Jewish Luck
(USSR, 1925)
Return of
Nathan Becker
(USSR, 1932)
Commissar
(USSR,
1967)
Everything Is
Illuminated
(USA, 2005)
Based on stories by
Sholem Aleichem.
Written by Peretz
Markish.
Based on story by
Vasily Grossman.
Directed by Aleksei
Granovskii.
Directed by Boris
Shpis and Rachel
Milman.
Adapted from the
novel by Jonathan
Safran Foer.
Directed by
Aleksandr
Askoldov.
Starring Solomon
Mikhoels, David
Gutman, Boris
Babochkin.
Starring Nonna
Mordyukova,
Rolan Bykov,
Vasily Shukshin.
Starring Elijah Wood,
Eugene Hutz, Boris
Leskin.
Jewish Luck was among the first Soviet
Yiddish films to be released in the US during
the 1920s. Based on Sholem Aleichem's series
of stories featuring the character Menakhem
Mendl (played by Solomon Mikhoels, beloved
star of Soviet Yiddish stage and informal
leader of Soviet Jews assassintated on Stalin’s
order in 1948) the film revolves around the
daydreaming entrepreneur Menakhem Mendl
who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich
schemes. Despite Jewish oppression by Tsarist
Russia, Menakhem Mendl continues to pursue
his dreams and his continued persistence
transforms him from schlemiel to hero as the
film uncovers the tragic underpinnings of
Sholem Aleichem's comic tales. Notes Village
Voice critic Georgia Brown, "The movie's best
intertitle translated from Isaac Babel's Russian:
`What can you do when there is nothing to
do?'"
This rare, newly restored feature was originally
advertised as "the first Yiddish talkie from
Soviet Russia." The plot centers on Nathan
Becker, a Jewish bricklayer who returns to
Russia after 28 years in America. After
reuniting with his father (played with comic
eccentricity by Solomon Mikhoels) Nathan
leaves the shtetl to work in the new industrial
center of Magnitogorsk. There, he and his
African-American friend Jim soon find that the
work habits they acquired in America that
helped them to "build New York together"
conflict with the Soviet system. While the
film's resolution emphasizes the triumph of
socialist productivity, the screenplay by
Yiddish author Peretz Markish reflects the
warmth and humor of the Jewish spirit.
Return of Nathan Becker is the only
Russian Yiddish sound feature film produced
in the Soviet Union and was made for domestic
consumption as well as for export to the United
States.
Commissar, commemorating the 50th
anniversary of the October Revolution, tells the
story from the period of the Russian Civil War
(1918–1922), when a female commissar of the
Red Army cavalry Klavdia Vavilova (Nonna
Mordyukova) finds herself pregnant. Until her
child is born, she is forced to stay with the
family of a poor Jewish blacksmith. Vavilova
seemingly embraces motherhood, civilian life,
and new friends. Meanwhile, the frontline
advances closer to the town and the Jews
expect a pogrom by the White Army as the Red
Army retreats. Vavilova attempts to console
them with a Communist dream: "One day
people will work in peace and harmony,” but
the dream is interrupted with a vision of the
fate of the Jews in the coming world war.
Soviet censorship was outraged by the
film. As a result, its director Aleksandr
Askoldov was banned from the profession for
life and was told that the single copy of the
film had been destroyed.
In the words of Roger Ebert, Everything is
Illuminated "begins in goofiness and ends in
silence and memory. How it gets from one to
the other is the subject of the film, a journey
undertaken by three men and a dog into the
secrets of the past. The movie is narrated by
Alex, a Ukranian whose family specializes in
'tours of dead Jews.' Alex and his grandfather
drive American Jews in search of their roots to
the places where many of their ancestors died.
It's a film that grows in reflection. The first
time I saw it, I was hurtling down the tracks of
a goofy ethnic comedy when suddenly we
entered dark and dangerous territory. The
second time, I was more aware of the journey
Schreiber was taking us on, and why it is
necessary to begin where he begins in order to
get where he's going."
March 5, 2017, 1:30-3:30
March 5, 2017, 4:00-5:30
March 13, 2017, 5:30-8:00
March 20, 2017, 5:30-8:00
Humphrey Hall Auditorium, Queen's University
Humphrey Hall Auditorium, Queen's University
Humphrey Hall Auditorium, Queen's University
Humphrey Hall Auditorium, Queen's University
Starring Solomon
Mikhoels, Tamara
Adelgeim, Moyshe
Goldblat.
Directed by Liev
Schreiber.