gavin6942
A story told with few words. We see a solitary man and a solitary woman, each alone with their thoughts. She is in the country, staring out a window. Nature is quiet, waiting for spring, trees are bare. He is in the city, walking from the docks, watching, somewhat aimless. She walks a country lane. Both are alone. She writes him a letter, offering an opportunity. Will he take it? I appreciate that film like these are called "visual poems". Because, really, as films they rather stink. But if we see them as poems, unfolding before our eyes rather than eyes, they are interesting to meditate to. Now, that does not mean it should be rated a good film simply because it is a good poem. The two should be considered entirely different subjects, just as movies and TV are.
MARIO GAUCI
This essentially presents an identical concept to AUTUMN MISTS (1928) – with a similar title, no less! The poetic aspirations related to city life are laid on even more thickly here, with its scenes depicting industrial labour (perhaps a nod to the contemporaneous and similarly 'experimental' Russian school of montage). The result, however, is just as drab – to say nothing of singularly unenthusing (especially at an 80 year-old juncture)! Frankly, I find little actual novelty involved in some of these would-be "avant-garde" shorts; incidentally, the director of this one was himself a renowned movie critic/historian.
Polaris_DiB
Wow, strangely this has ended up being one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen. A "film poem" (cinepoems being popular at the time but a dead art now, unfortunately--I believe the last real cinepoem to be Tarkovsky's Mirror and I think Aronofsky's The Fountain may be bringing it back), it's about two lovers separated, codified by the country house that the woman is in and the metropolis the man is in. They wander, the editing informing their mental state, until finally a plot-point is revealed as the woman writes a letter to the man excited for their reunion. They travel to an intersecting point between their two different lives: a train station, both an iconic industrial symbol of transition and border-transgression, and a mutually even space between countryside and city. The meeting is the best ever filmed of that cinematic cliché: two lovers running at each other and--well, in this case, not embracing, actually. The film ends there. The effect is more powerful.--PolarisDiB
waywardgirl
Identified in the open titles as a "film poem", Autumn Fire is reminiscent of Murnau's Sunrise (incidentally subtitled "A Song of Two Humans") Two lovers, separated by time and space, ponder a reunion. The film is longish for it's slip of a plot, which concentrates on the contrast of isolation in both the city and countryside. It's all worth it however, for the simple but heartfelt climax, as the couple is reunited in New York's Old Penn Station. Worth seeing if you get the chance.
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