Paul Fejos

Paul Fejos , born Pál Fejős (born January 24, 1897 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary ; † April 23, 1963 in New York City , USA ) was a Hungarian director of feature and documentary films, and in later years a respected anthropologist .

Live and act

The native Pál Fejős was drafted in the First World War and served as a nurse in the hospital . Back in civil life, he gained his first artistic experience as a stage painter and stage decorator at the opera. In 1918 he began his career as a feature film director in his native Hungary, where he made several films over the next five years. In addition, he successfully completed his medical degree in 1921. In October 1923 Fejos emigrated to New York via Vienna, Berlin and Paris because of the uncertain political situation under Miklós Horthy . In the USA he tried, with little success, in several jobs before he settled in Los Angeles in 1926 . The following year his first US screenplay was filmed under the title Land of the Lawless , and in 1928 he made his US directorial debut with the drama The Last Moment . The story of a suicide told in flashbacks received a lot of praise from the critics because of its stringent structure and the unpretentious imagery, the young and at the time largely unknown Leon Shamroy . Then Fejos received a directing contract from Universal Studios .

His next work, Two Young Hearts , which tells of the brief encounter between a mechanic and a switchboard operator on Coney Island , who lose sight of each other and finally find them again, also met with some recognition. Fejo's greatest assets here were his precise powers of observation and his semi-documentary, sober narrative style, which distinguished him as a critical chronicler. After a few less successful productions in the transition from silent to sound film, including Illusion with Conrad Veidt , and the German version of a US prison drama ( People Behind Bars with Heinrich George and Gustav Diessl ), Fejos returned home to Europe. In 1931 he continued his directorial work in France with little luck. A year later, Paul Fejos returned to Hungary. With the film Marie , of which three versions in other languages ​​were also produced, he succeeded in an excellent story of a peasant girl expelled from rural Hungary into the city, which was highly praised by international critics. The film lived heavily on Fejos' ability to perfectly stage Hungary's Pusz Valley landscape and the performance of the French Annabella .

Despite certain merits, Fejos was not able to celebrate any major successes with his fisherman story “ People in the Storm ” or with the Austrian everyday story “ Sonnenstrahl ”, in which Annabella appeared again. Fejos then decided to largely quit his work as a feature film director and instead turned to documentary film. For Nordisk Film he directed in Madagascar , for Svensk Filmindustri he realized documentaries in Thailand , New Guinea and Central and Southeast Asia . After his expedition for the documentary Yagua , Fejos returned to the USA from Peru in 1941 . In New York Fejos was appointed head of the research department of the Viking Fund, an anthropological research company. In 1955 he rose to the presidency of this institution, which has now been renamed the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research . He also gave readings at prestigious universities such as Stanford , Yale and Columbia .

Paul Fejos died in 1963 at the age of 66, leaving behind his wife, the anthropologist Lita Binns, whom he married in 1958.

Filmography

• 1918: Tláni
• 1919: Pán (also screenplay)
• 1920: Lidércnyomás (also co-script)
• 1920: Újraélők
• 1921: A fekete kapitány
• 1921: Arsén Lupine utolsó kalandja
• 1922: Szenzáció
• 1923: Egri csillagok (also screenplay, unfinished)
• 1928: The Last Moment
• 1928: Two Young Hearts (Lonesome)
• 1929: Broadway (Broadway)
• 1929: Illusion (The Last Performance)
• 1930: The Captain of the Guard
• 1930: People behind bars (Men Behind Bars)
• 1930: Révolte dans la prison
• 1931: L'amour à l'américaine (only artistic direction)
• 1931: Fantômas (also screenplay)
• 1932: Marie
• 1932: Tavaszi zápor
• 1932: Marie, a Hungarian legend (Marie, légende hongroise)
• 1932: Prima dragoste
• 1932: Tempêtes
• 1932: People in the Storm (Itél a Balaton)
• 1933: Sonnenstrahl (also co-script)
• 1933: Gardez le sourire
• 1934: Voices of spring
• 1934: Flugten fra millonerne (also screenplay)
• 1935: Catch No. 1
• 1935: Det gyldne smil (also screenplay)
• 1936: Svarta horisonter (six-part short documentary series)
• 1937: Stammen lever an (short documentary film)
• 1937: Bambualdern på Mantaivei (short documentary film)
• 1937: Houdingens son är död (short documentary film)
• 1937: Draken på Komodo (short documentary)
• 1937: Byn vid den trivsamma fountain (short documentary film)
• 1938: Tambora (short documentary)
• 1938: Attsegla är noduaandigt (short documentary film)
• 1938: En handfull ris (documentary)
• 1939: Man och kvinna (co-director, co-screenplay)
• 1941: Yagua (short documentary)

literature

• Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 2: C - F. John Paddy Carstairs - Peter Fitz. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 636 f.
• Elisabeth Büttner (Ed.): Paul Fejos: the world makes film . Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna 2004

Web links

• Paul fejos in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Paul Fejos at filmportal.de
• John W. Dodds: Eulogy for PAUL FEJOS (1897–1963) (PDF; 2.3 MB)