LONESOME - #623

What a lovely surprise. What a simple treasure. Lonesome is easily the most delightful Criterion title you’ve never heard of. You’re going to be sorry you waited so long to see it.

Lonesome is a 1928 silent film from Paul Fejos, a Hungarian transplant to Hollywood. Fejos led quite an interesting life, the many turns of which are chronicled in the autobiographical video essay included on this disc, and so it makes sense that the restless explorer would transform a straightforward script about two working-class New Yorkers falling in love into a lively, experimental treat.

We begin on a typical morning as the two characters roll out of bed and go about their routine. Mary (Barbara Kent) is a telephone operator, Jim (Glenn Tryon) is an assembly line worker. Both live alone, both trudge back and forth from work to their tiny apartments. On the weekend, when different couples they work with plan activities they can do together, rather than be a third wheel, both instead opt to travel out to Coney Island on their own for the Fourth of July. There, as fate would have it, they meet. They end up spending the day together, enjoying the pleasures of the beach and the spectacle of the holiday, only to be pulled apart by circumstance, unsure if they’ll ever meet again.

There’s not much to this summation, but there is much to what appears onscreen. Fejos pulls out all the stops, almost as if he is working his way through a wish list of special effects and innovations just in case he never gets to make a movie ever again. He superimposes images over each other to show the excitement of Coney Island, including the dizziness the lovers experience on the spinning wheel. He uses tinting and rudimentary color to show the spectacle of the lights and the fireworks. There is even a sing-along midway through, encouraging viewers to follow the bouncing ball and become a part of the outing. There are also several different dialogue sequences, added to capitalize on the growing trend of talking pictures.

Fejos mostly uses these special segments to show the courtship of Mary and Jim. We eavesdrop as they flirt and tease and make plans. The director keenly understands that the key to a romantic movie is that the romance be real, and so he capitalizes on the meet-cute, even going so far as to isolate his actors in an empty space, a metaphorical representation of the all-too-common feeling experienced by two people falling in love: it was like suddenly there was no one else around. Granted, this might have been born of necessity. With Kent and Tryon alone on a soundstage, there was no reason to worry about extraneous noise. Necessity equals opportunity in this case. The two performers prove to have excellent chemistry, and the intimacy of the technique makes us part of their blossoming love story.

It’s hard to imagine why Lonesome doesn’t have a larger reputation. Mostly lost over the years, its sweet take on the plight of modern singles was paving the way for countless “lonely hearts in the city” rom-coms to follow. Yet, it would never be done again with such little pretention or calculation. There is something natural and spontaneous to Lonesome, with the filmmaker making the most of the tools available to him: his actors, the setting, the feeling of falling heels over head. While in other filmmakers’ hands, the threadbare plot and anything-goes aesthetic might have seemed like showing off or being more concerned with show pieces than character, the naïve excitement with which Fejos approaches it all that makes Lonesome special. Mary and Jim aren’t merely common or simple, but rather, they’re relatable. In the days before online dating and texting, when young adults might go out on their own and meet people, the despair of single living could give way to the hopeful dream of love. Fejos isn’t judging his characters, nor is he playing it for laughs; rather, the director is a wide-eyed romantic, and he opens his camera lens just as wide to all the possibilities available.

Sure, there’s a certain formula to this, especially in the “will fate intervene?” ending, but Lonesome knows where it hails from. In one of their conversations, Mary and Jim talk about a rather fanciful Saturday Evening Post story they both read. Many good writers wrote formulaic tales for the Post, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, who always managed to make a silly twist work through absolute belief and commitment in his craft. (My favorite is “The Offshore Pirate,” where the titular rapscallion turns out to be a rich playboy looking for love, because of course he is.) It similarly works here. Not just from Fejos’ efforts, but Kent and Tryon’s, too. They are 100% dedicated to the moment, and they play it with a winning sincerity.

Though barely clocking in over an hour, don’t fret, Lonesome is worth the price alone--but you also get some pretty impressive bonuses on the Criterion disc in the form of two other full-length Fejos features, both from 1929 (more or less).

Broadway is a full talkie, and a musical to boot. The film is based on a play co-written by George Abbott of DamnYankees fame. While its backstage-nightclub plot is nothing too intriguing, Fejos’ facility with the camera makes it fun, and his innovative use of a crane means the musical numbers are larger and more ambitious than other talkies of the period. Plus, the final song-and-dance was shot in two-strip Technicolor, rescued here by Criterion.

