Year: 1928
Director: Paul Fejos
Country: U.S
Language: English
Warm-hearted silent films are always going to have a special place in my film collection. Charlie Chaplin has always left me in awe at films like Modern Times (1935) and The Gold Rush (1925), and made me tear up while watching The Kid (1921) and City Lights (1931). Of course, while Paul Fejos' Lonesome does not have the same style as the great Chaplin, his film certainly evoke the same emotions. Fejos' film is an almost forgotten treasure that is worthy of some very high praise.
A buried treasure from Hollywood's Golden Age. Lonesome stars Glenn Tryon as a lonely man named Jim and Barbara Kent as a lonely woman named Mary.They meet accidentally on their Saturday-off at Coney Island. It is love at fight sight but over the bewilderment of their sudden romance and escape from loneliness, they don't even realize they don't even known each others' name until a fire breaks out and they are separated.
Lonesome was one of the last few beautiful almost- silent films before the rise of the talkies. It is visual poetry, expressionistic and lyrical. Beautifully crafted, while most early semi-silents had rough unclear dialouge, this film places strong importance on clear dialogue that could be understood by pretty much any English speaker. The visuals are partly what make this film so great, montages compare Jim and Mary's eerily similar days as they get up to work, go to work and then go home lonely only to see that a fair is about to take place. The colors and the incredible editing style of this film show the excitement of the fair and what a break from work and a new chance at love means for these lonely people. Interestingly enough neither visuals or dialogue distract from the story nor the emotion of the film, which is a rarity in films during the transitioning period.
Lonesome feels more like a European picture as it focuses on an innocent love rather thn any sort of violence at all. It was not even technically made like most American pictures around that time. I think Lonesome is a critique of the busy attitude of Americans, like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? 30 years later, it seeks to change the idea of "success". Both Jim and Mary work very well at their jobs but are desperately lonely and feel miserable afterwards. Their work only numbs the pain, but they don't get any joy from it.
In conclusion, Lonesome's ending was breathtakingly beautiful. It reminded me of Chaplin's City Lights and how powerful that ending was. The dialogue is cute but funny. "I love her", "oh? what's her name then?", "I..don't know". Some of it I found darkly humorous due to hindsight, "I'm very rich, I work on Wall Street!" Considering one year later the stock market would crash and he would be dirt poor, the romance would not have worked out if he had actually worked on Wall Street. Praise it! 5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment