The Paul Fejos Movies Ranked
Paul Fejos’ filmmaking career wasn’t exactly brief, but from what we can view today, the visual luminosity of the Hungarian director is constrained to only three/readily accessible films. All three were made for Universal in America, but in fact, much of Fejos’ career took place outside of the U.S. Fejos was a relatively private man, but the general scope of Fejos’ life still seems to have been validated. Debuting his first films in Hungary in 1919 or 1920, Fejos then went to work in theater in Vienna and Berlin in 1923 (where he may have worked as an extra for Fritz Lang’s DIE NIBELUNGEN films [1924]), and settled in the United States by the end of that year. Fejos worked odd jobs and finally ended up in a medical lab, which may have been the reason for early American attribution to him as Dr. Paul Fejos (whose original, un-Americanized spelling, by the way, was Pál Fejös). In 1926, Fejos spent all his money to go out to Los Angeles from New York, began shooting a film to be called THE LAST MOMENT in 1927, and was courted by numerous studios after its screening. Unfortunately, THE LAST MOMENT is lost today, but from accounts attributed to people like Charlie Chaplin and Carl Laemmle Jr., it was a knockout, scrappy independent film at a time when those didn’t really exist. In fact, it so inspired Laemmle Jr. that he convinced his father to sign Fejos to a contract and let him do whatever he wanted, a stipulation that led Fejos to declining every other offer given to him by the American studios.
Still, Fejos ultimately butted heads in the American studio system, and returned to Europe in 1931 after directing foreign language versions of films and receiving no credit for his directorial work on others, like KING OF JAZZ (1930). Fejos made a few films in France, then went back to Hungary in 1932. The next year, he was in Austria, and the next, Denmark. His relationship with Nordisk Film, an overlooked monolith in the history of cinema, bore the fruit that would sustain the rest of his career. With Nordisk, as recounted in a perhaps apocryphal anecdote by Fejos himself, he was able to go to Madagascar and shoot an ethnographic documentary there after randomly picking a place on a map. Fejos made these types of films from 1935 to 1941 before he retired from the film industry, a place he never seemed to truly feel comfortable in. He went on to pursue an anthropological career that his non-narrative films certainly fomented. Eventually, he was named acting head of what is now called the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (and what was called the Viking Fund, based in New York City). At this point, Fejos may be more widely known in anthropological circles than in cinematic ones.
Nevertheless, his three most easily accessible, American films have gained increasing renown in recent years, with a Criterion Collection release ostensibly dedicated to LONESOME, but which also contains the two other films on this list, THE LAST PERFORMANCE and BROADWAY. It may seem silly to rank just three films, but ultimately, I write these (what may seem reductive) lists to spotlight my thoughts on the collective work of a creator or series, whether they be known or unknown. And Fejos should definitely be more known.
EDIT 7/22/21: Although I’ve written that only three Paul Fejos movies are readily available, I’ve recently discovered a couple more from his “return to Europe” era that can be tracked down online, although unfortunately, I’ve still been unable to find any from his later documentary days. Still, some of these rediscovered (by me) films are not out there with English subtitles, as is the case with FANTÔMAS (1932). But I have been able to watch SPRING SHOWER at this point, which has been added to this list at #2, and I will continue to update this list if I am able to track down more films from this underrated director. However, I won’t be editing the introduction or writeups of the other films to indicate there are more than three to be found, as I want to maintain the spirit in which the original piece was written.
