Lonesome

Pál Fejős's enchanting, bittersweet romance — one of the great undiscovered treasures of late silent cinema. Two lonely people in New York City — a factory worker and a telephone operator — spend an idyllic day together at Coney Island, fall head over heels in love, and lose each other in the crowd. The film captures the magic and melancholy of urban loneliness with an intimacy and visual inventiveness that feels decades ahead of its time: Fejős uses superimposition, split screen, and a swooping camera to externalize the characters' inner lives, and the Coney Island sequences — tilt-a-whirls spinning against the night sky, crowds surging through pools of colored light — are visually ravishing. The ending is either the most satisfying coincidence in cinema or a devastating commentary on the illusions of romance. A film that makes your heart ache.