623 Lonesome

[domino harvey]

Re: the dirty look. Jim was wolfing down his food and the proprietor gave him a judge-y look as if to say "Check yourself" and Jim replies by slowing down for two seconds before looking up at the clock and going into hyperdrive again. I don't think more info/cards are needed?

[Drucker]

I must have missed that detail. Thanks for clearing it up.

[Gregory]

To answer the second one, Jim tells the cop that the girl's name is Mary but that he doesn't know her full name and is short on other details about her.

About the talking sequences, it was interesting to learn from the commentary that while these part-talking pictures are almost universally derided, Fejos actually believed that a hybrid between silent and all-talking films was the most promising format. Lonesome doesn't seem to support this hypothesis! Many of the synced music and sound effects were done extremely well, but not the dialogue scenes. If it had been possible to compare the silent version as it was presented (not really the same as turning on the subtitles and muting the sound), I'd bet that it was the better film.

[jindianajonz]

Re: the dirty look. Jim was wolfing down his food and the proprietor gave him a judge-y look as if to say "Check yourself" and Jim replies by slowing down for two seconds before looking up at the clock and going into hyperdrive again. I don't think more info/cards are needed?

The commentary mentions this film was restored from a French version of the film, and says that it's possible that there was originally a title card here in the English version, but was lost in the move to French (possibly due to being an unstranslateable English idiom)

[zedz]

For the record, the print of the film I saw before the restoration (about fifteen years before the restoration) included the talking scenes, so it's not just a matter of before / after restoration for those. Also, the scenes aren't really improved by muting the dialogue, since it's the entire pace and style of those scenes that are 'off'. I just watch them with mental parentheses around them, knowing they weren't part of Fejos' original conception.

I feel like those scenes are just one more instance of a big studio not understanding the film they've commissioned and trying to 'improve' it in a dumb, literal, fashionable way in order to make it more commercial. Even though this strategy has a top class record of abject failure, the studios continue in the same grand tradition to this day.

[swo17]

Hmmm...the version I had seen through backchannels was, I believe, from a Hungarian TV broadcast (Fejos is of course Hungarian) and it played like a typical black-and-white silent film straight through.

[YnEoS]

Jonethan Rosenbaum mentions 3 versions

Significantly, Lonesome is available in three separate versions today. A sound version has the advantage of enhancing the viewer’s sense of city bustle (traffic and crowds) through its sound effects, while the use of music actually becomes central to the plot in the final scene. When the despondent Jim plays his record of “Always” on his phonograph — the tune to which he and his beloved Mary danced in the Coney Island dance hall — it leads him and Mary to discover that they live in adjacent flats and provides the clinching irony to this fable about urban alienation.

The same sound version, however, has three brief added dialogue scenes — all of them awkwardly staged and played and unnecessary to the plot; they were clearly tacked on because of the burgeoning commercial fad for talkies.

A silent version (sometimes shown today) of this longer Lonesome highlights the inadequacy of these insertions even further by revealing how totally pointless they are without the actual talk. The oriiginal silent Lonesome, on the other hand, seems entirely adequate. Indeed, it is so grounded in purely (and self-sufficiently) visual forms of rhetoric that it seems unlikely that any filmmaker geared mainly to talkies would have ever conceived it.

Seems like one silent version has the sound scenes muted, and another has them excised entirely.

My recollection from the last round of the 1920s list, was that the silent version without any of the talking scenes was the only version readily available on the backchannels.

[Sloper]

We had some discussion of this film four years ago in the 1920s thread. I haven’t had time to look through the whole thing, but here’s knives; and here’s Tommaso, followed by swo, myrnaloy and me. Apologies if there were interesting posts elsewhere that I've missed.

