wolf Feiser); and Harvey Clark (The Angel Gabriel). Child actress, Dawn O'Day, would later become professionally known as Anne Shirley following to first leading role as ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (RKO, 1934).

As much as Charles Farrell's popularity rested upon his frequent pairing opposite Janet Gaynor (12 films in all), it's a wonder how successful he would have become acting opposite other young actresses instead. Having already done solo work opposite other leading ladies as Maureen O'Sullivan or Joan Bennett, Farrell is given Rose Hobart, making her movie debut. Farrell's leading role here, sporting dark curly hair and mustache, might have done it for him, but his weak voice was somewhat against him. Playing a similar character as an egotistical young man with a heart of gold in his first role opposite Gaynor in SEVENTH HEAVEN (1927), LILIOM, certainly has the makings of another Gaynor and Farrell romancer. Had Spencer Tracy assumed the role of Liliom instead, chances are the movie would have been a hit since Tracy acting ability seemed to be a better fit than Farrell. It's been critically said that the 1934 French-made adaptation of LILIOM starring Charles Boyer to be far superior, and possibly so. For the role of Julie, Rose Hobart does a commendable job. Her performance as a loyal wife with eternal love for her husband is certainly believable, as opposed to the pretty Mildred Van Dorn, whose weak acting and method of speaking limits the movie's credibility.

For an early 1930 talkie, LILIOM looks somewhat advanced in the European cinema sense, especially with its Heavenly futuristic scenes that make this movie seem more like a 1935 release instead. Aside from dark visuals of "film noir" style and underscoring, the train express leading to the clouds of Heaven with lavish settings is quite impressive. Aside from OUTWARD BOUND (Warners, 1930), the Heavenly theme and spiritual guidance would be done repeatedly a decade later starting with Robert Montgomery in HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (Columbia, 1941), which set the pace for other fantasies of this nature to come.

Unavailable for viewing in decades, LILIOM, has been resurrected through its distribution to DVD as a tribute to Academy Award winning director, Frank Borzage. For those familiar with the movie musical version of CAROUSEL (1956) starring Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, may want to take a look at this dramatic form of the same story and compare. (**)

Rear projection was a go-to special effect many Hollywood directors used during the Golden Age of Hollywood. The system made it easier to film actual location scenes inside the studio sets rather than going outside. Alfred Hitchcock was known for being a big proponent in rear projection. Even later directors such as Quentin Tarantino, despite the dazzling computer generate images existing today, will use the projection technique.

The first ever rear projection seen in film was October 1930's "Liliom." In the Frank Borzage-directed movie, Liliom (Charles Farrell), a merry-go-round barker and boyfriend to Julie (Rose Hobart), decides to kill himself one hour into the film rather than being arrested for being an accessory to a robbery. On his death bed, he has visions of Heaven's train approaching as he nears his final breath. The projection of the train appears on the left side of the screen while he and Julie are on the right. The train magically is seen bursting through the set and stops before the couple, collecting the deceased Liliom. Next stop: Heaven. The sequence is a dramatic construct of the new special effects in cinema.

"At its advent in the 1930s, rear projection was a game-changing technology," described writer Meg Shields on the process most viewers know when seeing actors filmed inside their car and the background is shown. "It gave filmmakers more control, consistency, and creative freedom to shoot what they wanted where they wanted. During its heyday, rear projection's major advantage over other compositing techniques was its efficiency. The process could be completed immediately on-set at the same time as principal photography. It could also be shot in the presence of the key filmmakers and performers and assessed promptly in the dailies."

Three developments in film technology in the late 1920's made rear projection possible. The synchronization between camera and projection motors, which was a by product of talking pictures syncing of sound and film, emerged. Kodak's sharper panchromatic film stock in 1928 gave the projected images a shaper focus than its predecessors. And stronger projection lamps were developed during that time.

Fox Films adapted the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Moinar's 1909 play 'Liliom.' The work was a popular theme in movies, including Fritz Lang's version in 1934 with Charles Boyer, and by Rogers and Hammerstein's 1945 play and 1956 movie "Carousel." The Borzage screenplay focuses on womanizer Liliom's encounter with blue-collar worker Julie at the carnival and falling in love. Actor Farrell, who amazingly made the transition to sound despite a pitchy voice, plays the tough guy who beats Julie on several occasions. Discovering she's pregnant, Liliom is persuaded by his corrupt friend to rob a bank casher. That's when things really go south.

"Liliom" was Borzage's second talkie. His first, featuring Irish tenor John McCormack and Margaret O'Sullivan's film debut, September 1930's 'Song o' My Heart,' introduced the director to microphones. In "Liliom" Borzage penciled in his favorite leads Farrell and Janet Gaynor. But the actress made demands that studio head William Fox didn't like. He yanked Gaynor out of the part and inserted rookie Rose Hobart in her place. Hobart's role coincidently began her acting career at age 15 playing Julie in an Atlantic City, New Jersey, performance of "Liliom." The movie launched an active life in front of the camera with over 40 movie appearances in 20 years. Hobart was caught up in the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee looking for Communist subversives in the early 1950s, putting an end to her screen appearances.

THE STORY & GENRE -- Carnival barker commits suicide and meets the afterlife in the final 30 minutes of this tragi-romance.

THE VERDICT -- My heresy is that IMO this film version is better than Fritz Lang's 1934 LILIOM, and just as good as CAROUSEL. Maybe it's that the philosophical markers are better lit here, not striving for Lang's hard watch or Carousel's artiness. I don't have a problem with Liliom's abusive nature because it's the antithesis of his carefree public demeanor, and it's a lesson also. If all we focus upon is what a person "ought to be" then we will not address the intricacies of the human relationship. The film does not purport to be Frank Capraesque or Kubrickese, there is no particular direction you're supposed to turn. I think many viewers have a hard time with that, although by no means would I call this an art film.

FREE ONLINE -- There is a 94-minute version with exit music, and a 92-minute version without exit music. Both can be found. The 90-minute with exit music just runs fast.