Storywise, Broadway crosses the standard love triangle narrative with early gangster tropes. The nightclub show is run by a would-be hood, who stirs up trouble both by taking out a rival and also hitting on one of his biggest stars. Glenn Tryon returns here as the song-and-dance man with his eye on Billie (Merna Kennedy), the hoofer who has likewise caught the eye of their tough-guy boss (Thomas E. Jackson). Also of note is the streetwise chorus girl played by Evelyn Brent, who previously starred in von Sternberg’s Underworld [review].

Fejos packs out the nightclub set with flappers and tuxedoes, and spends most of the musical performances either looking down from above or circling the room to capture the party crowd. He also opens the picture with an audacious recasting of New York as a mythological locale. The songs may be as forgettable as the script, but you’ll hardly mind.  

The third film in the set, The Last Performance had its silent debut slightly earlier than the others (1927), though it had sound added on wider release in 1929. That version is lost, and Criterion presents a Danish print of the original here. Stepping away from the New York locale for Europe, but sticking to the theatrical life featured in Broadway, Fejos helms a story of a stage magician and hypnotist, Erik the Great (Conrad Veidt, seen in The Thief of Baghdad [review] as Jaffar and later as countless Nazis in roles in films like Casablanca). Erik has designs on his pretty assistant (Mary Philbin, also Veidt’s co-star in The Man WhoLaughs), but so do other members of his entourage. When the girl’s attentions stray, Erik turns to trickery of another kind to try to bring her back around.

The Last Performance is the most conventional of the movies offered, which is funny since it’s the most fantatistical at the same time. Fejos sticks to a fairly straightforward aesthetic, though occasional shots do stand out, including a fairly imposing use of shadow, reminiscent of Soviet and German propaganda images from the era, in the scene where Erik discovers the infidelity. I also quite liked Fejos’ zooming back and forth between hypnotist and subject to show Erik’s influence over the crowd in his stage show. I quite like mysteries featuring hypnotists doing dirty deeds, as evinced by my comic with Dan Christensen, ArcherCoe & the Thousand Natural Shocks, so this is right up my alley. A melodramatic ending aside, The Last Performance is quality entertainment.

Paul Fejos

PRIVATE LIVES OF ALEXANDER KORDA: THE PRIVATE LIFE OF DON JUAN - ECLIPSE SERIES 16

"What is romantic about spending your life telling women they are everything they are not?"

The jocular tone of Alexander Korda's 1934 film The Private Life of Don Juan is evident from the get-go, as is its sexual undercurrents. Or should I say overcurrents? The movie opens on a fountain spraying high into the air as a minstrel sings the ballad of the titular lover, the unseen Don Juan, desired by wives, hated by husbands. Women all across Seville are forlorn because their love lives have dwindled since the famous ladies man departed, only to have their spirits lifted as a mysterious figure, appearing to us only as a shadow, arrives beneath their despondent balconies to toss them a flower. Could it be that Don Juan has returned to woo them anew? Passion erupts, just like that fountain, rising up and going...well, nowhere.

The Private Life of Don Juan isn't so much a romantic comedy as it is a comedy of romance. Korda and writers Frederick Lonsdale and Lajos Biro (a regular on Korda movies, but who also wrote von Sternberg's The Last Command [review]), working from a play by Henri Bataille, aren't interested in the legend of Don Juan, except to skewer and deflate it. Screen legend Douglas Fairbanks, here in a rare talkie and also starring in his final feature, leads the film as the heroic lover. He has snuck back home under a veil of secrecy, hoping to avoid being jailed for debts that his angry wife, Doña Dolores (Benita Hume), has purchased in order to lord them over his head. Don Juan has seen better days. He is older and tired, maybe a little like the aging actor who plays him, not as ready to perform as in the old days, and also finding that he is being replaced. The man handing out flowers wasn't Don Juan, though now the whole town thinks it was. It's a new casanova looking to follow in the Don's footsteps.

Opportunity strikes when Don Juan leaves his wife waiting yet again, choosing instead to woo the pretty dancer Antonita (Merle Oberon). While he makes love to her, his doppelganger is straining his back to climb a balcony in another part of town. When the fake Don Juan is run through with an angry husband's sword, the real deal sees a way to sneak off, avoiding handcuffs by playing dead until he can save up enough to buy his way out of jail. Only, once Don Juan has gone, a new industry springs up around his memory. A scandalous, exaggerated biography becomes a best seller, and an opportunistic playwright crafts a stage production celebrating his alleged exploits. Fearing his legacy has gotten beyond his control, Don Juan returns to Seville to announce he is alive.

And here is where the true sting comes. No one will believe this middle-aged man is the real Don Juan. Antonita remembers him as younger, with a different mouth and blue eyes. The theatre audience laughs at the legendary lothario when he interrupts the play. There is no way for the man to live up to the mythology that exists around him. The truth is not important. When the play's author asks the audience which they'd prefer, a Don Juan who is just a man or the one who is a heroic phantom, they choose the phantom.

