Uncle Moses

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Movie
German title Uncle moses
Original title Uncle Moses
Country of production United States
original language Yiddish
Publishing year 1932
length 9 acts. 2409 meters / 88 minutes
Rod
Director Sidney M. Goldin,
Aubrey Scotto
script based on the novel by Sholem Asch, dialogues: Maurice Schwartz
production Yiddish Talking Pictures Inc.,
Louis Weiss,
Rubin Goldberg
music Samuel Polonsky
camera Frank Zucker,
Buddy Harris
cut Robert Snody
occupation

Uncle Moses (English original title: Uncle Moses) is a sound film in Yiddish that Louis Weiss and Rubin Goldberg produced in 1932 in their company Yiddish Talking Pictures Inc. in New York City . Directed by Sidney M. Goldin and Aubrey Scotto, the script was based on the play of the same name by Schalom Asch . The dialogues were written by Maurice Schwartz , who also played the title role.

Samuel Polomsky put together the music for the cinema and was the musical director. The assistant directors were Shimen Rushkin and Frank Melford. Frank Zucker and Buddy Harris took care of the photography, the sound recordings were made by Marc S. Ash, Gerre Barton and Armond Schettini. Anthony Continer created the film structures, Charles Nasca was in charge of the technical direction. The costumes came from the ateliers of the Brenner Bros. in New York.

The actor Maurice Schwartz (1890–1960) was the most important representative of Yiddish theater in the USA at the time. He was given honorary titles such as “The greatest of all Jewish actors” or “The [Lawrence] Olivier of Yiddish theater”.

action

In the garment district on the Lower East Side of NY, on the corner of Orchard and Delaney Street, Uncle Moses runs his sweat shop like a patriarch. In his clothing factory he is the principal of his Jewish shnayders , who like him came from the same Polish town of Kusmin to become something in the najen world , only: he has made it, has become something, and he likes to show it off. Overcome by homesickness, he writes a check to Kuzminer Rebben , who has come to visit the factory. He leaves the annoying day-to-day business to his already successfully Americanized nephew Sam.

He himself, widowed, maintains female acquaintances. When he falls in love with young Mascha, the daughter of one of his employees, he can persuade her to marry, but she only leaves because of economic and social constraints - Uncle Moses is supposed to have her father, whom he has given notice because he is with the union men sympathizes, hiring again - without feeling anything for him, because she loves Charlie, the union man.

When Uncle Moses is exposed to increasingly violent criticism from the growing trade union movement because of his business practices as a baleboss (house owner) and the exploitative working conditions in his factory, he calls on his workforce to go on strike. Then Uncle Moses begins to doubt the American dream that he believed he had fulfilled.

background

Sholom Asch's novel Uncle Moses first appeared in serial form in the Jewish-American daily Forverts in 1918 / פֿאָרווערטס.

The film was made at Metropolitan, a small studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey , in only two rooms between March and April 1932. It premiered in New York on April 20, 1932 at the Clinton Cinema. It also ran at the Benenson Theater in the Bronx and the Stadium in Brownsville / Brooklyn .

It was the first fully sound film with Maurice Schwartz.

The actor Zwi Schuler, Americanized Zvee ​​Scooler, who played the unionist Charlie, was also a popular radio presenter at the WEVD station, where he commented in rhyme as "The Gramme Master" and his programs with the slogan "Ayer gepayster, Zvee Hirsh Yosef ben Rab Yankef Mendel Halevy Scooler hamekhine the Forverts Sho Grammeister ”finished.

Rubin Goldberg, who played the old father of Uncle Moses , was also a popular record and radio artist in the USA.

reception

“This is the touching story of a community of Jewish people who live and work in New York's Lower East Side. The film illustrates their life as they work long, hard days in a sweatshop under the tight fist of it's manager. But ... love soon finds the manager and it opens his eyes to the world and to the concept of kindness. The film follows this wonderful love story until it's joyful conclusion. "

"To say this Yiddish-language film is dramatically overwrought would be an understatement, but it remains intriguing as a mirror of the Jewish immigrant experience and life on NYC's Lower East Side." (Leonard Maltin).

