A tale of a young telephone operator, Mary, who meets a factory worker, John, loses him in the urban throng, and finds him again, Lonesome is typical of director Paul Fejos' profound simplicity: his vision of loneliness in urban America has affinities with Murnau's Sunrise and Vidor's The Crowd, yet the film has a mood and beauty all its own. In his use of
handheld camera and breathtakingly mobile location shooting in this 1928 film, Fejos anticipates much later cinematic developments. Fejos was a medical doctor, novelist, playwright and anthropological and fiction filmmaker who worked in his native Hungary, in Western Europe and in Hollywood. His marvelous late silents were all but forgotten in the novelty of sound, but they represent the American silent cinema at its most accomplished in terms of narrative technique and visual poetry. Lonesome is considered Fejos' masterpiece. This print contains the sound and dialogue sequences which were added when the film was released in its sound version.