Der Dybbuk

This movie is, in a loose sense, a ghost story with a familiar theme: malevolent fate works through human passions, destroying our protagonists, who do not realize until too late what lies ahead. A fine melodrama, no matter how creaky the production might be. What makes it even more poignant, however, is the historical context. This world, which was fading already when the story was first written, was wiped out entirely by Hitler's Endlösung shortly after the movie was made. The film functions as a ghost story in more ways than one.

This movie is based on a smash hit of the Yiddish theater in 1914. It offers a view of Judaism and the world far from the one I grew up with in my Conservative Synagogue: a dark world, still medieval, in which spirits of the dead wandered, hungry for the life they never knew. All that stood between them and their devastation of the world was the Law of G*d, the rabbinical court, and the righteousness of the synagogue. That hope for righteousness is common to all branches of Judaism, which explains why we dispute things so vehemently: get it wrong and the world crumbles.

That is why this movie seems like a court room drama to me, with questions of the Law and Halakah being decided: can two friends affiance their unborn children? That is the first question and the cause of the tsuris and tsimmis that afflicts this story, with the son of one of the fathers asserting his right to marry Lili Liliana -- whom I met backstage at a show she and my grandfather's second wife were performing in -- when the lady is in love with and to marry another man. This allows the dybbuk to enter her, and it takes the summoning of a dead man to court, a judicial decree, and an excommunication to set things somewhat aright; not that the gates to wandering spirits can ever be closed, once opened.

The scenes of the rabbinical court, with Avrom Morewski as the rabbi asserting the Law is utterly foreign to me, and to most modern audiences, although I have seen the prayer shawls, and even the fur-trimmed garments the players wear. It awakens within me the same sort of emotions I feel on the High Holy Days, when we pray for G*d;'s forgiveness and righteousness; not for our own sake, but for the World's.

This is like no other film, while the one that comes closest to it is Paul Wegener's "Der Golem" from 1920, it's the same kind of dense mystery enwrapping everything and all people in it, like a fairy tale although it's all reality - Rabbi Löw was a true legendary celebrity of Prague; but this is no silent film, it is the most famous and probably greatest film in Yiddish ever made, and although it is all fantasy and speculation, it is all a very Jewish reality, and the story is universal, dealing with problems of fate. Two very close friends promise each other, that if one gets a son and the other a daughter, they shall be married when they grow up. They actually do get a son and a daughter, bit they never get the chance to see them grow up, while the children instinctively feel they belong to each other, while the adoptive family of the daughter prevents their union, with fatal consequences. It is actually a monumental tragedy but wrapped up in an incredible and comprehensive play involving many people, festivities, ceremonies, dances, songs, enormous circumstances and overwhelming passions, while it's the music that is especially impressing. It is as if music was the dominating element in the lives of these Polish Jews, and the film gives a very strong impression of the vital importance of music in all aspects of Jewish life. The film is unforgettable in its overwhelming richness of images and feelings, the unique filming of services, celebrations and ceremonies inside the Synagogue, in brief, everything in this film is exceptionally fantastic.

There's a lot to love about The Dybbuk, a Yiddish film made in Poland in 1937, a rather extraordinary context. It's a romance, musical, supernatural tale, and exploration of Jewish culture all rolled into one, with some elements of Expressionism mixed in from director Michal Waszynski, former assistant to F. W. Murnau. It was based on a very popular play first performed in Warsaw in 1920, and provides a fascinating (and heartbreaking) window into the period.

The story has a couple of friends who are expecting to be fathers make a pact that their children will get married, provided one's a girl and the other a boy. One of the men dies shortly thereafter, but the babies who are born do inadvertently cross paths and fall in love 18 years later. Unfortunately, the surviving father has more interest in finding a rich boy for his daughter to marry instead of honoring his old pledge. Frustrated, the other young man turns to Satan via the Kabbalah. This leads to this fantastic exchange with his astonished friend:

"In every sin, there is holiness." "Holiness in sin? How is that possible?" "All of God's creation has within it a spark of holiness." "Sin is the creation of the other side, not of God." "And who created the other side? Also God. And once you say it's a side of God, it must be holy too!"

