NFR Project: 'Tevya' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Tevya’

Dir: Maurice Schwartz

Scr: Maurice Schwartz, Marcy Klauber

Pho: Larry Williams

Ed: Sam Citron

Premiere: Dec. 21, 1939

93 min.

A labor of love that serves as a memorial to a now-vanished theatrical tradition.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Yiddish theater thrived in New York City. The masses of Jewish immigrants spoke, read, and wrote it, and became a kind of lingua franca for those who came from central and eastern Europe to the U.S. Many honored writers used it, including Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916), whose tales of Jewish village life in Europe featured Tevya the dairyman, a Torah-quoting villager who took life with a sense of humor and irony.

Aleichem wrote numerous plays, the last of which was Tevye der milkhiker (Tevye the Dairyman) – performed posthumously in 1917. The play proved immensely popular, and made a star of its lead player, Maurice Scwartz. (This play later became the basis for the blockbuster, award-winning musical Fiddler on the Roof.) Schwartz was among the last in the tradition of great Yiddish players – Boris Thomashefsky, the Adlers, the Finkels, Molly Picon, and others.

Twenty years after first acting Tevye, Schwartz set out to get the performance of the play on film. He combined two Tevye stories and created a screenplay in Yiddish; raising $70,000 from friends and family, he directed himself as the comic milkman in this unique film record, shooting in New York and on Long Island.

The story takes place in Tevye’s village, where he has lived for 50 years. He is evidently one of the few Jews in the area, but he suffers no more than the usual amount of anti-semitic scorn as he plies his trade. One of his two daughters, Chava, has eyes for Fedya, a Christian. Going against her father, she marries him and converts, breaking her parents’ hearts and contributing to the death of her mother, Golde.

Without warning, the Russian rulers decree that Jews must be expelled from its cities and villages. Given only 24 hours to pack, Tevye sells everything he owns at a loss and prepares to leave. At the last minute, Chava returns to him, spurning her husband and declaring her undying commitment to Judaism. Taking her along, Tevye and family set out for the Holy Land.

The melodrama is intense. The heartbreak of not fitting in with the Christian world is palpable, and Schwartz expertly plays Tevye with wit and depth. The entire ensemble is top-notch (having performed the theatrical version of these stories numerous times). It is easy to see why audiences found this material so compelling. While not cinematically extraordinary, the film manages to convey the life of its characters with fidelity and grace.

By the time the film was released, Yiddish theater was pretty much dead. Assimilation meant that Jews in America now spoke English. Yiddish, despite the continuing efforts of writers such as the Nobel-winning Issac Bashevis Singer, became a dead language. Meanwhile, the ancient language of Hebrew was modernized and popularized, becoming the official language of the newly formed state of Israel.

It is unfortunate that this lively tongue has gone out of fashion. Tevya stands as a testament to its vibrancy and ability to convey thought and feeling.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Verbena tragica.

NFR Project: 'Stagecoach' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Stagecoach’

Dir: John Ford

Scr: Dudley Nichols

Pho: Bert Glennon

Ed: Otho Lovering, Dorothy Spencer

Premiere: March 3, 1939

96 min.

How do you describe perfection?

There are very few “perfect” films out there, ones to which you would not remove or add a frame. Seven Samurai, Grand Illusion, Children of Paradise. Director John Ford has made more immaculately conceived and executed films than anyone I know. The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Searchers, Wagonmaster, The Man who Shot Liberty Valance, his cavalry trilogy. Stagecoach is one of these.

At the time this film was made, Westerns were an unreputable genre, strictly kid stuff. No one had attempted to make an “A” list Western since the notorious flop The Big Trail in 1930.

John Ford had started out his directing career in the silent era, making Westerns, and he had a taste for the mythic possibilities of frontier storytelling. (The closest he had come previously to making a Western epic was the excellent The Iron Horse, in 1924.) Now he focused all his genius on telling a solid story about the Old West.

In the movie, the stagecoach is set to go from Tonto (which means “stupid” in Spanish) to Lordsburg. The Apaches are on the warpath, and the coach’s passengers are warned of the dangers. However, some of them are in no position to stay. Dallas (Claire Trevor), a prostitute, is being forced out of town by the shrewish ladies of Tonto. They also have no use for the alcoholic Doc Boone (Thomas Mitchell), whom they consider a reprobate.

They are joined by a proper Eastern lady (Louise Platt) who is off to see her military husband, and who is very pregnant to boot. A Southern gambler, the gentlemanly Hatfield (John Carradine), gallantly adds himself to the roster in order to look after the lady. To the coach comes also Peacock (Donald Meek), a mild-mannered whiskey drummer, and the crooked banker Gatewood (Berton Churchill), who’s absconding with the bank’s funds.

Driving the coach is the scratchy-voiced comic relief character Buck (Andy Devine), who is accompanied by the marshal Curley (George Bancroft), who is on the lookout for the Ringo Kid (John Wayne), who busted out of jail and is looking for the three Plummer brothers, who killed his father and brother. The don’t get very far when they encounter Ringo, who is walking due to his horse coming up lame. Provisionally under arrest, he joins the others, squeezing into the coach.

