Autumn Fire
Autumn Fire
| 21 November 1931 (USA)
Autumn Fire Trailers

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?

Reviews
ChikPapa Very disappointed :(
WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.
Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.
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.
MartinHafer Herman Weinberg described this as a 'film poem' and instead of words (of which there are few), he uses images. It's really quite artistic--a treat for the eyes. While I am not a huge fan of this sort of thing, this was pretty captivating and seemed to show that Weinberg had the eye of an artist. This is a little less apparent in the later images of the city--but more pronounced when he showed images of the pretty young lady. It was as if Weinberg was really captivated by the lady. Incidentally, this woman who soon after married Weinberg--so she must have been quite pleased by how he portrayed her in the film and his feelings for her seemed apparent in the film! I wonder what ever became of them. Regardless, the scenes of the man in the city and the lady in the country do eventually come together--making for a nice little avant-garde sort of thing. Impossible to really give this one a numerical rating--it's just so unique.
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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