Autumn Fire Review: A Moody 15-Minute Daydream

If you have fifteen minutes to spare today and want to feel a very specific kind of cozy sadness, yes, Autumn Fire is absolutely worth your time. It is a tiny, silent slice of old-school melancholy that will hit right home for anyone who loves staring out of train windows on rainy days.

But if you need, like, actual things to happen or characters who talk, you are going to be bored out of your mind within ninety seconds. 🍂

There is no real plot here. We just watch a woman (Erna Bergman) in the quiet countryside and a man (Willy Hildebrand) wandering around some very dusty city docks.

They are both incredibly lonely, and the movie does not try to hide it.

I love how simple the contrast is. She is surrounded by these empty, bare trees that look like they are shivering in the wind, while he is surrounded by giant, heavy metal ships and dirty harbor water.

It feels like the director just took a camera out on a cold weekend because they were feeling a bit blue.

There is this one shot of water rippling under a pier that goes on for a long time. Like, a really long time.

I swear the camera operator just fell asleep or forgot to cut, but it actually works. It gets you into this weird, hypnotic headspace where you start thinking about your own life choices.

It is the complete opposite of loud, frantic stuff from that era like Radio Riot. This one wants you to just sit there and breathe.

The woman eventually writes a letter. We do not see what it says, but you know the vibe.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Autumn Fire (1931) through its definitive frames.

Will he go to her? The movie does not really care about giving you a neat Hollywood ending, and honestly, thank goodness for that.

Some of the edits are super rough. The transition from the country lane to the city streets has this awkward jump where the screen goes almost totally black for a split second.

It feels like a home movie some incredibly artsy college student made yesterday, not something from way back when.

Also, Erna Bergman has this incredibly expressive face. She does not do that wild, wide-eyed silent movie acting where people look like they are having a panic attack.

She just looks... tired. In a very real, Sunday-afternoon way.

Meanwhile, the guy in the city just walks. And walks.

He looks at a bridge. He looks at some stairs.

I think he might just be lost, to be honest. 😅

A few things I wrote down while watching:

• The wind blowing her hair is the best special effect in the whole thing.
• The city docks look incredibly cold. Like, bone-chilling cold.
• That letter envelope looks suspiciously clean compared to everything else in the frame.

If you are in the mood for something slow, give it a go. It is short enough that even if you hate it, you only lost a quarter of an hour.

But if you want a big dramatic story, maybe skip it and find something like The Man and the Moment instead. This is purely for the daydreamers.