The romantic comedy peaked in the 1920s and has been tumbling downhill ever since. 1923's Girl Shy married the formula with Harold Lloyd's insane stuntmanship. 1927's It made Clara Bow the silent era's biggest star and coined the term "It Girl", which then meant something like what problem glasses wearers would later call the "manic pixie dream girl". But it was with the following year's Lonesome that the genre reached its zenith.
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| >tfw no 1920s gf |
As its title implies, Lonesome concerns the sense of isolation felt by its protagonists in the urban prison of New York City. Early scenes depict the frenetic and oppressive schedule of city life with a light touch that builds upon the montage fretwank of the silent-era city symphony craze like if a prog band discovered humour.
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| This manlet desperately hanging onto a handle too high for him ilustrates a problem in modernity: one size doesn't fit all. |
Glenn Tryon is the Lonesome (1928) everyman machinist Jim, while 4'11" 20s 10 Barbara Kent is the less-probably Lonesome (1928) telephone operator Mary. A montage of their respective workdays is framed by the clock ticking away, a prison of mortality. Like Stefan Molyneux observing Taylor Swift, we can sense Mary's egg carton emptying to the ceaseless march of the clock's hands.
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| ♪Despite all my ragie I am still just a wagie in a cagie... |
Fortunately Jim and Mary get away from the metropolis for long enough to find each other on a beach. There's a charming will-they-meet-or-won't-they sequence in which Jim will catch sight of Mary just as she disappears into a crowd, or her reflection in a mirror.
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| >tfw no 1920s gf |
Lonesome was shot to completion as a silent film but in '28 there was a rush to capitalise on the false promise of sound so a few scenes with synched effects or audible dialogue were added, including the most dorkish flirtation yet captured on film. These would be better excised, but whatever; it's an interesting quirk of movie history and with a feature runtime of 68 minutes, it hardly makes the picture drag. Besides, the unpretentious sweetness of the romance is the point: it's only at the seaside funfair that the wagedrones can retvrn to innocence, unhindered by the srs bsnsness and mandatory cynicism of the urban grind. We delight in their aw-shucks courtship and bewail their tragical separation by the teeming throngs of NPCs and sudden storm that sweeps the funfair. Are they doomed to be foreveralones after all? Find out: watch Lonesome instead of The Boys or The Acolyte or whatever other SHIT you think you have to watch tonight.
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| And if I am elected, we will Make Women Wear Hats Again. |
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