History 299c

Modern Jewish History in Film

 

Spring Term, 2007

Francis Scott Key Hall 0106

Tuesday 3:15-6

 

Bernard D. Cooperman

Taliaferro 2130

301.405.4271

cooperma@umd.edu

 

This one-credit course is offered in conjunction with HIST 283/JWST 235. It is intended to provide an opportunity for students to engage some of the main themes in the history course by watching and discussing movies and videos that document or fictionalize Jewish life in the modern era. Students will be asked to prepare short written assignments after at least nine of the showings. NOTE: Almost all of the films are available in Hornbake Library's Non-Print Media collection (4th floor). To check on how many you have handed in, you will be able to click here.

 

Written assignments are expected to be typed, double-spaced, properly footnoted and documented (where relevant), and of approximately one page in length.

 

 

Jan. 30        The Jazz Singer. (USA 1927). Yiddish and English. Directed by Alan Crosland. 89 minutes. A copy is available in Hornbake as PN1997.J353 1991

 

Written Assignment: Why, in your opinion, is the theme of the Òprodigal sonÓ who leaves the community, achieves fame in the outside world of entertainment, and then returns to be reconciled with his father, so common in Jewish films?]

OR

Gender and ethnic stereotypes are used extensively in this film to establish the story. To the obvious Jewish mother we can add the role of the beautiful non-Jewish young woman, the way in which masculine roles are defined for the father and the Americanized son. These conventional representations, reinforced by clothing, actions, ways of showing emotion, etc. may seem overblown, simplistic, or even offensive to us, but they were part and parcel of the language of popular entertainment and film in the 1920s. Pick one example of a gender/ethnic stereotype and describe how it was developed and reinforced in the film. Suggest ways in which the same character would be treated in films or on television today. Give specific examples.

Suggested related films: The story on which "The Jazz Singer" was based was used in novels, short-stories, and movies many times. Comparing these versions can yield insight into the social and cultural context in which each was written. For example "Overture to Glory" [Yiddish title: "Vilner shtot Khazn"], a Yiddish version (with English sub-titles) directed by Max Nosseck and starring the famous cantor and singer, Moishe Oysher, was released in the much more somber year 1940. In it, the gentle resolution of "The Jazz Singer" is replaced by a tragic ending in which there is no reconciliation and no possibiity of undoing alienation in this life [PN1997.V544 1996]. Oysher also starrred in the 1937 film "Dem Khazn's Zindl" (The Cantor's Son) about a cantor and cafe singer who returned to his European birthplace to celebrate his parents' anniversary. [PN 1997.K3993 1989].

 

Feb. 6          A Child of the Ghetto. (USA 1910). Directed by W. D. Griffith. 10 minutes. and Grine Felder [Peretz Hirshbein's Green Fields]. (USA 1937). Directed by Jacob Ben-Ami and Edgar G. Ulmer. Yiddish with English sub-titles. 100 minutes.

 

Written Assignment:  The theme of country vs city or rural vs urban is a common one in modern literature and film. Authors and auteurs contrast the two environments in order to articulate and emphasize two opposed poles of behavior, society organization, and ethical values. Sometimes the city is portrayed as the land of opportunity, and sometimes it is portrayed as the locus of corruption and evil. Correspondingly, the country is the place of ignorance and brutalizing poverty or the place of original purity and genuine, healthy morality. The two films shown today were made by very different directors at very different times and for very different audiences, but both feature a young Jew leaving the urban environment and finding some kind of personal peace (as well as romantic love) in the rural context.

 

Contrast the two films in terms of their image of urban Jewish life, what is being escaped, and what positive values the rural environment offers. Put most of your emphasis on the Yiddish film. At the end, briefly explain who Peretz Hirshbein was and what themes generally characterized his plays.

Suggested Readings on Yiddish films:

J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light. Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds (New York: 1991).

