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Opposite the eternal night of The Black Cat, the plaintive luminosity of a makeshift shtetl. The protagonist (Michael Gorrin) is a restless and prematurely pensive yeshiva scholar, asleep at the synagogue and enveloped by sunshine as his wandering commences. "The light of truth is everywhere. But one must still search for it." Neighboring peasant households welcome him, bearded patriarchs promptly squabble over whose place he'll spend the Sabbath at. (Matriarchs meanwhile specialize in philosophical shrugs: "Because God's in heaven, does life have to be hell?") Bed and board at the farm means discovering the practical side of sacred texts, he teaches the boy (Herschel Bernardi) to read and asks to be taught to till the soil. Rabbinical asceticism contrasts with the sensuality of the playful lass (Helen Beverley), who scampers barefoot, tugs dreamily at a butter churn, delights in seeing her name scribbled on a chalkboard. "Living in the country sure can drive a Jew mad." The Yiddish-theater chestnut makes for an oasis of lyricism in Edgar G. Ulmer's tenebrous cosmos, an evocation of European meadows and choruses shot in under a week in New Jersey. (Dovzhenko figures distinctly in this ethnographic elegy, along with the Renoir of Toni.) Tragicomic routines, pastoral montages, the hopeful harmony of body and spirit. It closes on a hearty "mazel tov" for the happy couple framed by a field plow, though the director can't help noticing the darkening of clouds. "Man couldn't have created the world." "He can destroy it." With Isidore Cashier, Anna Appel, Max Vodnoy, Lea Noemi, Dena Drute, and Saul Levine. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |