Paul Fejôs: An Innovator in Vernacular Modernism
Paul Fejôs: An Innovator in Vernacular Modernism

Summary/Abstract: The federal programme aiming at the preservation of the “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” American films now refers to 550 items to be placed in the film archives of the Library of Congress. The 25 films listed in the yearly National Film Registry in 2010 included Lonesome, released by the Universal Pictures Corporation in 1928. The entry on Lonesome reads: One of the few American features directed by the gifted Hungarian-born filmmaker and scientist Paul Fejos (1897–1963), the film has been recognized for its success as both a comic melodrama (about young lovers who become separated during the chaos of a thunderstorm at Coney Island) and for its early use of dialogue and twocolor Technicolor. The film was restored by the George Eastman House and has found renewed popularity with repertory and film festival audiences. After its premiere and relatively successful release, the film was forgotten. It was shown for a short time only because Universal lacked a network of cinemas of its own and the copy in the United States was lost. It was rediscovered at the Telluride Film Festival in 1994, following the George Eastman House’s restoration of the nitrate positive copy made available by the Cinemathèque Française. Variety’s critic wrote that the best film of the Festival was the sixty-six year old Lonesome,seen there with a new musical accompaniment for silent films performed by the Alloy Orchestra.

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