It's a fairly prescient depiction of the downfalls of fame. Old Hollywood and its stars had a particular knack for creating actors to fit a predetermined image. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was known for his stunt work and his suave persona, and he must have more than once been in a situation where the truth couldn't live up to the publicity. One has to respect his lack of ego for poking fun at himself here. He's still very charming on screen, smiling and laughing, even as the Don Juan act falters. In the film's final scene, his usual lines are turned down, the woman he says them to has already heard them. Don Juan has no defense. That gambit is all he has. It's a revelation both mirthful and mournful. The old soul is accepting his new position. The myth is learning to be fine with being just a man.

Jim Jarmusch fans will likely recognize the funeral scene in The Private Life of Don Juan from Broken Flowers, the indie director's own film about the twilight of a ladies man. It's the movie that Bill Murray's character, also named Don, is watching early in the film, as he realizes how alone he really is. Jarmusch has picked this section for a reason. Korda's scene has a lot of emotional subtext. Here is the man, believed dead, standing amongst a legion of black-clad women who have come to mourn his passing--and he knows not a one of them. These aren't his actual lovers, these are women who believed in the fantasy, who are crying over something they never had. In reality, for all his conquests, Don Juan is alone. Sure, he is amused to be cut loose, but then frustrated that he can't reclaim his identity. Don Juan has to shed everything to learn what's truly important. He has to understand his biggest fib is not his practiced rap, but everything he pretended to be. People believe the lies because there was no other truth.

The Private Life of Don Juan has a heavy meaning, but it's not a heavy movie. Far from it. It's the lightest of the Alexander Korda pictures in the Eclipse set. The episodic script moves quickly from one scenario to the next, a series of quick comic bursts, some of them schticky, some of them sensual, sometimes both. The culmination is probably when the exiled Don tries to show a barmaid (Binnie Barnes) that he can be everything his biography claims him to be, but it takes a couple of tries to deliver the "hot lava." Korda is having fun peeling back the curtains to peek into the bedroom, to show the construct behind the myth. Just as Flora Robson stole The Rise of Catherine the Great [review] in her showy supporting role as the Empress, The Private Life of Don Juan is taken over by Melville Cooper, playing Leporello, the long-suffering organizer of Don Juan's life. He's the one who makes sure Don Juan eats the right food to stay in shape, and who organizes his social engagements. Cooper is like the 1930s equivalent of F. Murray Abraham, blustery and forceful and very funny. The biggest laugh comes midway through the film when he cuts one of Don's hostesses to the quick, saying his favorite meal is a gabby old woman's tongue. And not while it's still in her mouth.

What really makes The Private Life of Don Juan work, though, is that Korda doesn't sacrifice that glib tone in order to make his point. Don Juan settles down and expresses his lesson learned, but he delivers his epiphany with the same blithe manner as he has said everything leading up to it. It's a new seduction, you see, one that is about allowing himself to be seduced as much as he is doing the seducing. He's falling in love with life in a whole new way.

3 SILENT CLASSICS BY JOSEF VON STERNBERG - #528

"From now on you are my prisoner of war...and my prisoner of love."

It's interesting to look at Josef von Sternberg's early filmography and see how many films he worked on without credit or was eventually fired from. Having spent some time earlier this year researching one of those projects, I was aware he had gone through some struggles between his scrappy independent debut, The Salvation Hunters, in 1925 and his first studio picture, Underworld, in 1927, but you have to admire the guy for sticking it out. Then again, given how headstrong and defiantly individualistic his films were, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The new boxed set from Criterion, 3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg, picks up with Underworld and shows us the director's early development. Though the Austrian immigrant would eventually be best known for his sexy collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, he started off in a much different place, exploring a more realistic world than the exaggerated, opulent, and oft-times grotesque settings that would distinguish The Scarlet Empress or his Gene Tierney-led noir The Shanghai Gesture. Yet, even when the young filmmaker was recreating the mean streets and the back alleys of urban America, von Sternberg still found ways to be von Sternberg. The trio in 3 Silent Classics are rich with memorable images and a confident command of the movie screen, rife with the kind of psychological expressionism that would set von Sternberg apart from the rest. (Be sure to watch Janet Bergrstrom's video essay on Underworld for a succinct and fascinating elaboration on von Sternberg's career prior to this breakthrough.)

