Paul Fejos
Paul Fejos, born in Hungary and working as Pál Fejos ( born January 24, 1897 in Budapest, † April 23, 1963 in New York City ) was a Hungarian film director of feature films and documentaries.
Life and work
Born Pál Fejös was drafted in World War I and served as a nurse in the hospital. Back in civilian life, he gained his first artistic experiences as a stage painter and decorator stage at the opera. In 1918 he began a five year career as a feature film director in his native Hungary. In October 1923 Fejos emigrated via Vienna, Berlin and Paris to New York. In the U.S., he tried, with little success, in several jobs before he settled in 1926 in Los Angeles. The following year, his first U.S. writer ( " Land of the Lawless " ) was filmed in 1928, he made his U.S. directorial debut with the drama "The Last Moment". The story is told in flashbacks by a suicide was because of its stringent building and unpretentious imagery (camera: the young and then largely unknown Leon Shamroy ) much praise from the critics. Then Fejos received from Universal Studios a management contract.
His next work, two young hearts that tells of the brief encounter of a mechanic and a telephone operator at Coney Iceland, which lose sight and ultimately find, found some recognition. Fejos largest assets were here its exact powers of observation and his semi-documentary, sober narrative style that distinguished him as a critical chronicler. After two less successful productions in the transition from silent to sound films, including illusion with Conrad Veidt, and the German version of a U.S. prison drama ( people behind bars with Henry George and Gustav Diessl ) Fejos returned home to Europe. In 1931, he continued his work as a director in France with little fortunes. A year later, Paul Fejos found again in Hungary. With the film Marie, of the three different language versions were produced, he managed an excellent and international criticism of the highly praised story of a displaced from rural Hungary in the town farm girl. The film lived much of Fejos ' ability, perfect to put Hungary's Puszta landscape scene, and the Art of French Annabella.
Despite some merits Fejos could equal it, neither with its fishing history, " people in the storm " yet with the Austrian daily story, " sunbeam ", appeared in the re Annabella, celebrate greater success. Fejos then decided to largely finish his work as a feature film director and turned instead to the documentary. For the Nordisk he staged in Madagascar, for Svensk Industri film he produced documentaries in Thailand, New Guinea, and Central and Southeast Asia. After his expedition for the documentary Yagua Fejos 1941 returned from Peru to the USA. In New York he was called Fejos as head of the research department of the Viking Fund, an anthropological research company. In 1955 he was promoted to president of this, now renamed Wenner -Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research facility.