623 Lonesome

[Jeff]

this is its own Eclipse set!

In 1080p with a nice set of supplements!

It doesn't look like he's linked it yet: here's Chris's take.

[swo17]

I dunno, I think my old copy of Lonesome looks just fine...

[triodelover]

If only Glenn Tryon didn't lo so much like Sean Hannity's brother...

[Brianruns10]

Oops, am I reading the Savant review correctly? There's only mention of an audio essay on "Broadway", but it sounds as if the film itself was not included. If that were true, it would mean a major letdown, even though two complete films ("Lonesome" and "The Last Performance") would still be a cause to be overjoyed.

It's not your fault. Broadway IS in this set. I read the review too, and I don't know what was up with the writer, if he had a hard deadline or what, but he really dropped the ball, by completely omitting a very, very significant extra on this. I mean, I'm anticipating this set MORE for the inclusion of "Broadway," than I am for "Lonesome."

[Tommaso]

Well, I can't think of any film I'd like more to see on dvd than "Lonesome", but I have to admit that I haven't seen "Broadway" yet. Even the backchannels seem to have only compromised versions of that film (one with Hungarian intertitles, the other a honourable but probably not fully successful attempt at 'privately restoring' the sound version with footage from the silent version). Great fan work, but thankfully we will now be able to leave all this behind...

[colinr0380]

DVD Beaver

[Tommaso]

Heavens, yes, I've got it...

First of all I have to say thanks to importcds.com, an online retailer totally unknown to me until someone recommended them here recently in another thread. I gave them a chance due to them having the cheapest price on this set, and lo and behold: they managed to send it to Germany ultra-quick, and so I have this jewel in my hands even before the official release date. Totally great, because I was already anticipating a terrible wait of four weeks or so, while everybody else here was being already out of their mind for the sheer stunningness (does that word exist?) of this set and especially the main film...

Even though I don't know "Broadway" yet, there was no way around for me to watch "Lonesome" first. I had seen two different prints before, an Italian and a Hungarian one (with intertitles in the respective languages, IIRC), and both were completely silent: no music, no talking passages. So the greatest interest for me was the sound. Interesting to hear the original music soundtrack, because it is surprisingly upbeat and gives the film a somewhat lighter feeling, a rather joyful twist in places in a film that I had hitherto experienced mainly as a heartbreakingly romantic thing in the first place. Fantastic to hear the music of the storywise important "Always" 78 rpm finally, in any case. On the other hand, the spoken passages felt almost as an intrusion in this completely poetic masterpiece, adding nothing to the story but somewhat distracting from Fejös' hypnotic flow of images, especially the inserted sequence at the police station, which appeared to me as an unfortunate afterthought more than ever. You can clearly see that it is a mere insertion when the film picks up at the fair immediately afterwards. Strange, but in the interest of filmic poetry I would perhaps almost have preferred a version without it.

Otherwise, I'm completely with David about the colour sequences. Absolutely fantastic, delirious, and extremely beautiful, like the whole film. And as I'm not 100% convinced of the original score: if there's ever been a film on which In The Nursery should lay their soundtracking fingers, this one must be it.

The transfer is very fine, of course, the two full films on the second disc are incredible extras in any case (whatever "Broadway" may turn out to be; "The Last Performance" is a very fine film for sure), the booklet texts are extremely informative, and I'll now watch the film again with the audiocommentary, which I'm sure will provide me with further insights, so in a mood of silent enthusiasm let me state already: this set is an absolute must-have for sure; it's everything CC used to stand for in former years (and not always recently). I'm simply overjoyed about it.

[denti alligator]

Thanks, Tommaso. You're making my wait that much more intolerable!

[Tommaso]

Denti, it's out tomorrow officially, so the wait won't be long anymore. And your post is a good chance to mention that it was actually you who first made me aware of this marvel a long, long time ago. Thanks a lot, really!

[Jonathan S]

Fantastic to hear the music of the storywise important "Always" 78 rpm finally, in any case.

