Lonesome (1928)

Originally posted to Facebook on 8/26/2018

Lonesome was our ninth film from 1928. It was directed by Pál Fejös, and starred Barbara Kent and Glenn Tryon. We'd seen Kent before in a small role as Lars Hanson's younger sister in 1926's Flesh and the Devil, but this is the first time we've seen the other two. (Kent, interestingly, died rather recently at the age of 103, in 2011.)

This film is the first we've seen with synced dialog, though only during three brief scenes. I didn't tell the kids ahead of time, and their excited reaction when Kent and Tryon began talking for the first time was gratifying.

The plot overall is about two lonely young people in the city finding each other and falling in love. It reminded me of the early sections of The Crowd -- in its urban setting, and its slice-of-life approach. Its scope was narrower though -- covering a single day -- and in that respect it could be described as a 1920s version of Before Sunrise -- though the later film was much more textured and probing. The best scenes in this movie are of Kent and Tryon getting to know each other, and starting to relax in each other's presence. It is notable how confident the movie is about having relatively little plot -- but unfortunately the few plot threads that are present result in a disappointingly stupid ending.

The synced dialog also detracts from the movie, though of course it was one of my motivations for selecting the film, and also one of the things that lends it historical significance. But it was nonetheless extraneous and distracting, particularly the latter two talking sequences. The first sequence took place on the beach, and though superfluous, and clearly present only for the novelty, it was at least in keeping with the film thematically. The second sequence looked as though it was shot on a dark empty sound stage -- the beach and surroundings where the leads are supposedly talking mysteriously vanish for a few minutes. The final scene takes place in a police station, and the writing, pacing, and acting are embarrassingly bad -- understandable given the infancy of talking pictures, but still not a welcome development. Overall, this movie would have been better as a straight silent, though I'm not sure we would have seen it had that been the approach.

Next week we'll see Beggars of Life, our tenth film from 1928, which features our first encounter with Louise Brooks. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT