{"title":"\"An I fort Jews were supposed to be lucky!\": Jewish Wide Boys, Soho, and Postwar British Cinema","authors":"J. Young","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.6.1.0091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.6.1.0091","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:There is currently a lack of scholarship on Jewish cinema in Britain. As Kevin Gough-Yates has shown, films with Jewish themes are also absent from the postwar period. This article seeks to address this issue by identifying two unique Jewish protagonists who feature in films set in Soho, a historically cosmopolitan center. The character Johnny Jackson (Laurence Harvey) in Expresso Bongo (Val Guest, 1960) is representative of the postwar spiv/wide boy, but he is also, in the words of director Val Guest, \"part Soho, part Jewish.\" Postwar British cinema would depict another Jewish Soho wide boy three years later, imagined by Ken Hughes in his film The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963). This article is concerned with the cinematic representation of the characters Johnny Jackson and Sammy Lee, the actors who play them (Harvey and Anthony Newley, respectively), and their relationship to the Jewish immigrant community in London's Soho and surrounding peripheries.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"11 1","pages":"115 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90903261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On King's The Beauty of Judaism on Film","authors":"D. Levy","doi":"10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.1.0116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/jewifilmnewmedi.6.1.0116","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"47 1","pages":"116 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80518813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"The Catskill Mountains with Arabs\": Pluralizing the Meanings of Melville Shavelson's Cast a Giant Shadow (1966)","authors":"B. Hagin","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.6.1.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.6.1.0001","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Cast a Giant Shadow (1966) has usually been viewed by scholars as part of a group of pro-Israeli Hollywood films, such as Exodus (1960), that delivered to their viewers a heroic \"new Jew\" who was perceived as the antithesis of the Jewish Holocaust victim. Its writer-director-producer, Melville Shavelson, believed that the film was a failure, yet he chose to return to the story of its making in subsequent publications and to its themes in books and a television film. By analyzing these works, this article constructs additional contexts for understanding Cast a Giant Shadow. These include the film's relation to the US war in Vietnam, its significance for the Israeli film industry, and especially its role in exploring American Jewishness and its complex and shifting relationship to Israel.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"76 1","pages":"1 - 27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75445553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Altering Hebrewness: Holocaust-Survivor Characters in Under the Domim Tree (Etz Ha'domim Tafus)","authors":"R. Kimchi","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0143","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In the Oscar award–winning film Son of Saul (László Nemes, Hungary, 2015), Holocaust atrocities are presented directly, using traditional cinematic devices. No Israeli film has ever dared do this. The Holocaust has appeared in Israeli cinema through indirect depictions, represented by the character portrayals of Holocaust survivors. The Holocaust memories of these characters were frequently silenced and, instead, their cinematic construction was exploited to allegorically reflect the Zionist ideology of the time. Under the Domim Tree (Etz Ha'domim Tafus; Eli Cohen, Israel, 1994) is a film that prominently portrays Holocaust-survivor characters in three leading roles. Its release coincided with a period of radical change in Israel. At the time two watershed agreements were signed between Israel and its former Arab enemies. Analyzing the film's depiction of Holocaust survivors makes it possible to examine the shifts in hegemonic Zionist ideology that took place during those significant years.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"15 1","pages":"143 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74373238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Whitehead's Mike Nichols and the Cinema of Transformation","authors":"V. Brook","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0232","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"307 1","pages":"232 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79876489","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Chapman, Ellin, and Sherif's Comics, the Holocaust and Hiroshima","authors":"Liat Steir-Livny","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0246","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"8 1","pages":"246 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90744933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exodus, the Movie—Half a Century Later: The Interplay of History, Myth, Memory, and Historiography","authors":"Aviva Halamish","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0123","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The movie Exodus (1960) is the saga of a ship laden with Jewish European refugees sailing to British-ruled Palestine, and the story of the Zionist struggle against the British up to the beginning of the 1948 war between the Arabs and the Jews. The content of the movie, the timing of its release, and its vast distribution created complex relations among the movie and the events that took place in the years 1945–1948; the historiography of those years; the private and collective memory; and, to some extent, Israel's history. This article presents and interprets these multidirectional relations, arguing that, because of the movie's popularity and the way it portrayed historical events, Exodus changed history in a number of ways. The film's plot ingredients and their sequence diverge from \"what really happened\"; the movie itself was an event in the history of early 1960s Israel; and as a result of its location on the axes of Israeli history and the evolution of the historiography of the pre-state period, Exodus had an enormous influence on the presentation of history.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"46 1","pages":"123 - 142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78082610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Jordan's From Nuremberg to Hollywood: The Holocaust and the Courtroom in American Fictive Film","authors":"L. Baron","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0236","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"154 1","pages":"236 - 245"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74836035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Take This Waltz, Take This Photo: Photography and Holocaust Memory in Israeli Graphic Novels","authors":"Ofra Amihay","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0161","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article analyzes the representation of Holocaust memory and its influences on present-day reality in Israel in three graphic novels: Ari Folman and David Polonsky's 2009 Waltz with Bashir, Michel Kichka's 2013 The Second Generation: Things I Did Not Tell My Father, and Rutu Modan's 2013 The Property. It shows that, through the employment of private snapshots alongside references to famous photographic images, these texts invoke the duality at the heart of Holocaust memory in Israel, comprised of private and collective memory and postmemory and their clashing points. As a major point of reference, this study explores the specific allusion in all three texts to the iconic photograph of the surrendering child in the Warsaw Ghetto, highlighting its symbolic function in Israeli discussions of intergenerational trauma transmission. At the same time it argues that Bashir's employment of this image reveals its potential to also garner sympathy toward Israel's Others. Finally, it explores the unique combination of reproduced photographs and drawn ones, especially in Bashir, which simultaneously educes and questions photography as a path to memory. By referring to both private and public photographs, these texts also explore the place of public images in that process, thus touching on a tension inherent to Israeli culture from its earliest days—that between the individual and the collective.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"8 1","pages":"161 - 198"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73214498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Historical Argument\" or \"Cowboys and Indian\"? Arnold Wesker's TV Screenplay of Arthur Koestler's Thieves in the Night","authors":"A. Stähler","doi":"10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.13110/JEWIFILMNEWMEDI.5.2.0199","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:In October 1989 a TV adaptation of Arthur Koestler's novel Thieves in the Night (1946) was aired in three parts in Germany. The final script of the German-Israeli co-production was written by Wolfgang Storch, who also directed the miniseries. An earlier version of the screenplay had been commissioned by the German TV and radio station NDR from the British Jewish playwright Arnold Wesker. Based on the copious archival material held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin, which includes the original drafts of the author's scripts and his correspondence relating to the project, this article explores Wesker's involvement in the production from 1983 to 1985, and the eventual publication of an extract from the dramatist's third draft in the Jewish Chronicle in 1986. Wesker's screenplay was ultimately rejected because his conception of a \"historical argument\" was not compatible with the \"cowboys and Indian version\" which, in the dramatist's words, was expected of him. It is argued that the increasingly acrimonious relationship among the screenwriter, the originally retained director, François Villiers, and various producers originated not only in conflicting approaches to the commercial and artistic dimensions of the project but also in divergent perceptions of the position of Israel and its history. This tension reveals different strategies of instrumentalizing the literary text and its TV adaptation for an understanding of the present.","PeriodicalId":40351,"journal":{"name":"Jewish Film & New Media-An International Journal","volume":"107 1","pages":"199 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77430431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}