When I compiled a needle-drop soundtrack for Lonesome a few years ago, I was very disappointed I couldn't find an instrumental-only version of Berlin's song for inclusion and had to resort to other music. (Maybe it's a vocal on the real soundtrack? But I've always tried to avoid that when "scoring" silents.)

"Always" has been used for primarily dramatic - rather than musical - effect in several major films. Blithe Spirit and Siodmak's Christmas Holiday come to mind. I gather it's also quite central to Pride of the Yankees, which I haven't seen. Any others?

[mfunk9786]

I'm guessing that I'm the only person on Amazon who used his $15 promotional credit from pre-ordering Madden 13 towards this.

[Tommaso]

Have watched the other two films now. "The last performance" is a fine little film, probably not quite complete with its only 59 minutes, living basically from Veidt's performance. Imdb, probably wrongly, gives this as a 1927 film, so I always thought that it had been made before "Lonesome". Learning that it was actually made after that masterpiece somehow diminished my appreciation of it because I couldn't help seeing it as a step backwards now, with less inventiveness and boldness than the main feature, obviously. Still an entertaining film, although the piano score is again the conventional stuff one expects from Sosin.

"Broadway" is probably the much more interesting film, with a daring title sequence containing a giant striding through the streets of New York, pouring champagne. Positively weird and unexpected. Equally unexpected is the mix of the gangster and musical film genres that makes up the film, but it works surprisingly well, and the camerawork is outstanding and miles ahead of the plain look of almost all the other musical films of that very early sound vintage. The technicolor finale is very brief, but effective. Again, not "Lonesome" level, but a very fine addition to the still rather small number of earliest talkies on disc. I only wished for optional subs here, because the sound clearly shows its age, and some of it was rather difficult to understand for a non-native speaker like me.

[manicsounds]

Bluraydef review

[Drucker]

I watched the main feature Lonesome last night and wanted to lavish a bit of praise on it. Certainly one of the most upbeat and vibrant silent films I've ever seen (in my admittedly short film-watching life). While the moving camera and city feel certainly resemble Murnau to a degree, the vibe I felt the most was almost Man With a Movie Camera-styled. The film is hectic and hypnotic, and really a pleasure throughout.

Yes the talkie sequences are annoying (especially the first and last one; honestly the one in the middle, if it were there alone, wouldn't have been as distracting, considering it comes right as the color appears in the film). But otherwise, this release is a knockout. I loved the dazzlingly beautiful color sequences are, as well as an amazing on-board the Cyclone sequence at Coney Island.

The PQ and audio really aren't as shoddy as some reviews led me to believe. The start of the picture is a little rough, and the last scene is really, really messy, with what I assume is mold(?), but otherwise, the film looks great.
The title screen for the blu ray doesn't have any moving images (reads "top menu" rather than a timer...is that unusual?)

[htshell]

The beginning and end of silent era film (well... any film) always has more damage than the middle. Without seeing it, I'd hazard a guess that what you see at the end isn't mold but nitrate decomposition.

[CSM126]

To be fair, the booklet does mention mold damage, so it could be.

[mfunk9786]

What a lovely film. Feels completely groundbreaking, especially when color appears and talkie sequences come up. I suppose I understand the grouchiness over these, but I think they're well-acted and well-directed, and give the film an avant garde and experimental feel that a lot of silent films, by nature of their limitations, don't often achieve. Honestly, the film that it brought to mind more than any other for me is Punch-Drunk Love, a film in which the lead characters' very sudden romantic pursuits are only limited by interference from the outside world and their own neuroses. It's also a really neat historical archive and inadvertent commentary on pre-Great Depression American excess (all that confetti!) in the 1920s, particularly in New York City. Even with all this complexity and experimentation, it's a movie that knows exactly when to end, lest it overstay it's welcome and reduce the effect of the whole experience. A really warm, inviting piece of work that I'm so honored to have in my collection in such a flawless edition.