"Uncle Moses stands as one of the finest examples of Yiddish cinema and is unique in its portrayal of a despotic Jewish factory boss who takes pleasure in seeing the" tables turned "by employing the former leaders and highly respected men of his shtetl as sweatshop tailors . Uncle Moses is a harsh man who uses his wealth and power to fight against unionization of his shop (by a young idealistic Jew) and manipulate women, especially the daughters of his workers. " (J. Hoberman)

“One of the first Yiddish sound films made in New York that deals with the life of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the“ New World ”[…] The textile factories and apartment buildings on the Lower East Side form the background for various contemporary themes: romantic entanglements, the Industrial union struggle and the breakup of the traditional Jewish family. " (see cine-holocaust ID: FBW000231)

“It's not so much the plot that matters, but the milieu. The social differentiation that appeared god-given and coincidentally at the same time in the shtetl has assumed class character here, but Uncle Moses wants to overplay it patriarchally. The appearance of independence, which was important even to the water carrier in the shtetl , is lost here. He hires the father of his future bride as a tailor instead of borrowing money for an independent existence [...] Two new worlds have appeared, capital and labor, which Uncle Moses, the great Uncle Moses, break humanly [...] "Uncle Moses “Already has the status of a social document” (Detlev Clausen in: Ronny Loewy et al.: Das Yiddische Kino. 1982, p. 48)

“At the turn of the century, millions of Eastern Jews fled poverty and persecution to America; many found a new home in New York. The feature film ONKEL MOSES based on a play by Sholom Asch (1880 to 1957) precisely describes the change from traditional Judaism to the modern American lifestyle. " (anon. in “Once upon a time there was a Yiddish country”, by hagalil February 26, 1998)

“In two of the earliest Yiddish sound films, young women play a central role: Golde in“ His Wife's Lover ”(1931) and Mascha in“ Uncle Moses ”(1932). Again it is shown how they suffered from the experience of immigration. Although they win the upper hand in both films at the end, America is not drawn as the golden land of happiness , but as a place of poverty, distress and despair [...] Golde and Mascha embody the women of the transition generation who care for their families to sacrifice. ”(Joyce Antler p. 45)

Illustrations

Republication

The ZDF beamed the movie as a German premiere on TV on 24 April 1990 with German subtitles in a series of Yiddish films from which the by Hanspeter Kochenrath and Ronny Loewy in collaboration with the National Center for Jewish Film, Waltham, MA. produced 45-minute documentary film »The Yiddish Cinema«; it was broadcast on April 10, 1983.

The film was released on DVD by yiddishmovie [No. 57-DVD] [Copyright © 1999–2009 Rocksalt International Pty Ltd.] in the original version with English subtitles.

