A major flaw with modern audiences' perception of film is the overemphasis on story and audiences' fixation of it even when it is unimportant and only aids a theme. Some films can have great visuals, yet not hold up at all because of the lack of story and the fact that it attempts to make the story important and a true fixture of the film, like a "traditional" film. A film like this would be Tarsem's The Fall, a shallow, stupid film with admittedly lovely issues.
Two late silent era films are often criticized today for their lack of an interesting story, relying on old cliches of love. The first is Sunrise, which is certainly the more well-known of the two, but the second is Paul Fejos's often forgotten Lonesome. Lonesome was lost for many years, and could be criticized for its run-of-the-mill plot- two lonely individuals meet and fall in love, only by knowing each others first name, and soon are separated. The plot doesn't do much, but Lonesome is still a spectacle to behold today, with its unconventional structure, awesome tinting and hand-painting, and its odd use of sound and dialogue.
Paul Fejos, a European who was a doctor and anthropologist as well as a filmmaker, builds the atmosphere of Lonesome by first dissecting New York city at a whole. Much of the film serves as a New York city symphony, which was an early documentary mode, most famously seen in Veratov's Man with the Movie Camera. The first inter-title describes New York as a machine, and we soon see its inner workings through an array of shots, and a good amount of superimpositions. This graphic structure itself is interesting, and makes up most of the film. A good portion of the film takes place at (presumably) Coney Island on the Fourth of July weekend, serving as an event documentary, displaying the sprawl of the city and its often dehumanizing effect. This theme aids the simple plot, and takes the weight of the theme off of the literal story.
Tinting and hand-painting of old film is a technique that still impresses to this day, as one can really appreciate the amount of hard work one puts into the process. On top of that, it just looks beautiful. Fejos changes the color of the tint on a mid-shot of the two lovers multiple times, while a great sequence shows the gentle coloring and lighting of a two lovers, alone on a bench (despite the fact that the dock is always packed besides this scene, and in fact, the lovers almost lose each other in the herd, but is empty for this one shot, which works emotionally instead of literally-rare for such an old film) adorned in yellow amongst a dark blue surrounding, again showcasing a "us and them" mentality, separating lovers from the swamp around them.
It is worth noting that Lonesome was an incredibly early sound film, I believe Universial's first, and only three or four scenes have spoken words. However, the dialogue is just bizarre, stilted, and hokey, reminding me of the great early sound parody "Tomatoes Another Day." The last sound sequence shows a confusing dialogue between the man and a cop, where the police commander speaks with sarcasm, but it is completely covert- and intended to be so, since our hero is upset. The dialogue is usually incredibly weak, but the one instance of deliberate toying with tone is an interesting direction experiment.
Lonseome is far from perfect, and it certainly makes sense why it was forgotten for so long. It is a strange, strange film which doesn't ever really know what it wants to be. However, its indecision makes it incredibly interesting and certainly worth a watch. All in all, Lonesome's oddity warrants a watch for its history and sustained entertainment value.
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