By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — At the beginning of the New Year, most film critics release their top ten list of films from the previous year. Since I’ve only been reviewing films for three months, I’m devoting my Rosh Hashanah column to my favorite American Jewish films. I realize that there are many other worthy choices, but I find these are the ones that immediately come to mind when I’m asked which American Jewish films I like the best. Let’s hope this generates an on-line discussion of your favorites. All of these films are available on Netflix unless otherwise noted.
The Jazz Singer (1927)–Unlike Hester Street, The Jazz Singer speaks to the idealized aspirations of second generation Americans. Tradition restricts those ambitions to following in the father’s footsteps, but Jack (aka Jakie) ultimately wins maternal and public applause for employing his voice on Broadway rather than in the synagogue. Note the sympathetic portrayal of the Jewish mother in light of subsequent stereotypes. If you never heard Al Jolson perform, “You ain’t heard nothing yet.” Listening to the first dialogue ever spoken on screen is like eavesdropping on history.
Tevye the Milkman (1939) — Acutely aware of the escalation of anti-Semitism discrimination and persecution in Eastern and Central Europe and the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States and Western Europe as well, Maurice Schwartz acted in and directed this Yiddish version of Sholem Aleichem’s story about Tevye and his daughter Chava. Unlike Fiddler on the Roof, this version is uniformly negative in its portrayals of the Russians indicating the Czar’s expulsions of Jews mirror the popular and religious hostility Jews experienced in the Pale of Settlement. Consequently, Tevye is proven right and Chava divorces her Russian husband and returns to her father begging for his forgiveness. They flee in their wagon and head for the Holy Land.
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Gentleman’s Agreement: (1947)– Although it may seem tame by today’s standards, Gentleman’s Agreement exposed the occupational, residential, and social forms of discrimination which American Jews had experienced Though faulted for having a Gentile (Gregory Peck) pretending he’s a Jew endure the slings and arrows of prejudice, his Jewish friend Dave (John Garfield) has some of the movie’s best lines, particularly his conversation with the timid Kathy (Dorothy McGuire) about how remaining silent about anti-Semitic slights and slurs in effect condones them. It won Oscars for best director (Elia Kazan), best picture, and best supporting actress (Celeste Holmes). If you prefer to see less genteel forms of anti-Semitism, see Edward Dmytryk’s Crossfire (1947).
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The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)–Holocaust scholars savage George Steven’s adaptation for being miscast (fashion model Millie Perkins as Anne), not Jewish enough, and not revealing what happened to those less fortunate than the Franks and their friends. Comparing it to subsequent films like The Pawnbroker (1965), they ignore that the diary, the Broadway play, and the movie globalized the Holocaust like no other story before them. By focusing on the confines of the Secret Annex and the tensions generated by living under such claustrophobic conditions, the film enabled viewers to identify with the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. Today’s viewer needs to imagine what it was like in the 1950s to appreciate how the film raised awareness about what was commonly called “the Jewish catastrophe.” Otto Frank (Joseph Schildkraut) recalls in the final scene that he searched for his wife, daughters, and friends and discovered that they all were dead.
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Goodbye, Columbus (1969)–Following World War Two, American Jews increasingly uprooted themselves from their old neighborhoods to the suburbs. Conspicuous consumption vied with communal solidarity, religious observance and tikkun olam as the markers of Jewish identity. Goodbye, Columbus satirically illustrates that clash of Jewish civilizations as Neil (Richard Benjamin), a librarian from Brooklyn, has a torrid summer affair with Brenda (Ali McGraw), the pampered daughter of affluent parents residing in Westchester. The lavish wedding struck many American Jews as anti-Semitic, but like the Philip Roth novella, the picture posed the age-old question: “Can money buy happiness?” (Temporarily on the “save” list for Netflix).
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Fiddler on the Roof (1971)–Yes, you’ve all seen the movie and the musical many times, perhaps you even played a role in it during high school or college. Though it obviously casts a nostalgic light on the shtetl experience, it retains Aleichem’s criticisms of the class divisions, gender roles, and parochialism that characterized Jewish communities in those little towns. Through the marriage choices of his three daughters, Tevye learns that personal freedom and secular ideologies threaten Jewish life from within, while persecution threatens it from without. For a glimpse at the Yeshiva subculture in the shtetl, see Barbra Streisand’s underrated (at least in my opinion) Yentl (1983).
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Hester Street (1975)–Despite its low budget and perhaps because of it, this remains one of the greatest films about the impact of immigration on Jewish families coming from Eastern Europe to the United States between 1880-1920. In addition to the obvious changes in personal appearance and language that adjustment to America required, the toll taken on a marriage when one spouse came earlier than the other is beautifully portrayed. The nuanced performance by Carol Kane, who won an academy award nomination for her role, is worth the price of admission. And if you’re reluctant to see Hester Street because the original version was too grainy, the dialogue hard to hear, the subtitles hard to read, and the microphones visible in many scenes, the DVD has been digitally remastered and contains great interviews of the cast and director.
The Chosen (1981) –One of the few mainstream films that examines debates within the Jewish community rather than offering the polar options of assimilation or faith. It is often forgotten that Reuven (Barry Miller) and his father (Maximillian Schell) are not only Zionists, but Conservative Jews. After all, it is Reuven who decides to become a rabbi. There is a nostalgic warmth, albeit stifling in the context of the plotline, that exudes from the scenes of Hasidic life, and a real sense of what Israel meant to American Jews in the immediate wake of the Holocaust. I think the performances are first rate, but many critics at the time wondered if casting Robby Benson as Danny and Rod Steiger as his father detracted from the film’s credibility.
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Schindler’s List (1993) –Too many Jewish Studies scholars and viewers dismiss Spielberg’s masterpiece for all the wrong reasons. It doesn’t matter that the hero is a German rescuer. Are Jews only supposed to remember the terrible things that befell them and forget the rare acts of kindness that spared some of them from death? Even within a story about rescue, the viewer is bombarded with unforgettable images of mass shootings, the “logic” of Nazi anti-Semitism, and intimidations of the fiery fate of those who had no Gentile protector. While Schindler (Liam Neeson) emerges as the key protagonist, his metamorphosis into one is unthinkable without the moral suasion of Stern (Ben Kingsley).
A Serious Man (2009)–Was suburban Midwest Jewish life as vacuous in the 1960s as the Coen brothers portray it? If you like the Coen’s brand of humor or had an uninspiring Hebrew school education that prepared you to read a Torah portion and not much more about Jewish beliefs and history, then you’ll love this film. It is a simultaneously humorous and serious update of the Book of Job. Addressing the issue of theodicy (whether a just and omnipotent God exists if evil flourishes in the world), there are only two other films that broach this topic with equal nuance: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989 and The Quarrel (1991). Watch the credits almost to their end where you’ll read, “No Jews were harmed in the making of this film.”
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Lawrence Baron recently retired from being the Nasatir Professor of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University. He is the author of Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Rowman and Littlefield: 2005) and editor of The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (Brandeis University Press: 2011). He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com