The Oxford History of World Cinema (70 page)

Blondzhende Shtern (Wandering Stars, 1927), directed by Grigory Gricher Cherikover,

was a story about a Jewish boy who runs away from the parental home and years later

becomes a famous violinist. It too was based on a story by Aleykhein and had a script by

Isaac Babel. Babel changed Aleykhem's story considerably in order to make it

ideologically acceptable -- an effort that proved ultimately vain, since this great writer and

friend and confidant of Sergei Eisenstein was to die in the purges not many years later.

Gricher Cherikover also made a number of other Yiddish films, including Skvoz Slezy

( 1928) which enjoyed worldwide fame under its American title Laughter through Tears.

A classic of Yiddish cinema: Yiddle with his Fiddle (Yidl mitn fidl, 1936), produced and

directed by. Joseph Green and starring Molly Picon

SOUND CINEMA

The introduction of sound at the beginning of the 1930s resulted in a brief hiatus, but the

second half of the decade proved to be a golden age for the Yiddish cinema, with

synchronized dialogue now able to capture the richness of the language. Two Polish

companies specialized in Yiddish films, Joseph Green's Green-Film, and Shaul and

Yitskhok Goskind's Kinor. Aleksander Ford created fictionalized documents such as Sabra

Halutzim ( 1934) with the participation of actors from the Jewish Theatre, and We're on

our Way (Mir kumen on, 1935). Together with Jan NowinaPrzybylski, the enterprising

producer and director Joseph Green (Yoysef Grinberg, a native of Lódz) made Yiddle

with his Fiddle (Yidl mitn Fidl, 1936) with music by Abraham Ellstein and with Molly

Picon in the title-role, and The Purim Player (Der Purim-spiler, 1937) with Miriam

Kressin and Hymie Jacobson. With Konrad Tom he then directed Little Mother (Mamele,

1938) with the participation of Molly Picon. Then, in association with Leon Trystan, he

filmed A Little Letter to Mother (A Brivele der Mamen, 1938) with Lucy and Misha

Gehrman. The talented director Henryk Szaro (Szapiro) did a sound remake of The Oath

(Tkies Kaf, 1937) with Zygmunt Turkow as the prophet Elijah and with the participation

of the choir of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw. In 1937 Leon Jeannot directed Jolly

Paupers (Di Freylekhe Kabtsonim) with the participation of two famous Jewish comic

actors, Shimen (Szymon) Dzigan and Yisroel Shumakher. But the most important artistic

event of Yiddish cinema is rightly considered to be The Dybbuk (Der Dibek, 1937),

adapted from the play (and ethnographic survey materials) by An-ski and directed by

Michal Waszyfiski (Misha Wachsman). In this story, based on the old legend about the

unhappy love of a poor Talmud scholar for Lea, the daughter of a rich man, Hasidic

mysticism and symbolism come fully to the fore. The last Yiddish film to be produced in

Poland before the outbreak of war was Without a Home (On a Heym, 1939), directed by

Aleksander Marten (Marek Tennebaum, born in Lódz, and a refugee from Hitler's

Germany), based on the play by Yankev Gordin, with Shimen Dzigan, Yisroel

Shumakher, Adam Domb, and Ida Kaminska in the leading roles.

As life for European Jewry became increasingly threatened, the centre of Yiddish film

production shifted to the United States, where the Austrian-born émigré Edgar G. Ulmer

co-directed the popular success Green Fields (Grine Felder) with Yankev Ben-Ami.

Ulmer's varied and prolific career (he had been the assistant of F. W. Murnau and went on

to make numerous Hollywood B pictures) was interspersed with a number of other

Yiddish films including The Singing Blacksmith (Yankl der Shmid, 1938) and American

Matchmaker (Amerikaner Shadkhn, 1940). Gordin's Mirele Efros was remade by Josef

Berne in 1939, while Moris Shvarts of the Yiddish Arts Theatre crossed over to film

production to direct and act in Tevye der Milkhiker ( 1939).

The Holocaust took a cruel toll of Yiddish film-makers. Directors Henryk Szaro and

Marek Arnshteyn, actors Klara Segalowicz, Yitskhok Samberg, Dora Fakel, Abram Kurc,

and many others died in the Warsaw ghetto. Yiddish films continued to be made after the

war, but in the aftermath of the final solution the glorious past of Yiddish cinematography

assumed the special dimension of a value irredeemably lost.

Bibliography

Goldberg, Judith N. ( 1983), Laughter through Tears: The Yiddish Cinema.

Goldman, Eric A. ( 1988), Visions, Images and Dreams: Yiddish Film Past and Present.

Hoberman, Jim ( 1991), Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film between Two Worlds.

Shmeruk, Chone ( 1992), Historia literatury jidisz ('A history of Yiddish literature').

Japan: Before the Great Kanto Earthquake

HIROSHI KOMATSU

The apparatus of moving images, such as Edison's Kinetoscope, Lumière's

Cinématographe, Edison's Vitascope, and the Vitascope copied by Lubin, were first

exhibited in Japan in the latter half of 1896. By the autumn of 1897, the British motion

picture camera, the Baxter and Wray Cinematograph, was imported by Konishi

Photographic Store. Using these imported cameras, the first cameramen, such as Shiro

Asano, Tsunekichi Shibata, and Kanzo Shirai, filmed street scenes and geisha dances, and,

as early as 1898-9, were making skit films exploiting trick effects, like Bake Jizo ('Jizo

the spook', 1898) and Shinin no sosei ('The resurrection of a corpse', 1898). However, by

the turn of the century there was still no established film industry in Japan, and French,

American, and British films dominated the Japanese market.

Following the tradition of the magic lantern show, or utsushie, early films were shown at

variety halls, rental halls, or ordinary theatres, alongside presentations in different media.

