The Jester

Der Purimspiler

(Poland, 1937, 90 mins)

35mm

Wisconsin Premiere

writer: Joseph Green & Chaver-Paver (Gershon Einbinder)
dialogue & lyrics: Itzik Manger
music: Nicholas Brodsky
cast: Miriam Kressyn, Hymie Jacobson, Zygmunt Turkow, Isaac Samberg, Max Bozyk
2008 film restoration & new English subtitles: The National Center for Jewish Film

• IMDB Film Info
• www.brandeis.edu/jewishfilm/Catalogue/films/jester.htm

Set in a Galician shtetl before World War I, this musical comedy is rich with itinerant performers and starcrossed lovers. Negotiating the romantic rapids are a lonely jester, a circus performer, and Esther, the shoemaker's daughter, whose poor father tries to marry her into a prominent family. The intrigue climaxes with a Purim shpil (Purim play) and its parade of costumes, buffoonery, and music. The Jester was co-directed by Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylsk in 1937, following the great success of their film Yiddle with His Fiddle the previous year. Green who had emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1924, returned to Poland with the American Yiddish theater stars (and then married couple) Miriam Kressyn and Hymie Jacobson for the production. The Jester's lively circus and vaudeville music and set pieces provide a glimpse of Warsaw's then-thriving Yiddish revues and cabarets, which were destroyed soon after. Many of the film's Polish-Jewish crew and actors were killed during the Holocaust, giving the film's touches of melancholy an even more profound reading for today's audiences. The film has been restored by The National Center for Jewish Film, which has generously provided this print. Henry Sapoznik, klezmer musician and UW Artist in Residence, will introduce the film.

Sponsored By:

UW Arts Institute

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