Language:
Yiddish
Pages:
100 Min.
,
NTSC
,
s/w
Year of publication:
2007
Keywords:
Sowjetunion
;
Stummfilm
Abstract:
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, Jewish Luck 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?'" A dramatized version of the Menkhem Mendl stories was first staged by the Moscow Yiddish State Theater, under the direction of Alexander Granovsky, who later made this silent film. Jewish Luck features some of the finest artistic talents of Soviet Jewry during this period. It has been speculated that the cinematography done by Eduard Tissé inspired the filming of particular scenes in one of his later projects, Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. The original Russian intertitles were written by Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, who later became a victim of the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s.
Abstract:
TITLE: Jewish Luck / Yevreiskoye Schastye / Menakhem Mendl YEAR: 1925 DIR/PROD: Alexander Granovsky COUNTRY: USSR LANGUAGE: Silent with English intertitles Source: www.brandeis.edu/jewishfilm Text: Restored by The National Center for Jewish Film. One of the first Soviet Yiddish comedies to be released in the U.S.A., Jewish Luck is based on Sholom Aleichem's stories about a daydreaming entrepreneur who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich schemes. The film is an adaptation of the GOSET stage production.
Note:
Original: UdSSR, 1925. - Englische Zwischentitel
,
Ex. b: Nur für den internen Gebrauch
