Among the few positive effects of the pandemic I can list the cultural events and virtual festivals that we can access on the Internet and that I would otherwise have hardly or maybe never attended. One of them, the Jewish Film Festival in Bucharest, which took place between November 19 and 22, witch gave me the opportunity to watch the documentary ‘Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream‘ made in 1998 by Simcha Jacobovici. The festival also included a very interesting discussion, in Romanian, between the president and animator of the festival, Dan Schlanger and the Israeli-Canadian director whose parents were born in Romania and who entertains very well a conversation in Romanian. I knew previously Jacobovici especially as author of TV documentary series on biblical archeology and the history of early Christianity, and I knew that he is a filmmaker who does not avoid controversies, and I even suspect that he sometimes seeks them out or enjoys highlighting them. This is also the case with ‘Hollywoodism‘, a film that presents a relatively well-known history, of the Jews of the first or second generation of immigrants from Eastern Europe who created the film industry in their new homeland and dominated it for a long time, close to half a century. The facts are quite well known, but Simcha Jacobovici‘s perspective and interpretations develop some theses that not everyone will agree with at the end of watching the film, and which certainly deserve to be exposed and debated.
The story presented in ‘Hollywoodism‘ begins in the first decade of the last century, when a significant part of the film industry migrated from the New York area, where the dominance of Thomas Edison’s trust had become stifling to Southern California, an area still relatively sparsely populated, open to entrepreneurship and creativity. The six studios created at that time were to become the backbone of a film industry that would influence American culture and economy from then until today. Most of the founders of the new studios were Jews, immigrants, or children of immigrants who had fled anti-Semitic discrimination and pogroms in the Eastern Europe still dominated by the czarist and Austro-Hungarian empires, seeking freedom and economic prosperity in the expanding United States. The films that began to be produced by these studios, especially in the late 1920s and 1930s, represented an America resonating with the ideals of democracy, equality, social justice, and taking the side of the oppressed for economic or racial reasons. Not only the producers were mostly of Jewish origin, but also some of the stars of the screen, including some of the famous actresses. Cinematography was part of an expanding culture, in which the Jewish contribution was evident in other fields such as music or theater.
Simcha Jacobovici analyzes in detail the connections of the founders and heads of the great studios with their Jewish origins. Most of them belonged to the category of Americans who preferred to put Jewish identity in the background, striving for near-complete assimilation along with social recognition among the upper classes of the 20th century America. The result was not only that their films presented the American dream in an idealized way that was not always in line with reality, but was also reflected in their private lives. The rise of fascism in Europe and the rise of racist, including anti-Semitic movements in the United States had to take place in order to bring them back to reality and make them respond. I was surprised to learn that before the United States entered the war, only two bluntly anti-fascist films were made in Hollywood. Only during World War II were the great studios able to contribute openly and enthusiastically to the patriotic effort, with films that lifted the morale of American soldiers and openly condemned fascism. But after the war, silence. Although the heads of the studios traveled to Europe and saw with their own eyes the horrors of the death camps, it took almost half a century for Hollywood to produce films about the Holocaust. Moreover, in the early 1950s some studio owners cooperated with the ‘witch hunt’ at the beginning of the Cold War, accepting blacklisting that excluded from work also many directors, screenwriters, actors of Jewish origin. But it was already dusk time for the generation of the Warner brothers, Mayer, Zukor, Szenlnik.
Simcha Jacobovici is an engaged documentary filmmaker. I had seen this in his films about archeology and ancient history, and this style is also visible in ‘Hollywoodism‘. The facts are documented and detailed, but there are some main ideas around which revolve the comments and testimonies we see on the screen. Simcha Jacobovici has opinions that he exposes clearly and leaves little room for discussion, even when the topics are controversial. Some issues considered secondary are overlooked or briefly mentioned (the producers’ attitudes towards women, relations with other minority communities). Even so, Simcha Jacobovici‘s film has an exceptional documentary value. It may be the beginning of an in-depth and interesting discussion, as many of the topics covered are still the subject of research and controversy, but these discussions do not take place on screen in ‘Hollywoodism‘. If it were done today, ‘Hollywoodism‘ would probably look different, in light of the evolution of Hollywood in the last half century, but especially in the last two decades since the film was made. A good theme for ‘Hollywoodism – The Sequel’ ? What does Simcha Jacobovici think?