Two young hearts (1928)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Two young hearts |
| Original title | Lonesome |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1928 |
| length | 6,785 feet (2,068.068 m) (audio version) 6,193 feet (1,887.6264 m) (silent version), approx. 70 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Paul Fejos |
| script |
Edward T. Lowe Jr.Tom Reed (subtitles) |
| production | Carl Laemmle |
| music | Joseph Cherniavsky |
| camera | Gilbert Warrenton |
| cut | Frank Atkinson |
| occupation | |
| |
Two young hearts (original title: Lonesome ) is an American film by the Hungarian director Paul Fejos from 1927. He made the film on the threshold between the silent and talkative era for Carl Laemmle's Universal Picture Co. Original for the screenplay by Edward T. Lowe Jr. and Tom Reed, who also wrote the subtitles, was a story by Mann Page .
action
The everyday habits of two ordinary people in New York City are shown in parallel. The two of them, the telephone lady Mary and the metalworker Jim, do not know each other, although they have breakfast in the same bar and work in the same factory: she in the telephone exchange, he in the press. On July 3, the day before Independence Day , they embarrassedly refused invitations from couples of friends to join them and went home by themselves. But when a car with a jazz band drives by the window promoting a visit to the amusement park of Coney Island , they let themselves be convinced and board a bus that takes them there. They meet and soon begin to like each other and dream of a future together.
After spending the rest of the day together, they get separated on a roller coaster ride and lose sight of each other when a wheel of the roller coaster car catches fire and causes panic. Mary loses consciousness and Jim, who tries to work his way through the crowd to her, clashes with a police officer and is arrested. But the judge shows understanding and lets Jim go again. Now everyone seeks the other and in the end goes home disappointed and unhappy, everyone to his room. When Jim, full of longing , puts the record with the slow waltz Always on his gramophone , the piece to which he danced with Mary on Coney Island, Mary hears this in her room and, in her pain, knocks desperately on the wall: This is how they find themselves both of them again and discover to their amazement that they had lived in the immediate vicinity without realizing it.
background
The outdoor shoot for Lonesome took place at Coney Island Amusement Park , Brooklyn , New York City , USA . The sets were created by Gilbert Warrenton , who enjoyed a reputation as a cameraman in the States similar to that of Karl Freund in Europe .
Lonesome was released for rental in both a silent film copy and one with an optical soundtrack on which sounds and orchestral music were recorded. As a special feature, however, in the version with the optical soundtrack, three scenes with a short dialogue were built into the film to satisfy the audience's growing desire for "talking films" - two scenes between Jim and Mary, one scene between Jim and the judge. According to many critics, the sound film sequences seem artificial and inorganic today.
The silent version premiered in America (New York City) on June 20, 1928, the sound version only two months later, on September 30, 1928. The film came to France on December 9, 1932. The film was in German cinemas after its premiere on March 31, 1929 from April 1929 under the title Zwei Junge Herzen. A small episode from a big city shown. Oskar Schubert-Stevens obtained the German version . In Austria the film was called Ringelspiel. End of work for two people.
The waltz Always by Irving Berlin , which is part of the accompanying music compiled and conducted by Joseph Czerniawsky and whose singer you can identify the humming jazz singer Nick Lucas on the label of the record visible in the film , was recorded in Germany by Richard Tauber among others . Fritz Löhner-Beda wrote the German text Heimweh for him .
Restoration and publication
Lonesome was restored by the George Eastman House in 2012; the three speaking scenes have also been revised. Tinted and partly hand-colored in the "Coney Island scenes", this version comes close to the original theater presentation. Lonesome from the Criterion Collection was released on August 27, 2012 in a 69-minute version on DVD and Blu-ray Disc (No. 623); the booklet contains texts by critic Phillip Lopate and film historian Graham Petrie; the issue was reviewed by Jaime N. Christley on Aug. 30, 2012 in Slant Magazine .
reception
The KunstKulturQuartier wrote about the film: “ Two young hearts begins like a documentary and ends as a fairy tale. A hype turns into a magic forest, the roller coaster into an evil dragon, a furnished room into a fairytale castle. With Two Young Hearts, Paul Fejos gives the cinema one of the most beautiful films that have been made. "
The renowned US film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum said: “Paul Fejos' film is an almost perfect mixture of America's technology and energy combined with a rich legacy of European influences, from French Impressionism to German Expressionism to the assembly technique developed by the Russians . He is related to poetic big city films from the late 1920s such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis , Walter Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphonie der Großstadt , FW Murnau's Sunrise (all from 1927) and King Vidor's The Crowd from 1928; they are all part of its historical background. Lonesome testifies to an international, highly developed imagery with which few contemporary films can compete. ”At the same time, however, the film also shows the problems that the switch from silent to speaking film posed, since the short sound film sequences are significantly worse than the rest of the film .