Sylvia Paskin, "The Light Ahead," in S. Paskin, ed. When Joseph Met Molly. A Reader on Yiddish Film (Nottingham: 1999), pp. 119-129. [McK PN1995.9.Y54W44 1999]

Suggested related films: D. W. Griffith is most (in-)famous today for his film "Birth of a Nation" but he directed a very large number of other silent films (Hornbake's Non-print Media collection holds many of these), and there is a great deal of literature about his impact on American cinema. In the present context, you might enjoy seeing his 1908 15-minute film "Romance of a Jewess" set in the Jewish quarter of immigrant New York and reissued in 1995. [PN1997.R57822 1995]

 

Feb. 13        The Magician of Lublin. (USA 1978). Directed by Menahem Golan. 105 Minutes. Based on a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Written Assignment: The film (and even more clearly the novel from which it derives) contrasts two worldsÑthe Jewish world of Lublin and the cosmopolitan world of Warsaw. The magician tries to walk a tight-rope stretched between these two worlds and, in the end, fails, bringing disaster on himself and others. Discuss at least two elements through which the film marks the difference between these two worlds and thus explain the magician's ultimate failure and guilt. [You might think about the representation of love or of evil as possible areas of difference.] Once you have defined the difference between the two worlds, discuss the meaning of the last scenes in the film.

NOTE: I will deposit the VHS of this film in Hornbake, but it may take them a few days to catalogue it.

 

Feb. 20       Fateless (Hungary 2004) Directed by Lajos Koltaj. Hungarian with English sub-titles. 140 min.

 

Written Assignment: This film is based on a novel of the same name written by Nobel laureate Imre KertŽsz (who actually wrote the screen play). KertŽsz was taken to Auschwitz and then Buchenwald as a boy of 14 and the story is presented as an authentic memoir of his experiences. The film may therefore be usefully compared to other attempts by survivors to present historical aspects of the Holocaust in film. Your written assignment may appear simple: explain the purpose of the film. But to answer it well, you should consider the film in comparison to other "Holocasut films" you have seen and you should refer not only to the scenes of suffering and horror but to other parts of the film: the beginning and ending as well as interactions during the hero's imprisonment. You may want to look for reviews of the book.

 

Feb. 27       Tell Me a Riddle.

 

Written Assignment: Based on Tillie Olsen's short story by the same name this film presents the intricate story of an elderly couple facing death and loneliness after a lifetime together. The movie uses elements that are familiar: the "road movie" metaphor, the family in crisis setting, the generation gaps that allow grandpaent and grandchild to establish contact when parent and child cannot. But the end result is in no sense stylized or conventional.

In the context of this course, one of the most interesting themes in the movie is that of memory and history: the heroine Eva was a major revolutionary activist as a teenager, and her entire adult life is somehow submerged beneath the powerful memory of that time. While performing the obviously valuable roles of wife and mother, she has sustained herself by turning inward and living in the memories of those past moments and the revolutionary ideals she espoused. In a way she has made a brief period in her youth into the entire substance of her life, so that at the end she has left her husband and even her children outside of her world.

Question: do historians inevitably do the same thing when we pick a specific moment or even about which to write? Do we, in effect, "lie" about reality?

OR

A (Jewish) historian would be tempted to write about how David and Eva represent large movements and changes in (Jewish) history: the revolutionary movement in Russia; the mass immigration to America; the labor movement in America; suburbanization and the dispersion of the nuclear family; loss of Jewish traditional language and culture; etc. But the story and film "Tell Me a Riddle" deals with all of these phenomena by focusing on the lives of two individuals and on their relationship to each other. Discuss which of these two approaches you feel is "truer" or "more useful" and explain why. Give specific examples from the film to prove your points.

 

Mar. 6       Jewboy. (Australia 2005) Directed by Tony Krawitz. 52 minutes.

 

Written Assignment: This film, like so many others, deals with the tension between Jewish and non-Jewish values, between the Jewish world and its non-Jewish surroundings, through the story of a single character who leaves the former and embraces the latter while trying still to retain some connection to his origins. Though the story is frequently retold, each version is unique in the way it portrays the two worlds and the tensions faced by the hero. What is the world of tradition for this film? In what does its attractiveness lie? (Think specifically of comparisons with "The Jazz Singer" or "Grine Felder." Salomon Maimon's autobiographical tale might also be relevant to you here. Why was the world of tradition always portrayed in terms of family, parents, and elderly figures in "the Jazz Singer" but otherwise here? Why was financial success attributed to the outside world in "The Jazz Singer" but reversed here? Why was the supportive female figure "Rivke" not paralleled in the Jewish world of "The Jazz Singer?")