[Drucker]

The beginning and end of silent era film (well... any film) always has more damage than the middle. Without seeing it, I'd hazard a guess that what you see at the end isn't mold but nitrate decomposition.

I had recently watched The Red Shoes restoration video, and the damage at the end of Lonesome certainly resembles the damage on the reels identified as mold in that film.

[htshell]

Fair enough! Lonesome is one of my most-anticipated Criterions since the Jean Vigo set, though I won't be able to buy it for a bit..

[peerpee]

This is a fantastic Blu-ray. LONESOME is a very simple film but has a lot of magic.

Other than the sheer thrill of the two additional Fejos films in this edition, one of the most amazing extras I've seen lately is the FEJOS MEMORIAL visual essay from 1963 (20 minutes). It's like a pitch-perfect vintage Wes Anderson documentary. Hilarious and extremely fascinating.

[matrixschmatrix]

Just rewatched Lonesome-

It's still a fascinating movie, sort of a hybrid between a People On Sunday ordinary folk take on the city symphony thing and and extended take on the city scenes in Sunrise. Obviously the way it's tinted is pretty spectacular- it's hard to imagine getting the effect of the gleaming reds and blues of the carnival in any other context, as it really feels like an invitation to a magical world- and the use of the soundtrack is really effective, with the constant background murmur of a million people accentuating both the delight of being happy in a big crowd and the anxiety of trying to find someone through one. The transmission of information through sound seems pretty advanced, too, both in the big climax and earlier, when both leads here the truck-back band summoning them to the beach.

Yet the actual dialog scenes are really shocking in how horrible they are. I'm assuming they're all post hoc, as they all either repeat or prefigure information that's given more effectively elsewhere, or serve only to break the flow of a more interesting sequence, but more than that, and more than the sudden deadness of the everything on scene compared with the glorious liveliness of the rest of the movie- our leads suddenly seem dumb as hell, and all the acting disappears from them. Mary goes from a sweet, somewhat reserved woman who is obviously smarter than Jim, to a credulous idiot who sounds like a 7 year old, and Jim goes from a naive and sweetly romantic man to a bragging jerk. And the one in the courthouse is worse still- all three performances are awful, the whole thing makes very little sense, and one has to wonder how it is that Jim got to the police station and back and had his little argument over the course of what appears to be maybe thirty seconds, from Mary's end. Ugh.

Doesn't come anywhere near ruining the movie, of course- it would take something pretty remarkable to do that, and in some ways it highlights the fluidity of the silent camera, and the intelligence with which the music and effects track is used. But I don't know that I've ever seen a more striking juxtaposition of extraordinary craftsmanship and a big, embarrassing turd of a scene (or three) in anything else I've ever watched.

[Noiretirc]

Yeah, I couldn't agree more: those dialog scenes are cringeworthy, and I wonder if Fejos is on record with respect to his feelings about them being added by the studio. Surely the "directors cut" of Lonesome would see them gone, and we would be spared this rather unpleasant interruption.

[swo17]

You have to view those scenes in their historical context. At that point in time, talking pictures were still incredibly new and, yes, often cringeworthy by today's standards. But those scenes still have a sort of endearing "you are witnessing the invention of sliced bread" quality to them, and they're of a piece with the other playful experiments in the film.

[zedz]

I think the problem is that any such 'director's cut' would be purely speculative, since the talkie version was how it was released, and I don't think Fejos ever commented on it one way or another (because why would he?). So it wouldn't be a director's cut, it would be a fan cut - though maybe an arguable and rational one.

It's a bit like reconstructing a 'Brian Wilson' cut of Pet Sounds by 'correcting' the tracks that were interfered with / imposed by Capitol ("Sloop John B"), Mike Love ("I Know There's an Answer") and Murry Wilson ("Caroline, No"). Those pieces of interference are all documented, but as far as I know Brian has never expressed dissatisfaction about the 'compromised' release.

[Drucker]

In addition, at least the scenes were shot by Fejos, as opposed to talkie scenes in films like 4 Devils and City Girl/Our Daily Bread that were done without Murnau.