East and West (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | East and West |
| Country of production | Austria |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1923 |
| length | 85 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Sidney Goldin |
| script | Sidney Goldin Eugen Preiss |
| production | Listo movie |
| camera |
Eduard Hösch Richard Roth |
| occupation | |
| |
East and West , Yiddish Misrech and Majrew, English East and West, is an Austrian silent film - comedy from the year 1923 . Directed by the American Sidney Goldin , who shot with the well-known actors of the American Yiddish theater , Molly Picon and Jacob Kalich , in Vienna.
action
The film deals in an ironic, pointed way with the differences between assimilated Western Judaism and traditional, Orthodox Judaism in Eastern Europe. The main character is the young, Jewish American "Molly", who, far from any religiosity, leads the life of an ordinary, well-protected, "modern" American girl (you can see her boxing training with young men, for example) until the family at Mollys wedding Polish cousin Selda living in Tarnopol is invited. The family then travels to Poland, where Molly meets the Talmudic student Ruben. The annual Yom Kippur festival, which also includes a fasting period , takes place before the wedding . During a service, she sneaks out of the synagogue , generously helps herself to the feast prepared in the uncle's house, simply puts the leftovers under the table where they can be eaten by dogs and cats and forgets a personal book as incriminating evidence for the others in the kitchen. The cook and the rest of the household are very angry with Molly, but she decides to take revenge, puts on boxing gloves and knocks out the cook.
Preparations for the wedding are in full swing when Molly visits the young men practicing for the choir and teaches them to shimmy . In another scene she puts on men's clothes, which is also not met with much approval.
Finally the wedding is just around the corner and the bride-to-be, Selda, lets Molly try on the veil. Molly comes up with the idea of playing a wedding and persuades the others to join in. Ruben plays her bridegroom and, despite previous warnings, even puts the ring on her finger at Molly's insistence - and now that there were two male witnesses, according to religious law, he is Molly's bridegroom. The next day there are still heated discussions about how to proceed, but Ruben is unwilling to get a divorce because he has fallen in love with Molly. Since nobody wants to understand him, Ruben writes to his rich uncle in Vienna, asking if he could visit him for a while. He writes Molly's father a letter in which he asks him to give him five years - if Molly still wants to divorce him, he will agree.
Ruben is welcomed with joy by his uncle. Ruben stayed for months and during this time, initially with a heavy heart, took off his religious costume and also cut off his sidelocks . He is writing a book entitled East and West, which is attracting international attention.
After five years, the arrival of Molly and her father is announced. Ruben sends them an invitation to an author reading, where he, too , will present his latest book Mazel Tov under his artist pseudonym “Ben-Ami” . Molly and her father do not know anything about Rubens' new identity and Rubens uncle also keeps quiet. Molly is impressed by Ben-Ami, who is also embraced by other women, and the two quickly get closer. After the five-year period has expired, Ruben and Molly will soon divorce. Ruben "disguises" himself again as a Talmudic student with sidelocks, as Molly had met him, and hands her the supposed divorce papers. On these, however, there is actually a text by Rubens, who explains that he and Ben-Ami are one and the same person. Molly doesn't want to get a divorce after all, the two kiss, the film ends.
background
The title of the film refers to the Jewish cultural magazine Ost und West (magazine) published in Berlin from 1901 to 1923 . For the film scholar Jim Hoberman, the film presents the "Germanized Jew" as the "golden mean between primitive Eastern Jewry and the blatant American".
Production and distribution
The film was produced in the Vienna Listo-Film studio . The in-house company "Schmiedl, Berger & Co" took over the overall equipment (set design, props, costumes). In addition to Molly Picon and Jakob Kalich, who were on tour as actors with Yiddish plays in Europe, numerous actors from the Free Jüdische Volksbühne, a Yiddish theater in Vienna, and Eugen Neufeld , a busy actor in Austrian silent films , served as actors . The original length of the film was in Paimann's film lists with "approx. 2380 “meters and six files indicated.
The premiere of the film took place on August 17, 1923 in the "Zentral-Kino" (later Tabor-Kino) in Vienna- Leopoldstadt . The film is likely to have been an international success, also and especially in the USA, on whose audience taste Goldin oriented himself dramatically and in terms of cast (Molly Picon and Jacob Kalich were already well-known actors in the Yiddish theater on the US east coast at that time). Apart from the USA, where the film was released in 1924 and re-released in 1932, the film also started in France (1924), Romania and Poland. According to an advertisement by Listo-Film from September 1923, performance monopolies were also sold to distribution companies in Czechoslovakia , Holland , Belgium and " England " in addition to the countries already mentioned, which are also mentioned .
In Austria, the film was released in cinemas by Quittner, Zuckerberg & Co distributors.
literature
- Jim Hoberman: Bridge of Light - Yiddish Film between Two Worlds. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1995, pp. 66-69
Web links
- East and West in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Itzik Gottesman and Jeffrey Shandler: Mizrekh un mayrev - East and West . Rubric Di geshikhte funem yidishn kino / The History of Yiddish Cinema, ed. by the editorial staff of the Jewish Daily Forward , April 30, 2010 (Yiddish, with English subtitles).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Note: instead of “Eduard Hösch”, a very active cameraman at the time, who often also spoke to “E. Hösch "abbreviated, an" Edmund Hösch "unknown cinematographer is named as a cameraman. A typo is assumed here. Source: Advertisement for “East and West” in: Der Filmbote, No. 25, June 23, 1923, p. 35
- ↑ Hoberman, 1995, p. 68
- ^ Advertisement for "East and West" in: Der Filmbote, No. 24, June 16, 1923, p. 35
- ↑ Paimann's Filmlisten , No. 385, August 24, 1923, p. 173
- ↑ a b Der Filmbote, No. 32, August 11, 1923, p. 9 f.
- ↑ Hoberman, 1995, p. 69
- ^ Advertisement for "East and West" in: Der Filmbote, No. 37, September 15, 1923, p. 32