"Love at first sight" is the most obvious explanation for Jim's persistence in quickly courting Mary and his decision that he's ready to marry her. But do couples in films like Lonesome fall in love so quickly because that's part of the pace of city life, and anything you find can slip through the characters' fingers at any moment? ... Lonesome and The Clock both show the city to be a place where everything is regimented and regulated under complex systems that try to keep the chaos at bay. I think the characters are not just "Lonesome" but alienated by their highly repetitive work and the habits and routines they've settled into. But it's interesting to me that Lonesome, which maintains a very light feel from beginning to end, doesn't portray any of this (chaos on the one hand or regimentation and law on the other) as potential evils. The viewer can delight in seeing the characters sail through challenges with almost unbelievable luck.

And of course, those routines are handled so well early on, and enable us to get a sense of the characters, with Jim late, behind schedule, just barely getting by...he's certainly not the slickest character (which makes him desirable, in the end, seeing the creeps who hit on Mary). And Mary, forced to get ready in the morning and doll herself up just right. Is this in case she does find Mr. Right?

It’s telling that when Jim first sees Mary, and apparently falls for her, she is using her brooch-pin to fend off the creep who’s been rubbing up against her on the bus – and this is the very man who turns up to invade her personal space again the moment she loses Jim.

The keynote with Mary’s character is her guarded, defensive attitude towards the world. The opening scene in her hotel room hints at this, not only when we see her getting dolled up to face the world, but even when she opens her curtain and smiles out at the beautiful day. At first glance, this seems like a genuine, heartfelt expression of life-affirming joy, but as the film goes on Mary’s bright smile takes on a different meaning. We see her smiling as she sits down to her work at the switchboard, but then only see the back of her head as she operates the machine: those clamouring monsters demanding her assistance only see (or, rather, hear) the smiling façade, but from our privileged perspective we can see what a hellish, de-humanising job this is. Then, when she’s saying goodbye to her friends, the camera lingers a little too long on Mary’s smiling face, so that when the car finally drives off and the smile fades, we have a fuller sense of how much effort Mary puts into this almost-unchanging expression of happiness.

And of course we see this all the way through her brief courtship with Jim. He wears every thought and every feeling out in the open (again, this is clear from our introduction to him, and from the scene where he returns home after work, un-self-consciously airing out his sweat-soaked body...), whereas she does all she can to maintain control and to establish boundaries. His sincerity, his eagerness to please her, and his unaffected awkwardness and occasional weakness, are proven again and again at every stage of their day out: he offers to prove his strength but abandons the attempt to go after her, she sits on his shoulders and he collapses under her, she makes him think that she’s married but he still helps her to find the ring (the creep on the bus would have abandoned, rebuked or tried to seduce her at this point), he mocks his own failure to pose properly for the photo and then praises her beauty, he pats her hand like an over-eager puppy at the fortune-teller’s booth but backs off when she displays annoyance, and so on. This whole process is about Mary testing Jim out, and in some ways it all plays into wearily familiar gender stereotypes. But the point is that Mary is constantly under threat in this world, therefore constantly on her guard against it, and therefore attracted to someone like Jim who is earnest to a fault, non-threatening, and incessantly protective.

Jim, for his part, strives to involve himself in the world and the lives of people around him. We see this when he dives into the crowd at the subway entrance, and when he looks bizarrely happy, the doughnut clasped between his teeth, as he is carried into the train by this sea of people. (As an aside, I love the detail of the guard wiping the inside of his cap, suggesting the intense heat but also helping to establish this film’s keen, subtly invasive eye for the mundane details of individuals’ private lives.) Jim even tries to socialise with these strangers – for him, the world is not threatening but thwarting, continually rebuffing him, tripping him up or throwing obstacles in his way. What he and Mary have in common is a basic sensitivity that seems thoroughly lacking in the world around them: it’s this sensitivity that Jim perceives behind Mary’s defensiveness (whereas the other people who rebuff him are just mean-spirited), and that Mary perceives behind his (potentially creepy) advances.

It’s also this sensitivity, which at its deepest level is a longing for human affection, that makes them both venture outside, paradoxically hoping to find a refuge from this unsympathetic world in a place which, in this film, arguably comes to stand for everything that’s fundamentally wrong with this world. Perhaps that seems like a misguided statement, but I think that, as in Sunrise or The Crowd, these two people find love in spite of the bustling, urban environment they live in, and ultimately by retreating from it – not by embracing it.

