Lonesome

This film is outstanding.

A man and woman leave their respective rented rooms for work. He's a "punch presser"; she's a switchboard operator. After work, neither one feels up to joining friends; they just feel too ... single. But they both head to Coney Island. They meet, fall in love, get separated, return home distressed. A plot that simple, even clichéd, does not appear to hold much promise.

But the energy! The pacing is so frenetic. There's constant movement on camera, clocks ticking, crowds scurrying, throngs crushing, machines stamping, carnivals, streamers, roller coaster rides. Moments of relative calm come when the lovers are together.

The thrilling impersonality of the urban maelstrom has hardly been better depicted. I came away thinking it was one of the best things I've seen.

If you've seen "The Devil and Miss Jones", the Jean Arthur / Robert Cummings comedy from 1941, then you can't help but remember the Coney Island beach scene where everyone is packed in together with barely room to move.

Well, this film has a scene just like that one. In fact, the greater part of the film is that way. You're never so alone as when you're in a crowd. These scenes are funny, but they do make their point.

I saw a restored print of "Solitude" (as it was titled) with colour tinting and three sound sequences, courtesy of Cinematheque Ontario. The sound segments are just awful, so typical of the very earliest sound, but perhaps they're a blessing in disguise. The extraordinary quality of the silent film is spotlighted by the awkwardness of these three brief scenes: Jim and Mary on the beach, Jim and Mary near the midway, Jim at the police station.

The ultimate restoration of this elusive marvel would make the film silent throughout, liberating it from the stylistic cacophony of the stilted sound sequences.

Neither lead performer, Barbara Kent nor Glenn Tryon, was known to me previously. (Andy Devine is plainly recognizable however.) It seems that Tryon later became the producer of "Hellzapoppin" and "Hold That Ghost". He also holds the only acting credit for a film that anyone at all seems to have seen, "Variety Girl" from 1947. To me, Barbara Kent resembles Paulette Goddard somewhat, while Glenn Tryon looks like a brother to Don DeFore and Bob Cummings.

The screening I attended was the Toronto première of the restoration. Let's hope it now becomes more widely available.

There are at least three levels at which 'Lonesome' is an extremely interesting film.

1. It is a sweet story of two lonely people in a big anonymous city who meet, fall in love and lose each other. The picture is well-acted, and the two lead actors Barbara Kent (Mary) and Glenn Tryon (Jim) are perfectly matched; they both give nuanced and sensitive performances.

2. The style of the picture is almost documentary, which makes it interesting from a social history point of view. In some ways, nothing much has changed over the last 100 years: People are still commuting to work, the subway in New York was as crowded as the London Underground is today (I don't know about New York in 2022), you get annoyed at the same kind of behaviour of your fellow passengers (e.g. Eating smelly food) etc. Obviously other things have changed: The type of work we do, for example, and we no longer bond over serialised novels published in newspapers that we read. Nevertheless, we are still living in what is recognisably the same kind of society. I found this aspect of 'Lonesome' particularly interesting.

3. Technologically, 'Lonesome' was highly innovative, being the perfect example of a film that came out during the transition phase from silent pictures to talkies to colour films. Initially, it looks like a normal black and white silent film to which music and some sound effects have been added. However, some scenes have spoken dialogue, and some are even in colour, or at least partly colorised. People back then must have felt they were living in an exciting age of innovation; I am sure they expected that within the next few years, all talking and maybe even all colour films would become the norm.

So why am I giving 'Lonesome' no more than 8 stars? Well, there are a few flaws. First, the dialogue sounds as stilted as if the actors were reading it from a sheet, and on top of that, a bit of it does not seem to make much sense (the scene at the police). It feels like an afterthought, like something director Pal Fejös inserted after having finished the rest of the film. Second, the colour effects are not particularly nice to look at. The colours are just garish. They were certainly innovative, but the film would look better without them. And finally, the plot is so simple that it barely exists. The only real problem the characters face appears almost at the end of the film, and its resolution does not logically follow from anything that happened earlier; it just comes about by chance. I am reserving 9 stars for pictures that are as good as perfect, and 10 for those that have some particular emotional quality or style that takes them into the small group of my favourite films (like e.g. 'North by Northwest', which for my taste must be one of the most stylish films ever made). 'Lonesome' is very good, but not as good as that. Hence 8 stars.

The striking character of this film is its extreme intensity in a fantastic camera work that keeps rushing on in breathless frenzy to the very bitter end of the film. It's almost like a documentary in its constant flow of following the crowds from the working places to the reckless carneval of Coney Island, never leaving the strenuous hard pace of life for one second, except for the moments when the lovers find each other. Then there is a touch of poetry, which also marks the film with a totally different character, which makes it doubly interesting. This film is like no other film, the closest in likeness is actually Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" which also wallows in following the crowds in wild frenzy, but here the lovers provide some privacy and individualism, which is totally missing in Eisenstein's masterpiece, and this is certainly a masterpiece of the same rank but on a different level, for its very human touch of simplicity and basic togetherness. There are also some resemblance to Fritz Lang's "Liliom" with Charles Boyer, which also renders the carneval and wild pleasure hunting in frenzied rush of popular festivity in unforgettable cinematography.

Paul Fejos made many documentaries, he was a master and genius in observing and capturing life at its most original and basic level, his documentaries are from Madagascar, South East Asia, Peru apart from Europe and America, he made altogether 44 films, and this is just an example of his extremely personal and highly advanced art of the film.

...that I cannot stand my own company...says the hero.

This could be the optimistic side of King Vidor's "the crowd".This era was a time when the pursuit of happiness was legitimate and "even with a face like that" you could hope to find the woman of your dreams.Robert Siodmak would make "Menschen Am Sonntag" and Marcel Carné "Nogent Eldorado Du Dimanche" soon after ,and would replace Coney Island by the banks of the Rhine or of the Seine.

1928 was the year before the crash .Even in the biggest city in the world ,you can be lonelier than the loneliest of creatures.He pretends he is a millionaire ,she pretends she is a princess ;in fact he is a working man,she is an operator .

It is not as optimistic as it seems at first sight.The crowds are hostile and do nothing to help them ,they are as selfish as today's crowds .

"Lonesome " is an important movie,if only for its simplicity and its spontaneity.Everything happens in the short space of one day (from the rude awakening to the night when solitude becomes even harder to bear ) and the two principals are really endearing ,almost matching Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell.

NB:Paul Fejos would continue his career in France in the early thirties where he directed Annabella in a tragic melodrama ("Marie Legende Hongroise")and a remake of Feuillade's "Fantomas", the first third of which surpasses the original .

It's a shame Lonesome hasn't been seen more widely by modern audiences. The limited acclaim it's received is well deserved.

Lonesome is very simple. It's no more than a little romantic movie of two people who fall in love and then appear to lose each other. But the whole thing is told expertly well. The camera moves about freely in many unique and interesting ways. Visually alone, it's quite the spectacle. It also helps that the two in the lead roles are enjoyable.

Glenn Tyron is good enough in his lead role, but his romantic interest, played by Barbara Kent, is the real star. She is fun and playful when needed, but her soulful eyes convey more pain then most people ever could with their voices. Her charisma is evident from shot one.

The only downside to the film is the inclusion of a few sound scenes. Clearly done just to cash in on the new craze, it actually only serves to grind the story to a halt. It forces the movie to become stationary, and the dialogue itself is pretty inane.

I cannot recommend the film strongly enough, though. It's as enjoyable of a romance as you'll ever see. There's nothing too complicated here: just two people falling in love, and it's a joy to see.