Michael Gloversmith proposed that this film made Fejos perhaps the most neglected great filmmaker to have ever worked in Hollywood.
Lonesome is now considered to be one of the last great silent films and was included on December 28, 2010 along with 24 other films in the National Film Registry - the list of American films that are considered particularly worth preserving.
Remaking and editing
In 1935, directed by Kurt Neumann, a remake of the material was made under the title The Affair of Susan with ZaSu Pitts and Hugh O'Connell in the leading roles. Franz Waxman wrote the sound film hit Something in My Heart , the text of which EY Harburg wrote.
A contemporary adaptation of the motif is available in Gustavo Taretto's film Medianeras , which was made in Argentina, Spain and Germany in 2011 and is viewed as a tribute to Paul Fejos' Lonesome .
swell
- John de Bartolo: Lonesome (1928, aka Solitude), 2003 at silentsaregolden
- Brandon's movie memory: Lonesome (1929, Paul Fejos), at deeperintomovies
- Kevin Brownlow: Movement in moving pictures. An interview with Gilbert Warrenton ASC. in: Film History Issue 24, No. 3, 2012
- Zoltan Fejos, Paul Fejôs: To Innovator in Vernacular Modernism. In: The Hungarian Quarterly, LII. 2011. No. 202-203. Pp. 169–190 (English)
- Catarina Gómez de Almeida: Obituary for the silent film star Barbara Kent. In: Negative, October 25, 2011
- James zu Hüningen: part talkie. In: Lexicon of film terms
- Dave Kehr: Hitting the Boardwalk and the Boards. - Criterion DVD Edition Review, New York Times, August 31, 2012
- Graham Petrie: The Travels of Paul Fejos. August 31, 2012
- Jim Rutherford: Lonesome (1928), on Cinéma Misfits on December 25, 2010
Web links
- Two young hearts in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Lonesome - Text by Jonathan Rosenbaum, October 7, 2013
- Paul Fejos at KinoTV.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rosenbaum: “The use of music actually becomes central to the plot in the final scene. When the despondent Jim plays his record of Always on his phonograph - the tune to which he and his beloved Mary danced in the Coney Island dance hall - it leads him and Mary to discover that they live in adjacent flats and provides the clinching irony to this fable about urban alienation. "
- ↑ Brownlow, Interview 2012: "Until Carl Freund himself arrived in California he was thought of in the same terms as that outstanding German cinematographer."
- ↑ Rosenbaum: “The […] sound version […] has three brief added dialogue scenes - all of them awkwardly staged and played and unnecessary to the plot; they were clearly tacked on because of the burgeoning commercial fad for talkies. "
- ↑ IMDb distribution title at IMDb
- ↑ at deeperintomovies.net you can see a close-up of the Brunswick label
- ↑ Nick Lucas (IMDb). Retrieved January 17, 2018 .
- ↑ whitecitycinema (No. 8): "This new version restores it to its original theatrical glory as a part-talkie (there are three brief dialogue scenes) with a color-stenciled-by-hand Coney Island climax." At whitecitycinema.com
- ^ The Criterion Collection
- ↑ slantmagazine.com ; Jonathan Rosenbaum: further review of the issue ( Memento from April 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Announcement at KunstKulturQuartier, Filmhaus Nürnberg, December 1, 2013, cited above. based on: Zitty, Volume 31, Issues 23–26, Zitty Verlag GmbH, 2007
- ↑ Lonesome | Jonathan Rosenbaum. Retrieved January 17, 2018 (American English).
- ↑ at whitecitycinema.com
- ↑ cinematheque leipzig
- ↑ The city where we never met. ( Memento from April 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Kultur.Kino.Köln, see also berlinale.de
- ↑ Cinémathèque Leipzig