#4 — THE LAST PERFORMANCE (1927)
THE LAST PERFORMANCE is a bit of a strange product. It was Fejos’ introduction to the Hollywood studio system just as it was undergoing seismic changes with the advent of sound. THE LAST PERFORMANCE was briefly screened in 1927 as a silent picture, then released fully in 1929 with a Movietone soundtrack, sound effects, and a talkie final reel. Today, however, you can reference its abridged, 59-minute-long silent version as part of the Criterion package of Fejos’ movies. In that form, THE LAST PERFORMANCE feels a little stilted, a little unsure of itself even with glimpses of cool zoom effects, the set used for Universal’s 1925 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA adaptation, and a majorly intense Conrad Veidt performance. It is akin to Fejos’ debut full-talkie, however, in that it portrays a sort of sinister underbelly to a show business operation…
#3 — BROADWAY (1929)
…but BROADWAY does it better. Granted, BROADWAY is also somewhat of an uneven experience. Although my infatuation with Fejos does run in conjunction with the #1 film on this brief list, or perhaps because of it, his two other intriguing movies, certainly different from their contemporaries, nevertheless disappoint somewhat. They, and BROADWAY especially, demonstrate a certain mobility that defined the height of the late silent period and was sorely lacking in the early part of the sound era. A backstage musical and romance/crime drama that feels oddly rote in its transition from those backstage dramatic moments to extended musical numbers, time and time again (not uncommon for the era), BROADWAY nevertheless rises above some of its talkie brethren with camera crane shots and well-costumed extras. Glenn Tryon, who delivered a beautiful and touching performance in Fejos’ previous film, is nevertheless a bit harsh and hard to like here, while female lead Merna Kennedy is too sheepish and passive. Evelyn Brent, as a murdered gangster’s girlfriend (well, ex-girlfriend, I guess), pops out some great revenge-eyes. And she gets away with it! Gotta love the ambiguous Pre-Code morality.
#2 — SPRING SHOWER (1932)
SPRING SHOWER is a tremendous gem from the years in which Fejos had returned to Europe from Hollywood and continued making fiction films, before his ethnographic work. Made in his native Hungary, SPRING SHOWER is an extremely strong 62 minutes of film, treating the “fallen woman” trope with a grounded, straightforward humanity that puts similar American films to shame for their relative sensationalism. Fejos embraces some elements of Soviet montage with quick cuts that, in their best moment, associate the central character Mari (played by the beautiful Annabella) with Mary, mother of Jesus. Annabella plays her servant-girl-turned-social-outcast with incredible restraint; her eyes, not contorted facial expressions, say it all. But then, when she finally does give in to some sort of mania, those expressions are all the more potent. Mari is driven to frustration, and eventually death, after she’s impregnated by a local man. She of course is left to raise her daughter alone, out of wedlock, and she ends up in the care of a kindly group of women at a “house of ill repute.” Some upstanding women in the community, however, report that the baby is being raised there, and so the child is taken away from Mari. A year later, she returns to the church of her home town, gazes upon the face of Mary, and spontaneously dies, soaring up to heaven in a sequence that can only fittingly be described as heavenly. I don’t think it’s coincidence that Fejos links Mari’s shame and death to the church, and the movie’s central theme of the changing seasons and Mari’s ultimate shaping of her daughter’s life from up in heaven is quite beautiful. SPRING SHOWER is certainly underseen relative to its quality, and is another example of why Fejos was one of the deftest directors of his time.
#1 — LONESOME (1928)
But LONESOME is Fejos’ true masterpiece, and in fact, one of the best films of the late silent era. And specifically, of 1928, as I’ve written before. Kind of. I got very personal in my essay ostensibly about this truly remarkable film, but let it be known that LONESOME is an aesthetic and emotional marvel. A snappy, snowballing movie with irrational connections rendered real by Fejos’ lucid direction, paired with dreamlike tinting and hand-coloring, plus out-in-space (and slightly stiff) talking sequences, LONESOME lingered in my mind long after I saw it for the first time. And my esteem grew for it over that time. Tryon and Barbara Kent’s developing relationship is a delirious, idealized, and magical thing that affected my lonesome soul at first viewing and my full-of-happiness soul at its most recent. To quote myself: “I should…mention [LONESOME] is a wonderful, concise, visually brilliant little bit of filmmaking, a product of immaculate conception.”
