The Dybbuk (Michal Waszynski, 1938)

[myrnaloyisdope]

Well, for the past year I've been working on the TSPDT 1000 greatest films list, which has turned out to be a blessing as I've discovered a ton of great films I would never have watched otherwise.

Anyway, I picked up the DVD of The Dybbuk, solely because it's on the list, and I was very impressed. I was actually in tears at the end. The film can best be described as haunting, which makes sense given that the film is a Jewish ghost story. The dybbuk is a spirit in Jewish folklore that enters into the physical body of its beloved and possesses it. In this film, bascally a rabbinical student falls in love with a girl, but can't marry her due to her father's opposition. He aligns himself with Satan in order to get the girl, but ends up as a dybbuk instead. The use of rabbinical language, culture and music really creates a mystical sensibility, one that is equally fascinating and mysterious.

There's a great sequence about halfway through the film set during the girl's wedding night that is alternately beautiful and terrifying. The set is done in the German expressionistic style of Wiene and Murnau, and the sequence features dancers celebrating that feast of the rich, and the feast of the poor. All the while the bride is being swept up by all the ritual, as well as realizing the presence of the dybbuk inside her. This combined with the traditional Yiddish music makes for a beautifully grim, yet incredibly disorienting sequence.

The film is filled with atmosphere, so even though it's probably a bit long, and unfortunately for those who don't speak Yiddish, has sequences that aren't subtitled, it still is engrossing from start to finish. I must admit I wasn't expecting much, but I was very impressed.

Are there any other highlights of pre-war Yiddish cinema?

[Cold Bishop]

http://www.filmreference.com/encycloped ... inema.html

As far as American Yiddish cinema goes, Uncle Moses seems to be especially admired from the few who've seen it.

[MichaelB]

Poland made quite a few Yiddish films in the 1930s, of which The Dybbuk is the best known but certainly not the only one - others included The Purim Player (1937), A Little Letter to Mother (1938) and the gloriously-titled Yiddle with his Fiddle (1936).

As luck would have it, Marek Haltof's invaluable book Polish National Cinema has been scanned into Google Books, and you can read the whole of his brief section on Polish Yiddish cinema here.

[HerrSchreck]

Jidische Glickn, which I've skimmed thru a copy of, is a little-known Soviet Jewish comedy from the silent era. I can't tell you more outside of the fact that it is much beloved, and well executed.. and considered a first of its kind as well as an important, if hardly mentioned, classic.

[jsteffe]

I just want to point out that the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis has a major collection of pre-war Yiddish cinema, including early films by Edgar G. Ulmer. They're geared more towards institutional sales, but they will sell many of their DVDs for home use as well. Their restorations look really nice, based on what I've seen. However, I haven't seen their restoration of THE DYBBUK yet.

[Sloper]

Just saw this and I think myrnaloy summed it up pretty well in the first post. I do think it is scuppered somewhat by its funereal pace and portentous tone: the hairy spirit who crops up now and then to stare into space and deliver obscure judgements in a monotone kind of sums up everything that's wrong with the film. There's an awful lot of staring and gasping, and I can't help but feel this very simple story needed a less 'operatic' approach, or at least an operatic approach with more conviction (and better acting) to support it. I haven't read the play, but looking at an online summary, and at the first few pages on the Amazon preview, I get the feeling something important was lost in the translation from stage to screen. But it doesn't help that a lot of the dialogue is left un-translated on the Bel Canto DVD.

All that said, there are many moments of visual/aural beauty and dramatic intensity, most notably the wedding sequence mentioned above, and of course the ending - elegant, romantic and chilling all at once. Beautiful music, too; the way Nison's song at the start reverberates through the rest of the film is eerily effective, and from what I can gather this was not something carried over from the play.