The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: The Dybbuk (1937), directed by Michal Wasznyski

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "Tumbalalaika" by The Klezmer Conservatory Band

       I think it should go without saying that Jewish people have been instrumental in the development of cinema as an art form. Whether it be through acting, writing, directing, producing, some of the most celebrated films of all time likely would not exist were it not for members of the Jewish people, and some of those most celebrated films are about Jewish people. Yet when it comes to this blog’s forte, the genre film, it always seemed to me like there was a gap in representation. I mean think of all the famous horror film based around Christian theology, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, The Exorcist, The Devil’s Advocate and then try to think of an equivalent film based around Hebrew theology. Pretty hard I imagine. In fact the only Jewish genre movie that comes to mind (besides The Hebrew Hammer, which I believe is legally classified as a dumpster fire rather than a movie) is The Golem, a German Expressionist film that literally came out over a century ago, so I’d say we’re overdue for another one. So how about one that’s slightly less than a century old instead?

       Released in Poland in 1937, The Dybbuk was written by S.A. Kacyzna, directed by Michał Waszyński and produced by Zygfryd Mayflauer, based on the play of the same name by S. Ansky. Sender and Nisn are the best of friends, So much so that they make a vow to each other that if their soon-to-be-born children turn out to be boy and girl, then they shall be wed. God, however, hates harmless statements and decides to dole out some punishment on them: Sender arrives home to find his wife gave birth to a daughter but died in childbirth, and Nisn dies at sea before learning his wife gave birth to a son. 18 years later a young scholar named Khonen arrives in town and hits it off with the Sender family, especially Leah, but Sender has become a wealthy man over the years and the only potential groom he can consider for his daughter is one that can make him even wealthier. Obsessed with claiming Leah as his bride, Khonen turns to the Kabbalah and even Satan in order to get her, but God apparently hates that too and promptly kills him as well. That seemed to be the end of it, but it is said that if a man dies before his time that his soul can return to walk the earth, looking to experience the things they missed out on life, becoming what is known as a dybbuk. Which is exactly what happens here: Leah in her grief calls out for Khonen to be with her, Khonen’s spirit returns as a dybbuk and possesses her, and now the Sender family has to figure out a way to free her from the malignant spirit. Kind of like The Exorcist but with more Yiddish.

       One of the big appeals for me in watching foerign films is being able to catch a glimpse of different cultures and to see how they interpret the world. While the Jewish people aren’t ‘foreign’, at least in places like the U.S., as I wrote earlier you never really see that much of a Jewish presence in pop culture outside of Hanukkah time, so this is a treat. Not only to see Jewish actors performing in Yiddish, but getting to see how the Jewish people celebrate holidays and religious ceremonies, hear their songs and their views on theology, the full monte. More than a film that just utilizes an aspect of Jewish culture/folklore as a gimmick, like The Leprechaun, this is a film that knows and honors its roots.

        So besides being a cultural touchstone, how is The Dybbuk as a film? It’s fine. This was the era when many films were essentially stage plays on screen and Dybbuk is no exception, but there are some exterior shots and cinematic tricks (such as those involving the spirits) to spice things up, and I think the little village area they use as the main setting looks well crafted. The acting is also perfectly adequate, M. Lipman is probably the highlight as Sender and Leah’s potential bridegroom (psychoanalyze that Mr. Freud), who is the closest this film has to comic relief, although I think the actors who play Leah and Khonen have more charisma separately than they do together. I also liked the music, you can never have enough klezmer, although with the way audio was captured back in the day some of the songs come off as a bit creepy.

