Le bonheur juif

Solomon Mikhoels is a little man with big dreams of happiness from success. He leaves his poor home and goes into partnership with Moisei Goldblat, but alas! It's difficult, if not impossible for a poor Jewish man to make any money from rich Jews. They all already have life insurance. An attempt to make money selling corsets seems successful, but then the authorities claim they're contraband and bribing his way out of prison leaves him without a single kopeck. Then it comes to him in a dream: become a shadchen, a matchmaker!

It's the second movie made from a story by Sholem Aleicheim, the master story teller of life in the shtetels, and it is a fine movie, capturing the helpless humor of the Jews in Tsarist Russia. Aleicheim was plagued throughout his life by ill health and failures of his business schemes. He wrote more than forty books over his life. He was sometimes called the Yiddish Mark Twain; Twain, on hearing this, replied "Please tell him I am the American Sholem Aleichem. Aleichem died in 1916 at the age of 57. He was buried in the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Queens.

This film was called by one expert as "the greatest Jewish film ever

made." I am not sure what does this "Jewish film" mean. All films made by the Jews? Films by Mauritz Stiller, Woody Allen, films made in Israel, like "Avanti Popolo"? If it does, it is hard to agree with that opinion. But if the term "Jewish film" concerns movies that presents old Jewish traditions, this little masterpiece is propably the most entertaining and best-made. And far better than "Fiddler on the Roof", the most successful film of this sort.

Film was made in Soviet Union during the time when government policy still defenced different cultures, and I guess it could not have been made anywhere else in Europe: the atmosphere was too racist. The story has a cunning Jew trying to make a living. In a train he decides to become a match-maker. In a hilarious dream sequence he sees himself "saving the America" (that has too much grooms and no brides) by loading a big steamboat with young Russian brides. The comedy is quite funny. The last, slightly sentimental scene where the Jew walks away from the village alone, reminds me of similar scenes by Charles Chaplin and Jacques Tati.

For some idiotic reason this film was actually BANNED in Finland in the 20's! Can't understand why, because it has no violence, no sex and no communistic ideas.