L'âme du ghetto

A previous viewer commented that there isn't anything "Pre-Code" about "Symphony of Six Million." Ohhhh, yes there is - the frank and loving embrace of Jews and Jewishness, especially the familial bonds of aspiration, hope and love so strong and heart-rending that conflict and guilt are its inevitable by-products.

Such an overtly Jewish photo play wouldn't have been acceptable in the Hollywood of just a few years later. No one would come right out and say so, but the likely reason was the sensibilities of the newly militant Catholic audience, then being stirred up by the likes of Father Charles Coughlin's anti-Semitic radio talks. Also to be catered to were the quieter prejudices of Middle Western Protestants, for whom Will Hays stood in as proxy on the Code committee.

The story being pretty boilerplate, the charm of this film is all in the atmosphere, which is laid on pretty thickly. Crucial to this are able supporting players, especially Gregory Ratoff and Anna Appel as Papa and Mama Klauber. Ricardo Cortez is a bit stiff as the conflicted, noble Felix, but his swarthy, polished earnestness hits just the right note for the well-to-do My-Son-The-Park-Avenue-Doctor, 1932 edition. Irene Dunne as Jessica, Felix's crippled love interest, is lovable mostly for being Irene Dunne, whose refined features and diction don't gibe at all with her role as a ghetto girl. It says a lot about the men who once ran the movies that an obviously Jewish romantic female lead was something they couldn't, or wouldn't, portray. Authentic Jewish womanhood was still inseparable from the family matriarch, played with affecting melodrama by Appel.

TCM's Robert Osborne pointed out that "Symphony" was one of the first talkies with a full original score. At David Selznick's behest, Max Steiner wrote nearly continuous music for the film. It's heavy going at times: Felix's inner drama is too often greeted by heroic heralds of brass, and the lugubrious harmonic-minor strings accompanying Irene Dunne's entrances are like a nice glass Schmalz poured over a sumptuous Sunday chicken dinner.

I have to say I expected more from this early thirties' Gregory La Cava Photoplay, especially since one of my favourite actresses, Irene Dunne, starred in it, but she had little time on screen (IMHO) and her role as a crippled girl, is pretty shallow, she had not yet blossomed into the great actress of "Theodora Goes Wild", "Love Affair" or "The Awful Truth".

This weepie (based on a Fannie Hurst novel, the same author who gave us "Back Street", "Imitation of Life", etc.) tells the story of a family of German immigrants, who lives in a poor Jewish ghetto in New York. Thanks to the profession of one of the sons, who grows to be a successful doctor (Ricardo Cortez), they find much better "horizons".

Ricardo Cortez, who has a Latin name but who was really born in Hungary, of Jewish background, does a fine job in the leading role, suffering a lot through the movie, 'cos he sacrifices his ideals for his family's sake. His parents are skillfully played by Anna Appel and Gregory Ratoff, who bring much truth to their interpretations.

I have to say that I enjoyed more the first part of the film which shows the life of this family when their sons were kids; there's a lot of "real" truth in the depiction of their lives, when they grow-up the film becomes more of a routine-soap opera.

Anyhow, I had never seen Ricardo Cortez in such a role, 'cos I was used to see him portraying continental men of the world or gangster-types, and as I stated before, he does a good job. Irene Dunne is less than half of what she had yet to achieve (in acting talent & beauty-I prefer her with longer hair).

No Pre-Codes aspects here, although it was released in 1932. Anyway, 1930's fans will have to see it.

If I were picking a list of films for a Jewish film festival, Symphony Of Six Million would be right at the top of my list. Gregory LaCava directed it and with a rather florid style that probably would not go over with today's audience. Still it is quite a picture of the Jewish experience in America during the Depression years.

Ricardo Cortez stars here as an idealistic young kid who seeing the disease and poverty around him in the Lower East Side neighborhood he comes from works and studies hard to become a doctor. Cortez indeed becomes a doctor and opens a clinic in the old neighborhood.

But as his family sees it, he's too good for that. His brother Noel Madison persuades him to move uptown and start gathering a rich patient list in order that the entire family can move out and their parents Anna Appel and Gregory Ratoff can now take it easy.

Soon enough though Cortez forgets why he became a doctor with all the acclaim he now receives and the big money he commands. In the end he faces crises involving the health of two loved ones. He fails one and saves the other and possibly saves his soul as well.

One thing LaCava did was capture the Lower East Side of New York Jewish neighborhood. Appel and Ratoff were both veterans of the Yiddish theater and they really carry their parts off well. Cortez was also Jewish in real life, real name Jacob Kranz. He only got that name because he got his start playing Rudolph Valentino knockoff parts on the silent screen.

Irene Dunne is Cortez's co-star and she has little to do here as the girl who loves him since childhood. The film totally focuses around Cortez and his family dynamic.

Too melodramatic for today's audience, still Symphony For Six Million is a great picture of Jewish life in America in the not too distant past.

