“And they went for happiness! . . ? In 1926, Alexei Granovsky, who founded the State Jewish Theatre, based on the stories of Sholom-Aleichem, made the film Jewish Happiness. It was the first and last Soviet film of the director: in 1928 Granovsky left the country. The main role in “Jewish happiness” was performed by the leading actor of the theater – Solomon Mikhoels. That is, on the one hand, the film was created under the strong influence of theatrical art. At the same time, one of the director’s teachers was Max Reinhardt, who played not the last role in the development of the German avant-garde cinema (especially if we remember Karlheinz Martin’s From Dawn to Midnight). On the other hand, as the operator of “Jewish happiness” was Eduard Tisse, who created a number of outstanding and highly cinematic paintings in creative tandem with Sergei Eisenstein.
Indeed, “Jewish Happiness” is a film free from the dominance of theatricality. His distinctive visual techniques are less typical of the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s: organic editing and traditional drama refer to the works of David Wark Griffith. The director naturally turns to parallel editing, close-ups (not only faces, but also hands, details). Tisse chooses different angles of shooting: for example, the scene of Menachem falling into the water, shot from the upper corner, is expressive. Let’s look at the relationship with Soviet cinema. Granovsky also juxtaposes footage (e.g., comparing a boy and a kitten). The scene of loading brides on a steamer is not an Eisenstein movie trick, but a trick in the truest sense of the word. We find in the film an uncomplicated example of the Kuleshov effect, when Menachem looks at the skirt of a cook.
Initially, the filmmakers were tasked with making a propaganda film reflecting the plight of the ethnic minorities oppressed by the regime. Political partisanship, from which, in the end, only a portrait of Nicholas II remained in the courthouse, could bring Jewish Happiness closer to the cinema of the 1920s, but Granovsky chooses a different path, full of irony and warmth in relation to the past of the people. For Granovsky, the most reliable reflection of local life became one of the priorities, so part of the film was shot in Berdichev. Naum Altman, a famous painter and film director, convinced the film crew to visit his native Vinnitsa in search of a suitable nature. The authorship of the Odessa episodes is not in doubt, especially if you remember the scene on the famous staircase (Potemkin it will become only in a year). The film was shot in the summer, so many shots are literally flooded with light.
Solomon Mikhoels, by his own admission, sought to create an image on the screen, not a mask. Previously, the actor played the role of Menachem-Mendel in the theater, but the acting solutions he had already found were not suitable for cinema. In fact, the stages of preparing for the role and developing the image were passed by the performer anew. Soviet critic Mikhail Zagorsky noted that Mikhoels was able to find a way out of the local life into the wide world of fiction and romance. This road was helped by the aforementioned Altman. The sets and costumes created by him are both authentic and unique, complementing the acting work. Designed Altman and intertitles (author of the text itself – Isaac Babel). Both the text and its presentation are in harmony with acting and gesture.