Paul Fejos

Lonesome

Lonesome

A buried treasure from Hollywood’s golden age, Lonesome is the creation of a little-known but audacious and one-of-a-kind filmmaker, Paul Fejos (also an explorer, anthropologist, and doctor!). While under contract at Universal, Fejos pulled out all the stops for this lovely, largely silent New York City symphony set in antic Coney Island during the Fourth of July weekend, employing color tinting, superimposition effects, experimental editing, and a roving camera (plus three dialogue scenes, added to satisfy the new craze for talkies). For years, Lonesome has been a rare treat for festival and cinematheque audiences, but it’s only now coming to home video. Rarer still are the two other Fejos films from his Universal years included in this release: The Last Performance and a reconstruction of the previously incomplete sound version of Broadway, in its time the most expensive film ever produced by the studio.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1928
  • 69 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.19:1
  • English
  • Spine #623

Special Features

  • New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary featuring film historian Richard Koszarski 
  • The Last Performance, director Paul Fejos’s 1929 silent starring Conrad Veidt, with a new score by composer Donald Sosin 
  • Reconstructed sound version of Broadway, Fejos’s 1929 musical 
  • Fejos Memorial, a 1963 visual essay produced by Paul Falkenberg in collaboration with Fejos’s wife, Lita Binns Fejos, featuring the filmmaker narrating the story of his life and career
  • Excerpt about the Broadway camera crane from an audio interview with cinematographer Hal Mohr 
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: New essays by critic Phillip Lopate and film historian Graham Petrie and an excerpt from a 1962 interview with Fejos

    New cover by F. Ron Miller

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary featuring film historian Richard Koszarski 
  • The Last Performance, director Paul Fejos’s 1929 silent starring Conrad Veidt, with a new score by composer Donald Sosin 
  • Reconstructed sound version of Broadway, Fejos’s 1929 musical 
  • Fejos Memorial, a 1963 visual essay produced by Paul Falkenberg in collaboration with Fejos’s wife, Lita Binns Fejos, featuring the filmmaker narrating the story of his life and career
  • Excerpt about the Broadway camera crane from an audio interview with cinematographer Hal Mohr 
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: New essays by critic Phillip Lopate and film historian Graham Petrie and an excerpt from a 1962 interview with Fejos

    New cover by F. Ron Miller
Lonesome
Cast
Barbara Kent
Mary
Glenn Tryon
Jim
Fay Holderness
Overdressed woman
Gustav Partos
Romantic gentleman
Eddie Phillips
The sport
Credits
Director
Paul Fejos
Producer
Carl Laemmle Jr.
Story by
Mann Page
Adaptation and scenario
Edward T. Lowe Jr.
Dialogue and titles
Tom Reed
Cinematography
Gilbert Warrenton
Editor
Frank Atkinson

Current

The Travels of Paul Fejos
The Travels of Paul Fejos

He was a doctor, explorer, and anthropologist in addition to being a director. Learn more about the fascinating man who made Lonesome.

By Graham Petrie

Lonesome: Great City, Great Solitude
Lonesome: Great City, Great Solitude

A frenetic portrait of New York as well as a love story, Paul Fejos’s film captures the odd sensation of being alone in the big city, even when in a crowd.

By Phillip Lopate

Don Hertzfeldt’s Top 10
Don Hertzfeldt’s Top 10

The Academy Award–nominated independent filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt has amassed a major cult following for his meticulously crafted animated movies.

Lonesome in New York

Repertory Picks

Lonesome in New York
One of the upcoming releases of ours that we’re most excited about is Paul Fejos’s Lonesome. It’s early-Hollywood buried treasure, produced by Universal at a time when studios were still cranking out silent films as well as the talkies that the…