Coney Island is a thoroughly phony place here, a cacophony of mindless dazzle, and this point is nicely driven home when Jim and Mary lose each other, and we see swirling images of the band-leader conducting ‘Always’ superimposed over images of the lovers calling out to each other. The seemingly friendly bustle of Coney Island turns out to be an alienating maelstrom: it’s one of the rides here, in conjunction with the crowd of rubber-neckers and the over-zealous cop, that separates the two lovers, and from then on every person and every object in this place works to keep them apart. The ticket-seller could easily help them out, but verbally abuses them instead, and the billboard they both lean against at one point seems to echo his mindlessly divisive function.

Yes, they turn out to live next to each other, but in such a huge city this is an incredible stroke of luck, and I think the twist here leaves us to reflect on how alienating these apparently over-intimate living accommodations are. The apartment block is not conducive to personal relationships, in which sense it is like the rest of this unfriendly city. When the lovers are reunited (thanks to Mary’s uncharacteristically spontaneous emotional outburst), the final image shows them huddling together and cradling the doll between them, as their heads lean against each other and block the camera’s view. What they seem to find in each other is not only the chance of a conventional, nuclear family, but also something private and secluded, something real that the phony, grasping world outside can’t get at.

It makes for an interesting contrast, in this regard, to Fejos’ later Sonnenstrahl, which explores many of the same themes, but ultimately finds redemption in a large tenement block, whose residents come to form a more nurturing community within (and against) the cruel urban environment that has repeatedly injured and rejected the two central lovers, who meet for the first time while both attempting suicide.

About the talking sequences, it was interesting to learn from the commentary that while these part-talking pictures are almost universally derided, Fejos actually believed that a hybrid between silent and all-talking films was the most promising format. Lonesome doesn't seem to support this hypothesis!

Well the just-mentioned Sonnenstrahl gives some idea of what Fejos may have had in mind. I don’t actually like the film very much (it’s stomach-churningly cute), but it is very clever in its extensive use of mimed action in the key scenes, interspersed with sparing but effective use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. And I suspect Fejos meant that film should remain a primarily visual medium, and continue to take advantage of the various opportunities unique to the ‘silent’ and ‘talkie’ modes, rather than simply throwing out the first and adopting the latter wholesale.

Finally, since this post will end up back in the Criterion edition’s thread – this really is a terrific package, especially with the inclusion of the other two films on Disc 2. They’re not as good as Lonesome, of course, but each is fascinating and brilliant in its own way. Some stunning camerawork in both films, and again that eye for tiny, personal details and emotional nuance. Not at all surprising that Fejos became fed up with the artifice of Hollywood, or that he ended up becoming an anthropologist...

[domino harvey]

For me the most interesting aspect of Mary and Jim's dynamic is her guarded, almost playful approach to Jim's courtship, and I like Sloper's reading on this as being part of her hesitancy towards all men based on a lifetime of smarmy guys trying to get her via cheap pick-ups. Which makes her realization only after she's seemingly lost Jim that she really cares about him all the more effective. One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet: Unless I missed it, our lovers never actually kiss, even at moments when the entire world seems to be egging them on, as when Jim wins "A doll and a kiss" and is told to collect the latter part of the prize from his lady, or in the teary finale. It reminds me a bit of the ending to the Apartment, with our separated and weary lovers happily reconciled but not fully coupled yet.

And I for one will stick up for the sound elements, if just because I've seen plenty of creaky sound/semi-sound Hollywood pics from this time and have been exposed to far worse than what we get here. I didn't think any of the segments were bad and certainly none "ruined" anything. I even chuckled at Mary's delivery in her response to "I bet your name is Mary Smith"-- "I bet it ain't!"

[Gregory]

When Jim said "Well, Mary, you've found your little lamb, and he's going to follow wherever you go," I almost lost any interest in seeing the two end up together. Yuck. Next time I'm muting it.

