The Law of the Looking Glass. Sheila Skaff

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СКАЧАТЬ faced by its creators, including lack of “suitable, proper terrain for filming”—presumably because of their anti-Semitic behavior, they were not permitted to film on location.⁴ Władysław Banaszkiewicz and Witold Witczak claim that Ostoja-Sulnicki was chosen for the role of director of Meir Ezofowicz because, as a “radical anti-Semite,” he depicted Jews as xenophobic in a way that reflected growing xenophobia in the population at large.⁵ However, criticism of the film, such as that in Kurier warszawski, hinted that Jewish communities probably shunned him because of his social views, which, ironically, were why he received the job. The situation sheds light on the complex, sometimes contradictory relationship that Hertz fostered between Catholics and Jews in his films. The seemingly bizarre choices made in filming Meir Ezofowicz may have arisen from Hertz’s insistence on offering a little something for everyone—for Polish speakers, a Polish novel; for Yiddish speakers, a Yiddish title; for multiculturalists, a story of positive intercultural relations; and for anti-Semites, an anti-Semitic director. Finally, scandal-seekers chitchatted about the fact that a prominent Jewish producer had hired the enemy to direct his films.

      The outrage over this film was surprisingly short-lived. For example, Natan Gross claims in Film żydowski w Polsce (Jewish Film in Poland), “The fact that Ostoja-Sulnicki wrote anti-Semitic texts may not be a foregone answer to questions about the meaning of the film. In addition, he was probably only nominally the director, and in reality the film was probably made by the head of Sfinks himself, Aleksander Hertz.”⁶ Gross defends Hertz’s decision without explaining why Hertz continued to hire Ostoja-Sulnicki to direct other films, even after the minor scandal over Meir Ezofowicz, or why he chose him in the first place. Władysław Jewsiewicki offers a similar explanation: “Hertz, a patriot and PPS sympathizer, was not only a good businessperson. He also understood the touchiness of Polish public opinion, which manifested itself in more than just artistic matters. For this reason, he always chose directors for his films from the journalistic-literary or theatrical milieu with names that sounded Polish (Ostoja-Sulnicki, Sulimierski, Pawłowski, and Puchalski). However, once they were in the studio, these directors did not always have a say; the esteemed director Hertz, who ran his company with an iron fist, made the decisions. In the Sfinks studio, he took care that the last names of even the camera operators and technicians sounded Polish. This phenomenon is even more characteristic considering that Hertz came from a Jewish family.”⁷

      Improbable as it may seem, the decision did amount to little more than trite conversation for a few gossipers. Hertz knew that hiring Ostoja-Sulnicki would enhance, rather than hinder, the film’s financial prospects and its place in cinema history. In the Meir Ezofowicz scandal, Hertz proved that he could be successful by choosing a name that would ignite a fire and that once he dismissed the decision as insignificant, audiences and historians would excuse him. He knew that audiences would want to believe in the image presented on screen and that intellectuals in Poland often preferred to remain silent rather than become trapped in the impropriety of name-calling. His way of doing business was more than a media ploy or a means of satisfying people of all political ideologies: In this and similar endeavors, Hertz exploited practices of spectatorship that had been established in the first years of cinema in order to condition his audiences to accept the filmic image as the ultimate truth.

      Hertz’s other adaptations were less controversial but equally demonstrative of his strategies. Early examples include Wykolejeni (Aszantka; Human Wrecks, 1913), based on the popular novel by Włodzimierz Perzyński, and Edukacja Bronki (Educating Bronka) by Stefan Krzywoszewski. Hertz also wrote original scripts for Przesądy (Prejudices, 1912), a story of the love of a count’s daughter for a servant’s son, and Niewolnica zmysłów (The Slave of Sin, 1914), a film about a young woman’s self-destruction in the name of love and the debut of actress Pola Negri (Apolonia Chałupiec). In the years leading up to the First World War, Hertz began to collaborate with a small company called Sokół and to buy out other companies, until he eventually held a monopoly on film production.

