Lonesome

Lonesome, its silent version released on June 20, 1928 and a version with three synchronized dialogue scenes added released on September 30, 1928, is directed by Hungarian born Pál Fejős. Before signing with Universal, Fejős had worked as a bacteriologist at the Rockefeller Institute; the success of a self-funded earlier film caught Universal's attention, and Lonesome, his second American work, is generally considered his finest. The film follows two lonely New Yorkers, played by Barbara Kent and Glenn Tryon, who meet by chance at Coney Island over a Fourth of July weekend, get separated in an amusement park accident, and while searching for each other discover they're actually neighbors. The film was added to the US Library of Congress's National Film Registry in 2010; its original nitrate print survived thanks to a swap between archivists James Card and Henri Langlois. The Criterion Collection released it on August 28, 2012. Who it's for: anyone curious about a love story made during cinema's transition from silent to sound, directed by a former bacteriologist, whose surviving print exists thanks to an archive swap. Who it's not for: viewers wanting a purely silent or purely sound film, since this is a transitional work caught between the two.