Sloper's description of the film's unreal Coney Island as an alienating maelstrom is right on the money. Even though it doesn't need to be realistic, the real Coney Island was often just like that in the summer, as far as I can tell. Compare this Weegee photo from 1940, for example:

[domino harvey]

Yuck. Next time I'm muting it.

O' come on now boy-o, don't give me no' o' that blarney or y'll be facin' me shillelagh!

[Emak-Bakia]

With regards to the dialogue scenes: I’m in agreement about the second and third talkie parts being a distraction, but I like the first for all the background noises, such as a man (seen behind Mary) strumming his ukulele and children playing. It adds a nice bit of realism to the scene. Unfortunately, the others were clearly recorded on an echoey soundstage, thus they sound totally lifeless and cut off from the rest of the world.

I thought the first talking scene had quite a bit of potential- it really is quite surprising to hear voices for the first time after half an hour of silence, and to have it happen the first time the couple really chats with eachother gives the viewer the impression that they have pulled themselves out of the wordless machinery of city life and find an actual human connection. But the poor dialogue and the static camera tarnish what could have been an excellent scene.

Yeah, I had similar thoughts watching it this time around. Although I like the scene for the reason described above, it is frustrating that it’s incorporated so clumsily. I think that with just a bit more consideration given to the dialogue and performances in these scenes, it would have been possible to make them very effective moments of intimacy.

And does anyone know why the talkie scenes are in so much better shape than the rest of the film? The fact that they appear to be from entirely different film elements only makes the transition to these scenes more jarring.

[Tommaso]

About the talking sequences, it was interesting to learn from the commentary that while these part-talking pictures are almost universally derided, Fejos actually believed that a hybrid between silent and all-talking films was the most promising format. Lonesome doesn't seem to support this hypothesis!

Well the just-mentioned Sonnenstrahl gives some idea of what Fejos may have had in mind. I don’t actually like the film very much (it’s stomach-churningly cute), but it is very clever in its extensive use of mimed action in the key scenes, interspersed with sparing but effective use of both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. And I suspect Fejos meant that film should remain a primarily visual medium, and continue to take advantage of the various opportunities unique to the ‘silent’ and ‘talkie’ modes, rather than simply throwing out the first and adopting the latter wholesale.

I think an even better example is Fejös' 1932 "Spring Shower" or its French version "Marie, legende hongroise", a film which wonderfully uses music and sound, but tells its story almost exclusively without dialogue, and the little bits of dialogue (twenty lines for the whole film?) are completely unnecessary because everything is clear already from the carefully set-up script and the differentiated acting. The intention was perhaps somewhat similar to those silents written by Carl Mayer ("Sylvester", "Der letzte Mann") which come with next-to-no intertitles , i.e. to tell the story entirely from a visual point-of-view and make a 'pure' film without the crutches of text, no matter whether it's written or spoken. I feel the same is somewhat true for "Lonesome", which is why the dialogue scenes would probably be a distraction even if they were not so excruciatingly badly executed.

[bjh2009]

I believe it's Simmel's thoughts on Social Distance, I'll have to look further into it. Thanks!

For what it's worth, I immediately thought Simmel, particularly his essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life."

[Calvin]

I've watched Lonesome a couple of times before, but it's never had as much of an impact on me as it did this time around during the time of COVID-19.

“New York wakes up—the machinery of life begins to move.”
“In the whirlpool of modern life—the most difficult thing is to live alone”

Due to health issues, I haven't left my house in three months and, though I thankfully don't live alone, I'm acutely aware that there will be many others in a similar situation to me who don't have such a support network around them. Who will have had no or minimal physical contact in months, who may have only communicated with others through digital methods. This is all rather tangential to Lonesome itself, but it struck me how Fejos' images of crowds, the theme of urban alienation and how the mental state of loneliness can persist irrespective of being around people have taken on a new power in these times. When lockdown was eased, there were pictures of crowds who had headed to the beach - but making attempts to maintain a 2m distance between each group, in stark contrast to the minefield that Mary and Jim have to navigate through on Coney Island. Lonesome feels more like a fantasy than ever before, if not a public health horror, though perhaps it's a cause for optimism, coming 10 years after the Spanish flu which I'm sure Fejos hadn't forgotten considering his medical degree.