       As a story though there was definitely a disconnect. When I went into this film I was expecting it to be a sort of Hebrew religious fable, and given how much Jewish theology plays into the story it sort of is, but this is less like David & Goliath and more like Romeo & Juliet. In R&J the theme of ‘get along or this shit can ripple down to your kids and fuck up their lives’ is pretty clear, but I’m not sure of the moral of The Dybbuk. Sender and Nisn try to decide things beyond their station and get punished for it so you’d think the message is ‘place your faith in God and don’t try to micromanage everything’ but then it pushes Leah and Khonen together anyway. Khonen is running down the Talmud in one of his early scenes so you think he’s going to have to learn humility in order to get his just reward, but in fact Khonen succeeds by doing the complete opposite. Then you think it might involve Sender repenting for mistake and his miserly behavior but no, that doesn’t really factor in either. Usually in a religiously-based film the world with God or faith is portrayed as gray and miserable, but in The Dybbuk where God is a factual thing, all the characters end up miserable, and faith appears to be completely meaningless. Which really starts hitting home when considering the 2 hour runtime. It’s downright depressing, almost absurdist in a way, but I’ll fully admit that’s an outside perspective and the audience for which it was made likely saw it differently.

       A film made by Polish Jews on the eve of WWII sounds like it could be a movie on its own, but the film we got was interesting enough in its own way, so I’m giving The Dybbuk a mild recommendation. It’s not really a film made to just sit down and watch whenever, but maybe if you’re a teacher looking for something to show the class (I first found out about the play from a college class), or if you and your significant other like old sad B&W movies, or you’re just trying to expand your horizons as I’m trying to do, then The Dybbuk is worth looking into. If those don’t apply to you, then it'll probably be too long and too slow paced to be truly enjoyable, and you’ll want to look for something different. And if any mysterious bearded men suddenly appear and start giving you life advice, just walk away.

Reelin' In The Years -- A Day at the Races (1937), directed by Sam Wood

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "A Day At The Races", by Jurassic 5

       I’m not going to be one of those folks that says that comedy was so much better back in the day, as often times that seems to go hand-in-hand with ‘I want to make fun of minorities but I don’t want people to make me feel bad for doing it’, but I will say that it is distinctly different. I imagine much of that has to do with the fact that the comedy stars of the day came out of vaudeville, a style of theatrical variety show that had begun in the 1880s and had been phased out with the rise of cinema. Whereas many top comedic stars today got their start as stand-up comics before transitioning to the silver screen, those coming out of vaudeville were consummate performers: Acting, singing, dancing, musicianship, you needed to be well-rounded back in those days. That emphasis on stand-up also emphasizes the performer these days, whereas comedy then was based on the act. People didn’t turn on the Colgate Comedy Hour to see Bud Abbott and Lou Costello the people, they turned on to see the characters of Abbott & Costello, if that makes sense. At least they did until they were replaced by Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, and even then Jerry Lewis wasn’t the same guy as ‘Jerry Lewis’. Just ask the French.

       I was a big 3 Stooges fan when I was a kid, in large part because TCM or whoever loved to push marathons of their stuff back in the day, and it wasn’t until I was in late high school/early college that I first heard of the Rolling Stones to the Stooges’ Beatles, the Marx Bros. Where the crux of the 3 Stooges style lied in the fact that they were stooges and thus fucked up everything they attempted, the Marx Bros. (lascivious fast-talker Groucho, Italian con artist Chico, and prop-loving, anarchi mute Harpo, occasionally joined by their straight-man brother Zeppo or Gummo in the vaudeville days) made everyone else the stooges. As soon as they stepped into a room they were three steps ahead of everyone else there, and then it was a race to see how much they can fuck with those people before the scene ended. They were still good guys at heart, helping those in need, but they were totally fine with lying, cheating and stealing whenever the situation called for it (or because they felt like it at the time). Kinda like Eddie Guerrero when he was a babyface.

