Language:
Yiddish
Pages:
1 DVD-Video (95 Min.)
,
schwarz-weiß
Uniform Title:
Fishke der Krumer
Keywords:
DVD-Video
Abstract:
David Opatoshu ("Exodus", "Torn Curtain") made his film debut as Fishke, a lame young man hopelessly in love with a blind orphan girl (Helen Beverley) in cholera-obsessed Glubsk (e.g. Foolstown). The impoverished couple dream of life in the big city of Odessa free from the shtetl's poverty and stifling old-world prejudices. The benevolent and enlightened bookseller Mendele (Isidore Cashier as Mendele Mokher Sforim) helps them, turning small-town superstitions to their advantage. This 1939 Yiddish film classic, made on the eve of World War II, is at once romantic, expressionist, and painfully conscious of the danger about to engulf European Jews. Audaciously adapted from the work of novelist S.Y. Abramovitch (1836-1917), whom Sholem Aleichem dubbed the grandfather of Yiddish literature, this luminous allegory of escape marries Edgar Ulmer's masterful direction (and set design) with superb acting by members of New York's Artef and Yiddish Art Theaters. Film historian J. Hoberman calls Beverley and Opatoshu "perhaps the most beautiful couple in the history of Yiddish cinema ... their scenes have a touching erotic chemistry". [jewishfilm.org]
Note:
jidd. mit engl. UT
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