Together they wheel across the desert, interacting with each other. The polite members of their society disdain Dallas, but Ringo falls for her and treats her with respect. The lady is forced to give birth at a way station, and Doc Boone gets sober in order to facilitate the delivery – redeeming himself somewhat. Ringo almost escapes, but stays when he sees Apache smoke signals.

Finally, the Indians attack. In along sequence, the stagecoach races frantically along a salt pan, with tribesmen in pursuit. Just as all seems lost, the cavalry arrives to save them and bring them into Lordsburg.

There, Ringo asks for the chance to face down the Plummers, and Curley lets him go. In a nighttime shootout, he kills them all and prepares to return to jail. However, Curley and Doc give him and Dallas a buckboard and set them free, off to his ranch south of the border to start a new life.

The script by Dudley Nichols is exceptional, creating a ensemble of complex, three-dimensional characters who change and grow during the course of the film. (The lady befriends Dallas; the banker is apprehended; Peacock and Buck are wounded, and Hatfield is killed.) Ford wisely lingers his camera on the faces of the participants, letting their reactions further the story. Ford shot his location work in the iconic Monument Valley, that magnificent hunk of desert on the border of Utah and Arizona. It was a landscape he would return to again and again.

The juxtaposition of the epic scope of the setting and journey with the small intimate moments the characters dwell in give the film an intense resonance. With cinematographer Bert Glennon, Ford crafts stunningly beautiful screen compositions, minute after minute. And of course, this was the movie that made John Wayne a star. (He was the lead in The Big Trail; its lack of success doomed him to a deace of work in “B” Westerns.)

The group is a microcosm of society, and a subversive one at that. The “legitimate” characters are crooked, snobbish, ineffectual. It is the outcasts and rejects who are the real noblemen and -women here. Those who lead with words do nothing to solve the group’s problems; it is those who take action that count for something. In the end, they are the only ones who emerge unscatched.

Stagecoach also includes iconic stuntwork, courtesy of the stuntman legend Yakima Canutt. The film never lags or loses its way. We are given just enough information in any given moment to advance the story or illuminate character in depth, making this a genre film that transcends genre, one that can truly be called the first adult Western.

The Old West proved fertile ground for Ford to examine the convolutions and contradictions of the American character, turning myths inside out and holding them up for our examination. Stagecoach rewards repeated viewings – notably, Orson Welles screened it multiple times prior to his making Citizen Kane. What is ostensibly a simple story becomes a moving, stirring, thought-provoking, classic motion picture.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Tevye.

NFR Project: 'Ninotchka' (1939)

 

NFR Project: ‘Ninotchka’

Dir: Ernst Lubitsch

Scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Walter Reisch

Pho: William H. Daniels

Ed: Gene Ruggerio

Premiere: Nov. 9, 1939

110 min.

MGM was searching for a comedy to suit Greta Garbo, the mysterious and glamorous star of many dramas, both in the silent and the sound eras. A poolside conference led to the creation of a winning idea: Communist woman goes to Paris, finds out that capitalism and materialism are not so bad.

The expert writing team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder were put on the assignment, and they produced a witty and captivating script. Then MGM brought in the master of subtle and adult film comedies Ernst Lubitsch, to direct. It was nothing less than a high-class effort, all the way.

Here Garbo plays Nina “Ninotchka” Yakushova, a stern and unsmiling Soviet bureaucrat who flies to Paris from Moscow to straighten out some comrades – the bumbling comic trio of Buljanoff, Iranoff, and Kopalski – who were assigned to sell some jewels taken by the State from their aristocratic owners, but who fell prey to the delights of the City of Light.

Ninotchka gets grimly to work, but she isn’t prepared for the charming onslaught of Count Leon (Melvyn Douglas), who is immediately attracted to her and enjoys the challenge of melting her cold, cold heart. This he does by degrees, loosening her up, making her laugh, introducing her to champagne. He and Ninotchka are rapidly falling in love, but Ninotchka is blackmailed by Grand Duchess Swana (Ina Claire). Swana agrees to give up her claim to the jewelry if Ninotchka will leave Paris for Moscow immediately.

This she does, returning to a Soviet existence that is defined by crowded tenements and little to eat. Morose, she waits for word from Leon, but the only letter she receives from him is censored completely. When Buljanoff, Iranoff, and Kopalski get in trouble again in Constantinople, Ninotchka is ordered once again to go to the scene of the trouble and clear things up. There she finds the three have opened a restaurant – and that Leon is there waiting for her as well. She abandons Communism and falls into Leon’s arms.

The film was a big success – except in Russia, where it was banned.

The promotional tagline of the film is “Garbo Laughs!” It was her first comedy, an her second-to-last film. After a second comedy, a flop, she spurned Hollywood and lived as a recluse in New York City.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Stagecoach.