--

I notice that the Hungarian Film Archive uploaded a clip of Fejös's Spring Shower to YouTube a few days ago - it looks to be taken from an HD scan, if not a full blown restoration. Has anyone heard anything about a release?

I also notice that the Film Archiv Austria are selling a DVD edition of Sonnenstrahl - is this the recent restoration?

[Tommaso]

I don't know about a recent restoration of "Sonnenstrahl"; but the FAA disc was released already in 2011. It's quite a fine disc nevertheless.

Unfortunately I haven't heard anything about a release of "Spring Shower". Would be really great to have that one, as well as Fejös' second Austrian film "Frühlingsstimmen".

[Calvin]

I don't know about a recent restoration of "Sonnenstrahl"; but the FAA disc was released already in 2011. It's quite a fine disc nevertheless.

Unfortunately I haven't heard anything about a release of "Spring Shower". Would be really great to have that one, as well as Fejös' second Austrian film "Frühlingsstimmen".

Thank you, Tommaso. Sonnenstrahl was screened as part of the classics strand at the Venice Film Festival in 2015, but I can't seem to find any details regarding whether or not it was a (then) new restoration. I've contacted the Filmarchiv Austria to see if I can find out more.

[hearthesilence]

I finally saw Broadway as it's part of MoMA's restoration festival, and it's the first time this new restoration has screened in New York City. Details:

This new restoration from Universal synthesizes several different sources and includes the surviving Technicolor sequences.

4K digital restoration by Universal Pictures from the 35mm nitrate original negative, 35mm composite fine grain, and 35mm two-strip (red/green) original.

FYI, there was only one Technicolor sequence - the very last scene - and I'm guessing previous viewers will know it well because this description from Wikipedia matches up:

Both the silent version and the talking version of Broadway are extant, but the surviving talking version is incomplete. The color sequence at the end survives in color and in sound but the sound survives separately from the picture. The surviving color footage is from the silent version and has been synchronized to the surviving disc audio.

The new restoration is indeed for the "talking" version, and I'm guessing the color footage is the same one used in the silent version because you immediately see the lead character moving his mouth to no matching singing whatsoever.

It's a very good restoration from what I'm guessing are materials in less than ideal condition, but the film itself really is a letdown. Lonesome remains one of my favorite films, and while the talking sequences are marred by dreadful dialogue (which Fejos didn't even direct), it's not a huge deal as those moments are very brief. They also retain some charm as being very early examples of synchronized sound in what's still primarily a silent film. Otherwise, the vast majority of the film comes off as a technical tour de force and offers a meticulous look at everyday life in the 1920s that's very moving and very appropriate coming from someone who'd become a renowned anthropologist. With Broadway, it's as if the ratio has been inverted - the exteriors (more or less all crane shots over an impressively detailed model of Times Square) and all the musical numbers and all the scenes taking place on the floor of the club are phenomenal, not just for the camera movements but also for the beautiful production design. Even when the songs aren't so hot, it doesn't matter, the movie takes off during these sequences. This is probably about 10% of the film - the other 90% takes place backstage and it's almost entirely a drag as the dialogue and plot are terrible.

MoMA's website says the movie "decisively challenges the persistent myth that the arrival of synchronized dialogue resulted in static, stage-bound cinema," but I don't think that's entirely the case. Since the actors appear to be lip-synching their songs, the musical numbers likely had the advantage of having a reference (i.e. pre-recorded music) they could play on set for everyone to move to and then to use as the actual soundtrack - in other words, they don't have to worry about capturing live sound because they already have this recording, thus freeing the camera to go anywhere Fejos wants. As soon as they go backstage, all of that goes away, and the camera immediately gets weighed down as we follow the hackneyed plot of gangsters and a love triangle. A shame, but I'm still glad I saw it, and if I ever see it again, I'll probably skip everything backstage.