       A Day at the Races was the second Marx Bros. film to be released by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer after their move from Paramount (the home of their first five full-length films) and the second in a row to be directed by Sam Wood (who you might recall from Raffles) , following A Night at the Opera. Maureen O’Sullivan plays Judy, the young and beautiful owner of a sanitarium located near the Sparkling Springs Lake summer resort which has recently fallen on hard times. It’s looking like she might have to sell the place to shady businessman Morgan, and finding out that her lover Gill (Allan Jones) has spent all the money he’s saved up as a singer in order to buy a racehorse in order to pay her debts does nothing to lift her mood. Tony (Chico), the sanitarium employee, offers a suggestion: Get Ms. Upjohn (played by Marx Bros. regular Margaret Dumont), the resident rich lady and hypochondriac to pay off the debt! Well Miss Upjohn isn’t really in the mood to break open the pocketbook, convinced as she is that something is wrong despite all the doctors saying she’s fine. So if that’s the case, then they better call in Ms. Upjohn’s favorite doctor, Hugo Hackenbush (Groucho), physician and diagnostician, but mostly a veterinarian. Then you’ve got Stuffy the jockey (Harpo) who ends up meeting Gill at the race track while running from his own troubles, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a cinematic jambalaya.

       Of course you’re not going to a Marx Bros. movie for the plot, you’re there to see them do their schtick, and in that A Day at the Races fulfills that need. I find it hard to describe what makes the Marx Bros.entertaining, because so much of it is based on the dexterity of how they perform and how they use language (probably not a good choice for an ESL class movie night) that you really need to see it to get the full effect. This is clear whenever one of the Bros. are aimed at somebody, but Races also dedicates a decent chunk of time to longform skits involving the Bros. interacting with each other, which has a different sort of energy entirely. The only one who can match a Marx Brother is another Marx Brother after all, and seeing them play off each other is a treat all on its own. The first big skit of the film in fact, when Tony unknowingly meets Hackenbush for the first time and cons him into buying a tip on a horse, which is in a code you need to buy a code book to decipher, and so on and on, feels exactly like something they pulled out a hundred times back on the vaudeville circuit. Hell, you don’t even need the rest of the film for context, it works perfectly well on its own with a definitive beginning and end. 

       Marx Bros. films are often very musical ones as well, with most if not all of their films featuring a virtuoso solo performance by Chico on the piano and Harpo on the harp (natch). Races takes this a step further by sticking two lengthy musical numbers in the second half, including a reprise at the end. Allan Jones does his Zeppo impression here, by which I mean ‘generic old-timey Hollywood ballad’, but I do enjoy the second, jazzier number. Combined with those long skits it does throw off the pace of the film, so things end up coming across as a bit chaotic by the end. A bit of a ‘we’re running out of time so let’s wrap everything up now’ kind of thing. Not bad, just different.

       Really I’ve only got two gripes with this movie. One is an unfortunate case of blackface, when the Marx Bros. are trying to escape from the villains in a crowd of Black people, but not too much attention is drawn to it and no jokes are made at the expense of Black people during the scene so it’s not as bad as it could have been. The other issue is with Harpo, or rather how he’s utilized in this film. Not only does he seem less actively chaotic than he has in other films, but he also seems kind of...superfluous, I guess is the word? As if they struggled to find something for him to do except at the very end of the film. I also must admit that I hate his ‘whistling as talking’ gimmick, and when he breaks it out here it lasts just long enough to get me in a sour mood. They get back by the next scene, but that fucking whistling is not doing it for me dude.

       When talking about the best Marx Bros. movies, I imagine folk with more cinema experience than I do likely lean towards their output with Paramount (that Zeppo tho). Honestly I’d probably agree, although it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to watch their early stuff. However I think A Day at the Races (as well as A Night at the Opera) works as a good showcase of their stuff, and showed that they still had plenty left in the tank. At least until they reached A Night in Casablanca, by which time the wheels were definitely falling off the car. 1937 though? Still good, and so it gets the recommendation.

       This year’s potential inductions included Disney’s landmark animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Leo McCarey’s family drama Make Way For Tomorrow, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage. We’re heading closer and closer to some dark times on the timeline, so how about for our next stop we get into some heavier fare?