      Finkelstein and Samuel Ginzburg established the Kosmofilm production company in 1913, though Ginzburg (who had helped establish Siła just a few months earlier) soon left it. Run by Finkelstein, Kosmofilm had its own studio and laboratory in Warsaw. Its interests resembled those of Towbin’s Siła in that the company produced films mainly on Jewish subjects with actors from the eminent Warsaw Jewish Theater, including the Kamiński family: Abraham Izaak Kamiński, Regina Kamińska, Kazimierz Kamiński, Ester Rachel Kamińska, Ida Kamińska, Samuel Landau, Herman Wajsman, and Helena Gotlib. Kosmofilm’s productions included many adaptations from plays—a sensible decision, considering the talent that the company brought from the local theater. It made Dem khazons tokhter (The Cantor’s Daughter, 1913), Der unbekanter (The Stranger, 1913), Di shikhte (The Slaughter, 1913), Gots shtrof (God’s Punishment, 1913), and Di shtifmuter (The Stepmother, 1914), all based on the plays of Jacob Gordin and premiering, presumably to the theatergoing crowd, in a small cinema in Warsaw. With actors from the Polish-language stage theater, in 1913 Kosmofilm produced a popular three-act adaptation of Halka, the Polish national opera written by Stanisław Moniuszko and in 1914 brought out Karpaccy górale (Carpathian Mountaineers), based on Józef Korzeniowski’s play. In the same year, Sebel filmed a documentary, Ziemia święta, Egipt (Palestyna) (The Holy Land: Egypt [Palestine]), for Finkelstein that was shown in 1915. In its two years of existence, the company produced nearly twenty feature films and documentaries, becoming one of Poland’s main producers.

      In addition to Kosmofilm, Sfinks, and Siła, independent producers and groups of friends made films. Fertner joined three other popular actors—Julian Krzewiński, Wincenty Rapacki, and Juliusz Zagrodzki—to form their own production company. With Sebel as their main cameraman, the company specialized in comedy, specifically in films starring Fertner as the cheery, absentminded character that he had created in Antoś in Warsaw for the First Time. One such film, Zaręczyny Antosia w dzień kwiatka (Antoś’s Wedding Engagement on Flower Day, 1911), satirized philanthropy among Warsaw elites: Fertner’s character, not having enough money to buy flowers for the attention-seeking women surrounding him on the streets of Warsaw, gives away his articles of clothing, one by one.

      In L’viv, there sprang up small production companies that specialized in documenting local news events. According to scholar Irena Nowak-Zaorska, a member of the Polish Teachers’ Union organized the first educational films—featuring scenes from nature, historical monuments, inventions, and other documentary-type films—beginning in late 1909. In 1913, a theater devoted to educational films opened to the dismay of many who felt that motion pictures were demoralizing and harmful to children.⁸

      Marek Münz opened a small production center in his photography studio in 1912, and the firm known as Kinofilm opened soon after. Together, these companies made ethnographic documentaries (presumably registered in official legal documents in the Polish language) such as Wzloty hr. Scipio (The Flights of Count Scipio), Uroczystość Bożego Ciała we Lwowie (Corpus Christi Celebrations in L’viv), and Wiec chełmski we Lwowie (A Rally from Chelm in L’viv).⁹ Other films include Uroczystości ślubne ks. Czetwertyńskiej (Princess Czetwertyńska’s Wedding), Pożar odbenzyniarni w Drohobyczu 21 III 1912 roku (A Gasoline Fire in Drohobycz on March 21, 1912), and Galicja w kinematografie (Galicia in Film), all made in 1912. Completed by Pathé Frères at the request of the Galician Tourism Association, Galicia in Film’s Vienna premiere “drew the court and cream of the capital’s society” and was meant to display L’viv’s significance to the empire’s military strategies, according to Banaszkiewicz and Witczak.¹⁰ Other travelogues made for the Galician Tourism Association include the sights of L’viv, a Hucul funeral, a wedding, and the travel of “hoodlums” on the Czeremosz River.¹¹

      The fiction film Powrót taty (Ballada w 15 odsłonach) (Papa’s Return [A Ballad in 15 Acts]) premiered in L’viv in January 1910.¹² Among other fiction films made in L’viv were Zygmunt Wesołowski’s Miłosne przygody panów Z. i J.—Znanych osobistości СКАЧАТЬ