ORIGINAL TITLE
Lonesome
1928
DIRECTOR
Pál Fejös
SCREENPLAY
Mann Page, Edward T. Lowe Jr., Tom Reed
PRODUCTION
Carl Laemmle Jr., Oskar Schubert-Stevens
DURATION
69 minutes
COUNTRY
USA
CAST
Barbara Kent, Glenn Tryon
Original English version with Italian subtitles
PLOT
In 1928, the Hungarian filmmaker Paul Fejös directed this beautiful silent film, in which the pleasures and tragedies of life, big and small, are summed up in a single summer’s day at the beach just outside New York City. Jim (Glenn Tryon) is a day laborer who decides to get some sun and see the water on the same day that Mary (Barbara Kent), a telephone operator, chooses to do the exact same day.
Fejös chronicles the joy this lonely pair experiences through pursuing the kinds of vacation-day adventures that any couple would. But just as they’re brought together by fate, they end up being separated by act of fate as well. Scrambling to reconnect by pushing through the immense crowds – who, ironically, are enjoying themselves with the same activities that Jim and Mary shared – all they know of each other are their first names, probably among the most common names in America at the time. “Lonesome” describes their emotional state at the beginning of the movie. And through the perfectly cast young actors, Fejös and screenwriter Mann Page allow us to take part in nearly the entire spectrum of feeling in a cinematic parable.