* Underworld (1927): This early gangster picture was built off a story by Ben Hecht, with a little doctoring by Howard Hawks, the guys who would eventually make the genre-defining Scarface. Underworld precedes that film by five years, but it actually plays a little fresher than its more famous descendent. George Bancroft stars as the corpulent crime boss Bull Weed. Just think about that name for a second: he's a deadly, oversized animal whose presence in a healthy area strangles the life right out of it. Underworld opens with Bull robbing a bank by basically blowing it up, setting the stage for his getaway. He's a larger-than-life figure in a larger-than-life city--though ostensibly Chicago, it's also a place called Dreamland. It's a landscape with dark corners, and von Sternberg's use of its unnatural shadows would greatly influence film noir.

For as crazy as all the above sounds, and for how outrageous the film often looks, most of the Underworld plot is fairly conventional. Bull takes a down-on-his-luck, alcoholic lawyer nicknamed Rolls Royce (Clive Brook) under his wing, helping the brainiac get back on his feet. Bull's thanks? Royce falls for his moll, a flapper named Feathers (an alluring Evelyn Brent). Surprisingly, both feel guilty for succumbing to their sexual nature (a theme of von Sternberg's), but then, Bull is a pretty generous guy. He's the prototype of the neighborhood gangster who spreads his ill-gotten gains around. He'll sneak the money out of your pocket with one hand and give it back with the other.

Things come to a head during Underworld's most inventive scenario. The hometown criminals hold a party every year and declare a one-night armistice. They file into a ballroom, checking their coats and guns at the door, and dance the night away. The lead bad guys campaign for their girls and get the others to vote for their favorite to be Queen of the Ball, which sets up Bull's rival, the flower-shop-owner Buck Mulligan (Fred Kohler), to make his move. Bull fights back, gets pinched, and gets in hot water.

This central event is audacious and riveting, like what the consul of criminals from Fritz Lang's M gets up to when they want to have a good time. Ticker-tape is everywhere, booze is flowing, von Sternberg even takes the time to show pranks the hoods play on one another. One montage in particular has the director's fingerprints all over it. As the night wears on, von Sternberg takes us from the point where too much booze has been consumed to the point where the dancing has ended by putting together a series of grotesque close-ups of the guys and gals, showing just their faces as the hooch takes over. They get uglier and more nauseous with each new subject. The movie is pre-Code and so frank with its bad behavior, including some pretty salacious come-ons and visual entendres. It's the perfect subject matter for the director, whose films are always erotically charged and engorged on visual metaphor. Symbols often stand in for character--the actual feathers for Feathers, the flowers for Mulligan.

The acting is all solid in Underworld. von Sternberg keeps the exaggerated gestures under control, knowing what works best for his story. The most over-the-top moments are reserved for Bancroft's laughs, which are hearty and demented. There are some narrative leaps in a jailbreak in the final act, von Sternberg leaving out some of the steps, but given how much we've seen that kind of thing before, you can fill in the gaps, I'm sure. The movie has a sentimental yet effectively existential third act that avoids some of the clichés later gangster movies would run into the ground.

Surprisingly, Paramount thought Underworld was a stinker and limited its release. Ben Hecht apparently even tried to get his name taken off. Lucky for him, he failed. Word of mouth saved the picture, and Hecht won a writing Oscar for his story.

* The Last Command (1928): The great German star Emil Jannings (The Last Laugh, Faust [reviews]) stars as a former Russian general, Grand Duke Sergius Alexander, who has been exiled to Hollywood following the 1917 Russian Revolution. Sergius has taken to movie acting to make money, and as fate would have it, his first assignment is playing a Tsarist general. Little does he know, he was picked out of a pile of prospective performers by the movie's director (William Powell, The Thin Man) because he is another expatriate, and back home, Sergius locked him in prison. The director wants to see what happened to the man who was so cruel to him.

Cruelty is a running theme throughout The Last Command. The broken soldier is taunted by his fellow actors, who refuse to believe he is who he says he is. The general still carries around a medal the Czar gave him, it's a point of pride for him, and when we flash back to his downfall, we never see him without it. The majority of the movie takes place ten years prior, when Sergius was in charge of the front and the future film director was the head of an acting troupe that was going to perform for the soldiers. Noting that this radical influence has a pretty actress with him, Sergius decides to take advantage. He goads the director into rash action in order to arrest him, and then he takes Natalie (Evelyn Brent again) for his own.

The Last Command is based partially on the life of General Lodijensky, a real Russian leader who fled to Hollywood following the rise of the Communists. von Sternberg takes a sympathetic approach to his portrayal, but it's not one that is necessarily skewed to either side. Rather, the politics and the morality portrayed are complex and often contradictory. Jannings plays Sergius as a tragic figure. He treats citizens with a misguided entitlement, but he cares for his country and his soldiers. Natalie can't help but be attracted to him, she sees he's more than a uniform and fancy medals.

