Different Slants

On the topic of: Unexpected Pleasures of viewing  sexy blonde actresses pretending to be Jewish (excluding Marilyn Monroe – who would be 82 now if she was still living — and who converted before she married Arthur Miller, in July 1956, and the stunning Scarlett Johansson, who doesn’t need to)  I offer the delectable:

                               Melanie Griffith

Who, in an interesting example of strategic career choices, decided to make movies about these exotic Biblical people, twice.

In A stranger Among Us  (1992), she play a tough cop who goes undercover by assuming the identity of a Hasidic single woman who has ‘strayed’ from the sect and then chooses to return to it.  This allows her to have no connections to any of the other Hasidic communities in the Northeastern US area and therefore eliminating any way of tracing who she was, if some suspicious person wanted to do that. 

She is first introduced as gorgeous, physically competent, brave, very effective with a gun and sexually free young woman, but whose life is going nowhere.  She comes across as vaguely unhappy and aimless.  But, of course, still well built.

Then a murder occurs in a New York City’s Jewish Hasidic community and she is assigned to find out who did it–a difficult task in the insular, extremely observant religious community.  

After she is allowed to live in a kind of dorm as a single woman with no money, and gradually blends in with the sharply gender-divided responsibilities each person assumes, she displays a kind of fascination with what she learns and wonders why the women put up with so many restrictions on their freedom of choice, or in other words, the unrestricted  life Melanie is living.

Besides being a murder mystery, the movie is a glimpse into a seldom seen on the screen, every day frozen-in-time world of the Hasids, who also speak Yiddish almost exclusively among themselves, but not around Melanie.  Yiddish–a Middle-European dialect that arose about a thousand years ago as millions of Jews gradually migrated north and east from their original Middle Eastern homeland–is a blend of German, Polish and Hebrew.                                                

All four of my grandparents and both of my parents were fluent in it, while I speak a very primitive kind of German-Yiddish blend and only in the present-tense, too.  But in Germany and other German-speaking areas, people still seem to be able to understand me.  

After the Holocaust killed off six million Yiddish-speakers in Lithuania, Poland, Byelorussia, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Russia, Austria-Germany, The Ukraine, France, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Moldavia (Russian Rumania), Denmark, Holland, Bulgaria and in the mostly Croatian parts of the former Yugoslavia, between 1939 and 1945, effectively rendering a vibrant and idiomatically unique language with a very large body of literature, music and theater…..virtually extinct, as an everyday language.    

Whatever else the Hasids have contributed to modern Jewish life in America and Europe, one extraordinary gift has been their revival of Yiddish as an everyday language, and also the general re-discovery of long dead authors, songwriters and playwrights who only wrote in that millenium old language.

This Stranger…film depicts with great intimacy how the women interact with each other, the sensuality of the elaborate preparation of the Sabbath meal, and how modestly the married women dress, covering their hair to diminish its seductive allure to other men, and covering their figures head to toe, in order to keep other men’s eyes from glimpsing any exposed and tempting cleavage or calves. 

Melanie is quickly accepted into the woman’s group and she convincingly emulates their drab clothing and modest manners.  No one would dream that she was actually a cop.

She arrived at the Hasid’s communal dwelling already wearing a dark brown wig, neatly concealing her lush blond hair.  But since many of the woman living there also routinely wear wigs,  she arouses little suspicion.  Ironically, in reality, Melanie Griffith’s natural hair color really is dark brown.  She is the daughter, by the way, of Tippi Hedren, whose greatest fame came from starring, along with Rod Taylor, in The Birds, a 1963 Hitchcock thriller about a mass invasion of deadly black birds who threaten an isolated town in California  

Curiously, also in the movie, she develops a strong crush on a sexy young member of the Hasidic dynastic ‘royalty’ who has recently had an arranged marriage agreement concluded and is waiting his new, never-before-seen bride’s arrival from France. Though always chaste, or mostly chaste, from the formerly liberated Melanie’s perspective, their on-screen moments together have a lot of heat and also vividly convey the groom’s frustration in being unable to succumb to his passion for Melanie.  Even secretly. 

Amazingly, Melanie is equally effective portraying her inability to comprehend why he won’t surrender to her lush charms.  She more fully then realizes what a completely different world she has entered, where normal male/female sexual desires are carefully controlled and restricted, for the good of the larger  community.  But Melanie, never in a situation where anyone would say ‘no’ to her if she offered herself to them in the outer world she lives in, suffers great emotional pain because of this one-sided and unfulfilled love affair.  