Web links

literature

  • Joyce Antler: Talking Back. Images of Jewish Women in American Popular Culture (= Brandeis series in American Jewish history, culture, and life ). UPNE Publishing House, 1998, ISBN 0-87451-842-3 .
  • Shalom Asch: Uncle Moses . Novel. German by Siegfried Schmitz. Verlag Ladyschnikow, Berlin 1926. (Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1929)
  • Detlev Clausen: A naje world. Jewish migration from the West and Yiddish cinema. In: Ronny Loewy among others: The Yiddish cinema. 1982, pp. 35-52.
  • Alan Gevinson (Ed.): Within Our Gates - Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911-1960. University of California Press, 1997, ISBN 0-520-20964-8 , pp. 1078-1079.
  • Erika Gregor, Ulrich Gregor, Helma Schleif (Red.): Jewish worlds in film. Friends of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-927876-06-2 .
  • Jim [d. i. James Lewis] Hoberman: Bridge of Light - Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. changed and expanded Edition. Dartmouth College Press, Hanover, NH 2010, ISBN 978-0-8052-4107-5 , pp. 162-63, 223, 398, 403, 414, 418.
  • Stefan Kanfer: Stardust Lost - The Triumph, Tragedy, and Meshugas of the Yiddish Theater in America . Random House Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-0-307-54747-7 , p. 163 f.
  • Ross Laird: New York sessions, 1927–1931. (= Brunswick Records. Volume 2). Greenwood Press, London / Westport, Conn. 2001, ISBN 0-313-31867-0 .
  • Ronny Loewy among others: The Yiddish cinema. With contributions by Mischa Brumlik, Detlev Clausen, Dan Diner, Winfried Günther, Christiane Habich, Gertrud Koch, Cilly Kugelmann and Ronny Loewy. Edited by Hilmar Hoffmann and Walter Schobert. German Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-88799-002-1 .
  • Clifford McCarty: Film Composers in America: A Filmography, 1911-1970. revised edition. Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-511473-6 .
  • Janet Maslin: Maurice Schwartz in Yiddish Drama. In: The New York Times. November 21, 1991.
  • Chantal Catherine Michel: The Yiddish Cinema - Staging of Ascension Between Shtetl and American Dream. 1st edition. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-081-3 .
  • Chantal Catherine Michel: Between Shtetl and Hollywood - Music in Yiddish Cinema. In: Kiel contributions to film music research. 8, 2012, pp. 231-246. ( filmmusik.uni-kiel.de , date of access: July 15, 2012)
  • Dietmar Pertsch: Jewish worlds in feature films and television games. Films on the history of the Jews from their beginnings to their emancipation in 1871. (= media in research and teaching. Series A. Volume 35). Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 1992, ISBN 3-11-095212-2 , pp. 208, 211, 271.
  • Sharon Pucker Rivo: Yiddish Film in the United States. Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women's Archive , March 20, 2009. (Viewed on December 5, 2013)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. McCarty p. 231 et al. 520
  2. ↑ u. a. from works by Anton Rubinstein [u. a. Kamennoi Ostrow , Op. 10, No. 22], cf. cine-holocaust
  3. ↑ all data from: Ronny Loewy and others: Der Yiddische Film. P. 110.
  4. ↑ cf. This film features the commanding performance of Maurice Schwartz, often billed as "the greatest of all Yiddish actors", or the "Olivier of the Yiddish stage." , so at cuny.edu
  5. ↑ cf. Kanfer p. 163.
  6. ↑ cf. cinematreasures
  7. ↑ Uncle Moses. In: Turner Classic Movies . Retrieved March 29, 2020 .
  8. ↑ cf. cinematreasures
  9. ↑ cf. cinematreasures
  10. ↑ cf. Poster in his first all-talking picure
  11. ↑ cf. livingtradition ( Memento from February 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ): “Zvee Scooler was born in Kamenets-Podolsk (now Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine) in 1899 and arrived in America with his family in 1912. By 1916 he made his first appearance on the stage — in an amateur Hebrew-language theatrical — and soon thereafter became a regular chorus member in Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theater. He appeared with all the major companies of the day, such as the Irving Place Theater with Ludwig Satz and the Folks-Teater. His first English-language role came in 1926 in “We Americans” starring Edward G. Robinson (Paul Muni was also in the cast). He again appeared on Broadway in 1928 in a 29-performance dud called “The Command Performance,” after which he did not make a Broadway appearance until “Fiddler on the Roof” opened in 1964. He returned to Yiddish with an appearance in the 1932 film classic “Uncle Moses,” playing Charlie, the young love interest ” .
  12. ↑ cf. The Jewish Radio Favorite poster and records on the Brunswick label ; Brunswick 67 133-A: Jewish Comic Recitation The Waiber'she Game (Women's Game) 'Rubin Goldberg, Comedian'; Brunswick 67 133-B: Jewish Comic Recitation Hikatch (The Stutterer) 'Rubin Goldberg, Komiker', aufgen. NY, November 10, 1928, cf. Ross Laird p. 640, label shown. at ebayimg.com (accessed February 14, 2016)
  13. ↑ Announcement of an anonymous at yiddishmovie
  14. ^ Leonard Maltin : Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide . Plume, New York 2015, ISBN 978-0-14-751682-4 , pp. 743 (English).
  15. ↑ in: J. Hobermann: Bridge of Light - Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. 2010. cit. according to jewishfilm.org
  16. ↑ Uncle Moses. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 29, 2020 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  17. ↑ cf. cine-holocaust.de ( Memento from February 19, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) and hagalil
  18. ↑ yiddishmovie