The film is steeped in Jewish customs, and hearing soulful renditions of songs of worship, including one of Solomon's Song of Songs, knowing what was in store for Polish Jews just a few years later, was deeply moving. It's also full of life. The dancing scenes at the wedding, including the dance of the dead, are absolutely marvelous, and anytime the beautiful bride-to-be was on the screen (Lili Liliana) the film tended to shine.

There is such life to some of the scenes that I wish it could have carried over throughout the film; as it was, those involving the central figures of judgment, the messenger (Ajzyk Samberg) and the rabbi (Abraham Morewski) tended to be too slow, bogging the film down. I also felt that while the setup to the story was good, how it played out was rather heavy-handed.

With that said, it was fantastic to see this film, and a miracle that it was pieced together from fragments from all over the world after the original negative was lost during the war. It works on many levels, and its significance for having been made when it was is impossible to not be profoundly touched by.

DYBBUK -- THE JEWISH EXCORCIST



In Poland today, "Dybbuk" is regarded as much a Polish film as a Jewish one and is often revived.

Michal Waszynsaki's "The Dybbuk", Poland, 1937, is probably the most widely known, if not necessarily the best liked, of all Yiddish films. Like Ulmer in America Michal Waszynski was an accomplished mainstream director with numerous non-Jewish films to his credit, but this film is considered his masterpiece even by the Poles. The prominent Warsaw writer, Alter Kacyzne, worked on the screenplay of what is easily the spookiest Yiddish movie ever made.

In the opening scene two young Hassidim, close friends, vow that if they both have children one a boy and the other a girl, these children will marry. An ominous other worldly messenger (Meshulach), who appears and disappears at will, warns that no-one has the right to vow for unborn children. Already the die is cast. One of the friends is lost in a storm rushing to the bedside of his wife who is giving birth to a boy. The wife of the other Hassid dies in childbirth leaving a girl behind. Eighteen years pass. The boy, Chonen, is now an impoverished talmudic scholar. The girl, Leah, has been adopted into a wealthy family. Chonen becomes a tutor in the same family. The two are immediately drawn to each other and fall in love but are unaware that they were promised to each other long ago. The solemn vow is broken when the girl is betrothed to another.

Chonen, versed in the arcane mysticism of the Kaballa, invokes Satan's aid but dies in the process. On Leah's wedding day Chonen's spirit enters the new bride's body as a "Dybbuk" and possesses her. To the horror of all, only his voice comes out of her mouth. The famous rabbi of Wielopole is called in to exorcise the evil spirit from the girl's body. Only when the spirit is threatened with excommunication from the Jewish community, even in the other world, will the Dybbuk leave the body of his beloved, but, when he does she too dies to join him forever in the Other World. An impressive work with many ritual set pieces, this is a one of a kind Yiddish film of The Occult. A classic originally written in Russian by the Jewish playwright S. An-Sky. "Dybbuk" has been performed in many languages on the stage and was remade as an Israeli-German film co-production in 1968. If "The Golem" is the Jewish Frankenstein the Dybbuk, rich in ancient mysticism and folklore, must surely go down in film history as the Jewish Exorcist. (The Hollywood "Exorcist" was made, incidentally, by a Jewish director, William Friedkin).

One of the things that made the film so impressive were the professionally choreographed ritual dances, and an eminent Jewish historian, Dr. Meyer Balaban, was hired to assure accuracy in the presentation of religious detail. Lili Liliana and Leon Liebgold (he, of "Yidl Mitn Fidl" and "Tevya" ) are the star crossed lovers and not long after, as if to confirm their heavenly union in the film, became man and wife offscreen in flesh and blood.

Avrom Marevsky is the Great Exorciser, and Max Bozhyk also appears, but the role that is likely to remain longest in memory is that of The Ominous Messenger as played by Isaac Samberg. Waszynski, a Ukrainian Jew whose original name was Moishe Waxman, was only 33 and Polish cinema's reigning wunderkind when he directed "The Dybbuk" in 1937. In Poland today, "Dybbuk" is regarded as much a Polish film as a Jewish one.