The scenes on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the 1930s are very convincing. The Jewish family in which Ricardo Cortez is a prodigy are too. The mama, played by Anna Appel, presages Molly Goldberg: "Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Fishbein," she calls out. Everything about the milieu seems authentic. (I'm not saying a 1932 film was shot on location but the setting was lovingly recreated.) Cortez, without his Latin-lover makeup and mannerisms, is very believable. I like him always. His name here is Felix and, though he plays a more somber than usual character here, it fits: His nearly omnipresent grin can remind one of Felix the Cat.

Gregory Ratoff is excellent as the stubborn patriarch of the household.

I watched it essentially because of my enduring fondness for Irene Dunne. (Director Gregory La Cava was no slouch either. His movies, especially the early ones like this, are always worthwhile.) Dunne plays a character named Jessica. Forgive me if I'm wrong but this does not sound like a name one would have been likely to encounter in the Jewish "ghetto," as the characters keep calling the neighborhood. She plays a teacher of blind children who limps.

She has very little to do and she acquits herself well. It seems like a waste of her special talents, though, and somewhat intrusive miscasting.

Nevertheless, the movie is touching and at times amusing. It's a rarity in its (generally) direct portrayal of lower-class Jewish life at the early part of the last century.

(There may be some Spoilers) Growing up in the Jewish ghetto on the lower East Side of Manhattan Felix Kauber, Ricardo Cortez, always wanted to help those less fortunate them himself which drove him to go into medical school and become a doctor. Working at the lower East Side Cherry Street Clinic Felix was happy helping the people in the area who couldn't afford to pay a family doctor or wait hours on end at the local hospital emergency ward for treatment which was no where up to the high standards that Felix provided for them free of charge.

Happy with his lot in life Felix's life begins to change for the worse when his greedy younger brother Magnus,Noal Maison, persuades their mom Mrs. Hanna Klauber, Anna Appal, to somewhat reluctantly tell Felix that he was throwing away his future as a high paid Park Avenue doctor, treating neurotic but very rich society women, by giving his service to people who were more or less charity cases.

It takes a while for Felix to change his lifestyle and doctors office, from downtrodden Cherry Street to rich and swanky Park Avenue, feeling rightly at first that his roots and friends that needed him most were in that poor to middle-class community. Finally taking his mom's and brothers advice Felix moves up in the world of medicine, and list of high class patients, becoming one of the foremost and respected surgeons in New York. But what he doesn't know until it's almost too late is that he traded in his humanity as well as his soul for a pot of porridge; like Esau the twin brother of Jacob traded his birthright in the bible.

Very effective and ahead of it's time early talkie about a Jewish family without the usual racial and ethnic stereotype. We even have Felix have a girlfriend the sweet and caring braille teacher Jessica, Irene Dunne, who seems to be non-Jewish, Jessica looks and acts like she's Irish, with his very Jewish parents not making a point of it which you would have expected in a very Jewish movie like "Symphony for Six Million".

Felix's father Mayer, Gregory Ratoff, as well as his mother Hanna and girlfriend Jessica become more and more distant from Filex as he becomes part of the upper crust of high society without even him realizing. When Felix wasn't able to attend to young Georgie, a boy from then ghetto, who died on the operating table that Felix finally realized that eh had gone astray; Georgie died with the words Felix on his lips. Felix got the news of Georgie's death from Jessica whom he at first, until he realized that it was her, didn't want to see her at his office because she didn't have a doctor's appointment.

Felix trying to keep his past in the Lower East Side behind him has it catch up with Felix big-time when his father Meyer suffers a stroke at a party given by Fielx's sister and her husband as well as their new born son. Filex being the only one who could remove the deadly tumor from his fathers brain suddenly freezes-up and in the ensuing operation Mayer dies on the operating table. It has to be said that Felix did the best he, or any other brain surgeon, could have but still held himself responsible for his fathers Meyer Klauber's death.

Broken in both mind and body Felix mindlessly roams the streets of New York in a haze not knowing if he'll ever be able to hold a scalpel in his hands again and goes into a deep depression where he just about gave up any hope or future from himself. It's when Felix got the word that his girlfriend Jessica is to be operated on, for the removable a spine tumor, that the old Felix came back. The attending physician Dr. Schiffen,John S. Polis, feeling that Felix is a much better surgeon then he'll ever be allows Felix to operate on Jessica. A bit rusty and out of form Felix never the less ends up saving Jessica in a miraculous spine operation thus saving both her life and redeeming his soul and his lifelong concern for the city's underprivileged.

Nowhere as corny as you would expect it to be with a solid performance by Ricardo Cortez, who's Jewish himself, as the humble and caring Jewish doctor Felix Klauber. Felix learned in the end what he always believed, until he was corrupted by a fistful of shekels. Felix learned that being a physician and surgeon is to live by the rule that he always had deeply etched in both his heart and soul and upheld until greed and high society momentary blinded him of it: "I dedicate these two hands..That the lame may walk, the halt be strong..Lifting up the needy; comforting the dying. This is my oath in the Temple of Healing".