Marie, eine ungarische Legende

The international audience knows Paul Fejos as the man who directed the silent movie "Lonesome" in America.

"Marie Légende Hongroise" could be subtitled " Lonesome Mary" ;it substitutes the dreary Hungarian country for the urban landscapes of New York City .But unlike the two characters of the American classic,Marie is and will stay alone.

Marie has got no family and she works as a servant for a widow (?) and her daughter.The beginning begins as an updated " Cinderella" :there is a ball and ,unlike the fairy tale character ,she is allowed to go.But she won't meet her prince but a young bourgeois who gets her pregnant and then walks out on her.She's turned out everywhere before finding a home in a seedy place (the recurrent feature of the whores with a heart of gold) where she has her child and she's fine.But Mary has not heard the last of the establishment.

A very simple story,told with a great simplicity ,which features at least two very good scenes in the church where Marie is gazing at a statue of the Virgin which almost comes alive.The way gorgeous Annabella is turned into a tramp walking in the church is also impressive.

But the scenes in Heaven are all the more questionable since the movie is closer to realistic melodrama than to "legend" ,in spite of its title.

Paul Fejos would continue his career for a while in France,with a remake of Feuillade's "Fantomas".

Like this?try these.....

Liliom ,Frank Borzage,1930 and its remake by Fritz Lang,1933.

Angèle ,Marcel Pagnol,1934

Like Fejos' LONESOME, this film shows a creative imagination combined with an undeveloped story sense and a finite talent. The events in the simple plot are telegraphed, repeated, and told very slowly. Poor Marie, hanging out clothes on the line in the front yard at midnight, is offered candy by the fiance of the lady of the house and, presto, comes the dawn. (Presumably the seduction or rape occurred right in the barren front yard, next to the road.) Marie is cast out, and can find little work. Finally, she finds herself at the door of a tavern frequented by prostitutes, facing the ferocious woman who runs the place. She is given a menial job and finds a family in the girls and a mother-figure in the manager. The character of this woman--strong, hard, inexpressive, but compassionate and just--and the actress who plays her, is by far the most complex and interesting aspect of the film. Marie suffers further at the hands of a group of do-gooders, cardboard figures as Fejos' villains tend to be. Finally she goes to a ridiculous, saccharine, kitschy heaven, where she again finds herself washing the floors. It's hard to know just how much Fejos has his tongue in his cheek with this final sequence. In fact, it's hard to pin Fejos down in general. Much of the time he seems simple-minded, even dull, but then he'll come up with an original visual idea or an unexpectedly well-observed moment or character that makes you think he has something after all.