 

Mar. 13      Unstrung Heroes (USA 2003). Directed by Diane Keaton. 93 minutes. Missed because of a snow-day; I've deposited a copy in Hornbake if you want to watch it.

 

Written Assignment: This movie tells several stories simultaneously Ñ the obvious story of a boy growing up, the story of a family torn by illness, the story of the crazy uncles, and the story of American Jewish identity in the early 1960s. The story is not simply a fiction; it is closely based on the memoir by the same name by Franz Lidz (though Lidz complained that his tale of a left-wing Jewish family of the 1950s was hopelessly "disneyfied" by the movie makers. Lidz also wrote Ghostly Men (CT9991.C65 L53 2003) about the Collyer brothers in New York, famous "hoarders" whom he compares with his own uncle Arthur. How does the movie imagine the Jewishness of post-World War II America? What are its major features? What are its weaknesses, and what are its strengths? (Ask yourself whom the movie portrays as religious, and in what contexts? What other forms of Jewish identity are shown?)

 

Mar. 20     Spring Break. No Class.

 

Mar. 27    La Petite JŽrusalem. (France: 2005). French and Hebrew with English sub-titles. Directed by Karin Albou. 94 minutes.

 

Written Assignment: Here we have another variant of the movie version of modern Jewish life: young person grows up in Jewish environment; young person wants out of Jewish environment; young person goes through the tension of living in two worlds. In this case, the tale is about a female protagonist, a non-Ashkenazi, and an intellectual. How do these factors change the way the story is told? Look specifically at who the "other" is; is the non-Jewish world portrayed in positive or negative terms? On the other hand, how is the Jewish world and Jewish piety configured? What is the source of tension between the main character and the traditional community? How is that tension finally resolved?

OR

To what extent is Jewish piety, and specifically non-Ashkenazic Jewish piety given a fair treatment in this film?

 

Apr. 3       [Passover. We will try to find an alternate showing date.]

 

Apr. 10     [Passover.]

 

Apr. 17      Belzec. (France, 2005). Polish, French and Hebrew with English subtitles. Written and directed by Guillaume Moscovitz. 112 minutes.

Written Assignment: This film, much influenced by Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah" recreates the past in the viewer's mind by displaying, comparing and contrasting, various people's memories (and reconstructions) of the past. It challenges us to rethink what we mean by testimony, evidence, and history. Discusss.

 

Apr. 24       Ushpizin. (Israel 2005). Directed by Gidi Dar

Written Assignment: This film presents a type of traditional religious Jewish folk tale, retold here in a straightforward rather than in an ironic or critical mode by the screen writer Shuli Rand (who also played the male lead). How would you describe Rand's authorial intent, and how does it differ from what you might have expected from such a film? Are there points in the film where you found yourself criticizing actions that the film seems to represent as positive?

 

Apr. 26      Live and Become. (Israel, France, Italy, Belgium, 2005). Written and directed by Radu Mihaileanu. Hebrew, French, Amharic with English subtitles. 140 min.

 

Written Assignment: The film deals with identity conflict in Israel by telling the tale of an Ethiopian Christian boy who joins the 1984 airlift of thousands of Ethiopian Jews from the Sudan to Israel. In doing so, the film follows certain tried-and-true conventions of Israeli film-making (the wedding scene, for example, where members of different Jewish ethnic communities join together to celebrate) but it also challenges many of those conventions. Discuss by examining one particular aspect of the film that seemed to illustrate the complexity of Israeli identity.    

 

May 1       October's Cry. (Israel 2006) Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles. 70 minutes. Directed by Julie Gal.

Written Assignment: The documentary makes, I think, a powerful case for a certain political position within the Israeli political spectrum. How did the film make its case and what mechanisms did it use to prove its points?

 

May 8      The Pity Card (USA 2005). Directed by Bob Odenkirk. 12 minutes. Also available on U-Tube.

 

A first date at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Written Assignment: Is it legitimate to use the Holocaust as the subject of humor?