JEWISH LUCK ("Yidishe Glikn," Russia, 1925, 90 minutes)
In Yiddish and Russian with English subtitles
Introduced by Amelia Glaser, Assistant Professor of Russian Literature,
University of California at San Diego
Wed., August 13, 7:00 pm
Building 260 (Pigott Hall), room 113
Map
This classic of Soviet cinema is an adaptation of Sholom Aleichem's story, "Menachem-Mendel the Matchmaker," and combines fantasy, document and comedy. The main character is a luft-mentsh who wanders the land in search of new get-rich-quick schemes and learning accidental lessons along the way. It is also the film debut of the Yiddish State Art Theatre actor, Solomon Mikhoels, who was considered the greatest living Yiddish actor and director of his time. The fiction writer Isaac Babel penned the film's original Russian subtitles. JEWISH LUCK is a wonderful document from early twentieth-century Ukraine, and, despite its effort to portray the misery of pre-Revolutionary Jewish life, offers wonderfully detailed images from Jewish Berdichev. The film follows the hapless main character as he looks for luck, traveling from his hometown to Odessa. The film concludes with an almost ethnographic staging of an outdoor Jewish wedding. In one of the highlights of his adventure, Menachem Mendl dreams of exporting a shipload of Jewish brides from Eastern Europe to America. While he never actually sets sail, the film represents a moment in which all roads seemed open, but true fortune might be found shockingly close to home.