Eventually, the Revolution reaches a fever pitch, and here is where von Sternberg's sense of visual drama really shines. Cutting back and forth between the heads of the army living it up on a train and the gathering of Communists in the streets, von Sternberg eventually unleashes a sea of people in a series of breathtaking scenes where the revolutionaries focus their anger on the general. This sequence combines bombastic filmmaking with imagery straight out of Communist propaganda. Yet, the freedom fighters aren't shown as heroes. When the shoes are on the other feet, they can be just as awful to their fellow man as they believe the rulers were to them.

Jannings is a powerful screen actor, and he and von Sternberg work in concert to give The Last Command the kind of sturm und drang a tragedy of this kind requires. Jannings even picked up an Oscar for his efforts. Evelyn Brent is also really good as Natalie, who has some character changes that are far different and more challenging that the character arc of Feathers in Underworld. The period re-creations look phenomenal, and the climactic scenes of the flashback--which involve a train, a bridge, and a frozen lake--are not just amazing to look at, but they carry a devastating emotional punch.

Also quite neat to look at are von Sternberg's replications of a movie set. We get to see the backstage and the cattle call of extras, and we go out in front of the cameras to see Sergius' ironic fate drawn to a close. It's an effective finish, with the old soldier caught somewhere between the bloated buffoonery of Falstaff and the sad ravings of Lear. I am not sure I quite buy Powell's final lines (as seen on a title card, naturally), the sentiment seems forced--particularly as the closing image of the quiet soundstage works so well to blur the lines between fact and fiction. It's part metafiction, part a cinematic take on the theatrical curtain call.

* The Docks of New York (1928): Josef von Sternberg reteamed with his Underworld star George Bancroft for the second of many movies they made together. In this one, Bancroft plays Bill Roberts, a sailor on leave for one night in New York. Bill is a "stoker," one of the guys who works in the belly of the ship shoveling coal into its big burning engine. It's dirty work, and so when Bill goes on land, he's ready to blow off some steam of his own.

Plans go a different way, though, when he happens upon Mae (Betty Compson) flailing about in the water. She means to kill herself, but Bill isn't having it. He takes her to a nearby bar to dry out, and the two end up bonding. They've both seen their fair share of trouble, and there isn't a romantic bone in either of their bodies, but this is a von Sternberg film, so the animal attraction is enough. They spend the night dilly dallying around one another, and even end up dragging a preacher (Gustav von Seyffertitz) in to perform a marriage ceremony.

They also run afoul of trouble. The crew boss (Mitchell Lewis) from Bill's ship is drinking at the same bar, and he's got it in for Bill and wants a piece of Mae himself. His wife (Olga Baclanova) is none too thrilled with it either. There's going to be plenty of drinkin', brawlin', and carousin' before the night is through.

von Sternberg and cinematographer Harold Rosson create a rundown, realistic urban landscape for The Docks of New York. The bar that the couple spend most of their time in looks seedy, and Mae's apartment is falling apart. Scenes down in the bowels of the ship are remarkable documents of the industrial setting. The fire light and the glistening oil make Bill's world both hellacious and majestic. von Sternberg choreographs each scene down to the finest detail. Watch the mirrors in the bar. Just because Mae and Bill are alone in the foreground doesn't mean there isn't something going on in the background. von Sternberg sets it up so we can see the other patrons in the glass behind them, and they react and interact with what is in front of the camera.

Bancroft is excellent again. Bill doesn't have the magnanimity or expressiveness of Bull Weed, but the actor does manage an interior life for him. Much seems to be going on when he looks at Mae. Betty Compson is also very good. She is sexy and has attitude, but she's also weary. That said, the scene stealer is easily Olga Baclanova. She pulls off so much just by the way she stands, hand on hip, hip cocked out. She's getting fed up, and it shows.

Naturally, Bill wakes up the next morning with no real intention of sticking around with Mae, even though she kind of wishes he would. It's the first sentimentality that von Sternberg has allowed to creep into the picture. This is a love affair that is practical, not magical. That makes the little ground the two eventually do give to each other all the more meaningful. It took a lot for them to take those baby steps.

3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg is one of my favorite boxed sets to come along this year. All the films are both engrossing to watch and to look at. von Sternberg had an individualistic personality, and his vision shows in every frame. From the gangster chic of Underworld to the period war drama The Last Command and through the stark melodrama of The Docks of New York, he was developing his craft and establishing a style that was all his own.

For a full rundown on the special features, read the full review at DVDTalk.