Many of the first Japanese films recorded scenes from kabuki: in 1899, Momijigari

('Viewing scarlet maple leaves') and Ninin Dojoji ('Two people at Dojo temple') were

filmed by Tsunekichi Shibata, and Tsuneji Tsuchiya made Nio no ukisu ('The floating nest

of the little grebe'). Momijigari, a film of the kabuki play, featuring the legendary actors

Danjuro Ichikawa IX and Kikugoro Onoe V, consisted of three shots and already showed

a primitive form of film narrativity. Ninin Dojoji was the first tinted film ever made in

Japan. It was coloured by the Yoshizawa Company, manufacturers of magic lantern

apparatus and slides, who later became one of the first Japanese film production

companies. When Ninin Dojoji was projected at the kabuki theatre in August 1900, the

sponsor created a mock-up of a valley in front of the screen, with a fishfilled pond

between the rocks, and a cool breeze generated by an electric fan wafting over the

audience. Such extrafilmic devices were an important feature of early Japanese cinema.

In addition to the Konishi Photographic Store, Asanuma & Co. and Tsurubuchi

Photographic Store dabbled with film production at the turn of the century, but soon

turned exclusively to the sale of film stock and equipment. Japanese audiences were

hungry for domestic subjects, but even as late as 1904 there were no production

companies to fulfil their needs. The Komatsu Company, established in 1903, made some

subjects for travelling exhibitions in the provinces, but even Yoshizawa Company, the

most active, filmed only news subjects, landscapes, and geisha dances, and foreign films,

especially from France, still dominated the market.

It was the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 that vitalized domestic production.

A number of journalists and cameramen were sent to the Asian mainland to report on the

war, among them motion picture cameramen Tsunekichi Shibata and Kozaburo Fujiwara,

whose war films, along with those shot by British cameramen, became extremely popular

in Japan. The popularity of war films led to the production of Japanese-made fake

documentaries, and, in a similar vein, in 1905-6 a number of French 'reproduction of war'

films were released. These fake documentaries of the Russo-Japanese War drew

audiences' attention to the differences between fiction and non-fiction films, a distinction

that had not been visible in the Japanese film industry up until that point.

Until 1908 there was no film studio in Japan, and all films were shot in the open air,

including the kabuki films that required painted backdrops. However, after visiting the

Edison studio in the USA, Kenichi Kawaura, the head of Yoshizawa Company, built a

glass studio in Meguro, Tokyo, completed in January 1908. Soon afterwards, Pathé built a

film studio in Okubo, Tokyo, the Yokota Company followed suit in Kyoto, and a year

later the Fukuhodo Company started film-making in the Hanamidera studio, also in

Tokyo. From 1909, then, systematic film-making, particularly of fiction films, could

begin, and these four companies formed the mainstream of that production in the early

years.

In October 1903 Japan's first cinema (Denki-kan or Electric Theatre) was established in

Asakusa, Tokyo, and from this point the number of cinemas gradually increased, slowly

replacing the vaudeville halls. The Japanese developed a unique way of showing films,

borrowed from the traditions of the staged kabuki and Noh, which lasted throughout the

silent period; a benshi, who explained the filmic image to the audiences, attended each

performance. In the primitive era they introduced the films and told their outlines to the

audience before the show began. But, as the films became longer and increasingly

complex, the benshi explained the scenes and spoke the dialogue, accompanied by

Japanese music, while the silent images flickered on the screen. The system of one or

sometimes several players narrating from outside the filmic image prevented Japanese

cinema's complete assimilation to the western form of film practice. The narrative

function of the intertitles and the shot organization tended to be simplified as much as

possible to emphasize the skill of the benshi in describing the narrative development of

the film, the meaning of the scene, the atmosphere, and the feelings of the characters.

There were few intertitles in Japanese films even in the late 1910s, and in most cases they

functioned only as captions to each chapter of the story. Similarly, the dominance of the

benshi's voice obliged the exclusion of the short take and any rapid action by the actors.

By the 1910s, the popularity of the benshi became so enormous that they exerted as much

power over the finished look of a film as any of the production companies, if not more.

This is not to say, however, that Japanese films did not adopt any western influences. By

1912, inspired by the French films that flooded the domestic market, the powerful

Yoshizawa Company was making dramas with contemporary subjects (known as Shinpa),

and filming in diverse genres such as comedy, trick film, scenery, and travelogue,

alongside more traditional kabuki. However, similarities with western cinema were

superficial, and Japanese films preserved a unique flavour throughout the 1910s. The

existence of the benshi as a narrator 'outside' the film meant that the primary purpose of

the mise-enscène of Japanese cinema was representing the characters' interactions and

changes of feeling and mood within each scene, rather than constructing an illusion of a

smoothly developing story. There were some, however, who did attempt to assimilate

western filmic forms into early Japanese film; Shin hototogisu ('The cuckoo-new form',

Pathé, 1909), directed by Shisetsu Iwafuji, used flashbacks, and Matsu no midori ('The

green of the pine', Yoshizawa, 1911) used a film-within-a-film as the climax of the

narrative. Even these works, however, adopted the traditional theatrical rule that the

female role was to be played by an oyama, the special male actor who always played the

women's roles. Until the early 1920s, there were very few actresses in Japanese cinema,

because it was believed that femininity could be rendered more effectively by an oyama

than by a real woman.

In 1912, aiming to monopolize the market, Yoshizawa, Yokota, Pathé, and Fukuhodo

consolidated into the trust Nippon Katsudoshashin Co. (Nikkatsu). This company built the

Mukojima studio in Tokyo, where they produced scores of Shinpa (New School) films.

These dealt with contemporary subjects, often adapted from newspaper serials or foreign

fiction, in a melodramatic style. In Kyoto they used the former Yokota studio, and