Page 146 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY 127
figure; unlike Chaplin, however, he is never permitted to triumph–even temporarily
–over his social betters. Mikhoels’s performance is almost ideogrammatic:
whether taking a swim (still in his hat and selling insurance all the while) or simply
riding on a train, he moves with fantastic, almost mincing precision. Accused of
smuggling by a tsarist policeman, he becomes fawningly coy, offering the official a
bribe–with Granovsky lavishing close-ups on his elaborate hand gestures.
In the film’s marvellous set piece, Menakhem Mendl dreams that he is a
shadkhn of international proportions. He meets an elegant prospective bride on the
steps of the Odessa harbour, presents her with a bouquet and introduces her to the
legendary Jewish philanthropist Baron de Hirsch, who informs him that America
is suffering from a shortage of eligible brides. Begged to thus ‘save America’,
Menakhem Mendl mobilises Berdichev. The vision grows increasingly elaborate–
its extravagant plenitude of marriage-minded women rivalling the climax of Keaton’s
contemporary Seven Chances–and in hindsight, more than a little sinister, as box-
cars filled with Jewish maidens, already dressed in their wedding gowns, arrive in
Odessa for export overseas. 8
Alone among Soviet Yiddish films, Jewish Luck had the authority of a folk
tradition and the weight of official sanction. In addition to Mikhoels, Altman and
Pulver, the project involved another prominent Jewish artist: the humorous,
idiomatic intertitles were written by Isaak Babel, whose violent, sardonic stories of
the Polish-Soviet war had recently been published to great acclaim. The movie’s
première was treated as a gala event: Pulver conducted his score with a symphony
orchestra at a special preview sponsored by the GEZERD (Society for the
Resettlement of Jewish Workers on the Land), a quasi-public agency closely
associated with the Yevsektsiya.
Jewish Luck appears to have been both a popular and a critical success–as well
as being one of the first Soviet films offered for export. (Within fifteen months of its
9
domestic première it was shown in the Baltic states, Hungary and China.) Writing
in Pravda (15 November 1925), Boris Gusman cautiously termed the movie a
‘transitional’ work, overly episodic and theatrical–as well as lacking that ‘element of
propaganda which is essential to the Soviet film’–but nevertheless intelligent, lucid
and ingenious: ‘Seeing the film, one can think that something worthwhile has been
contributed to cinema…a good “theatrical” film is better than a slapdash
cinematographic “original”.’ 10
In fact, Jewish Luck is impressively non-theatrical–as anyone who has seen the
excellent surviving print can attest. The Deluge [Mabul, 1926] presented greater
problems. Reports in the American Jewish press suggest that the film was
11
intended to mark the twentieth anniversary of the 1905 Revolution. This seems
to have been a relatively lavish production with sequences shot on location in the
Jewish quarter of Vinnitsa, Natan Altman’s home town, as well as in the nearby shtetl
of Litin. Habima actor Raikin Ben-Ari, who appeared in the film, maintains that
neophyte director Yevgeni Ivanov-Barkov, a former set designer and a non-Jew,
showed considerable–even obsessive–concern for Yiddish culture. Despite this,
however, he proved unable to finish the movie.