I’ve just finished
watching the 1937 Yiddish film, The
Dybbuk – based on the 1914 play by Russian playwright S. Ansky. I freely admit that this film will not be
everyone’s idea of an entertaining motion picture. It’s in Yiddish, but it has subtitles (mostly…). My wife refuses to watch anything with
subtitles.
She also refuses to
watch scary movies with me. And The Dybbuk is a horror movie… of sorts. It’s
an exorcism movie - like The Exorcist,
or The Last Exorcism or any number of
other movies about demon possession.
Except that the Dybbuk (pronounced dee-book in the film) isn’t a demon. The Dybbuk is the restless spirit of one
recently dead that possess the body of a loved one.
It’s a strange sort of
movie, difficult to classify. It has
elements of the horror and fantasy genres, as well as musicals, and German
expressionism. One critic of the
original play writing to the author said, “"I have the impression that as
a collector of folklore, you went around to all the rubbish heaps. There you
collected fragments of folklore and pieced them together like a tailor who
takes bits of clothing and rags, and makes of them a patchwork quilt."[i]
The Judaism pictured in
this film was very different from the (admittedly limited) experiences I’ve had
with Judaism. It was very much a folk
version of the religion with numerous superstitious elements intermingled. There was discussion of Gematria and the
Kabbalah. There was communication with “the
sacred dead,” and there was even a discourse about the transmigration of souls –
reincarnation – with the wicked coming back in the bodies of animals and plants
– not elements usually included in discussions about the Jewish faith.
The film is about 2
hours long, it’s in Yiddish, mostly subtitled and filled with a strange and
exotic expression of faith – but if you don’t mind working at it (and watching
it will be a bit of work), I think you’ll find that it is an engaging and
powerful film. It’s not all special
effects like modern horror films – but by the standards of 1937 it pulls off a
couple of neat tricks. The visuals are stark
– especially in some of the wedding sequences when it starts to look a lot like
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The sound quality isn’t great, but some of the
music is wonderful.
(In this scene Leah, the soon-to-be-bride is dancing with Death.)
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