On one of her few clandestine return visits to her gritty Manhattan police station to report to her superiors about the progress of her investigation, the changes in her behavior when interacting with her fellow policemen and even with her father when she goes to see him, are both dramatic and mysterious to the men.  A viewer of this film can see the delicate balancing act she’s gotten herself into while trying to solve a crime and try to stop the killer from striking again, and that she can’t easily shed her new, more reserved, persona.

There is a warm and sexy scene in the movie where the aged white-bearded Rebbe (rabbi) of the entire group whom everyone instantly defers to, is wistfully recalling an earlier erotic episode from decades before, from when he and his life-long wife were young.  She listens to him and assumes a coquettish expression on her face.  He responds.  It’s charming, and a reminder that even the very old retain sexual desires, no manner how much their exterior’s age.  But in this case, the moment of passion extinguishes the life of the revered Rebbe, happily, I can only assume.   

Aside from randy old Rebbe’s, the movie is still a police drama, and when the killer is finally identified, whom I will not reveal except to say there is a subtle link with Michael J. Fox in there, somewhere.  No, he’s not in the movie, and I’m pretty sure he’s not Jewish either.  He’s Canadian, which is not the same thing.

There is an exciting and deadly shoot-out at the end of the movie, this being an American film, because such things are required and expected by our bloodthirsty citizens, whether the movie is about the Hasids or even the Amish (see my KCK # 1, about the wonderful Harrison Ford Amish-related movie, Witness, 1985).

As you might have already noticed from this review, I am an admirer of Melanie Griffith, all of her, including her talent.  She’s pretty much invisible in Hollywood these days, because she made the fatal career error of become an “older woman”, now being 50 years old. Her mom, Tippi, by the way, is 77.

In Europe, both women would still be seducing young men.  Or women.  But Europe is a strange place, so I’m not sure which.  I am certain however that Europeans still value women as actresses and objects of beauty beyond the age of 4o.  As I do, too.                

Her other equally dramatic (and very deadly) Jewish-themed, but completely different film, was Shining Through (1992).

But that’s a column for next week, KCK # 7, a lucky number.

So, see you, under the flickering lights…..

Robert M. Katzman

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Note from the Author:

 

Robert M. Katzman, owner of Fighting Words Publishing Company, with four different titles currently in print and over 4,000 books sold to date, is seeking more retail outlets for his vivid and non-fiction inspirational books: 

 

Independent bookstores, Jewish and other religious organizations, Chicago historical societies or groups, English teachers who want a new voice in their class who was a witness to history, book clubs, high schools or museum gift shops.  I will support anyone who supports me by giving readings in the Chicago Metro area.  I have done this over 40 times, and I always sign my books, when asked.  Everyone, positively everyone, asks.  I was amazed, at first, by that.

 

Individuals who wish to order my books can view the four book covers and see reviews of them at www.FightingWordsPubco.com 

 

There are links to YouTube and podcasts, as well.  Or, anyone can call me directly at (847) 274-1474.  Googling my name will also produce all kinds of unusual results.  That other Robert M. Katzman, now deceased, whose name will also appear and who also published, was a doctor.  He actually bought one of my books!  Such a nice man.  Rest in peace, Dr. Katzman.

 

There will be short poems, stories and essays published in this space every two weeks by either myself or my co-blogist Richard G. Munden, or both.  If you find our postings thought provoking, moving or even amusing, please tell others to come view this site.  We will find our strength in your numbers.

 

 Next year, I will publish my fifth book, a collection of my best poetry and essays, called,

                                         

        I Seek the Praise of Ordinary Men

 

Individuals who know of independent bookstores that might be interested in a rough-hewn guy like me, who ran a chain of newsstands for 20 years in Chicago, please tell them about my books, will you?  I am partial to independent bookstores, having owned two, myself, until my last one was killed by the giant chains, in 1994. I still miss it. 

 

I’m also looking to find someone who would want to make a play out of some of my stories in the Chicago area, so I could go there and do some readings sometimes.  I think there’s enough honest sex, drugs and rock n’ roll to hold anyone’s interest, as well as a lot of authentic dialogue from ordinary people in extraordinary situations.  I think the plays would work anywhere, frankly, in some intimate theater with talented actors.