At The Movies Ea a*k NAOMI PFEFFERMAN Special to the Jewish News tuart Blumberg remembers the days when he was a strug- gling writer, rooming in New York with his buddy, Edward Norton, the strug- gling actor. Every evening, Blumberg arrived home late, whereupon he and Norton settled in front of the TV with a couple of pizza slices. 0 0 Interfaith relations: Rabbi Jake Schram (Ben Stiller) and Father Brian Kilkenny Finn (Edward Norton), both in love with the same woman, play the "God Squad" of New York's Upper West Side. Over and over, they stared at Raging Bull or the British cult film Withnail and I playing on the VCR in their modest apartment. "We watched those same two movies again and again," Blumberg recalls. "It was like meditation while we were eating. And we said, `Wouldn't it be great if we could make Judaism, Take 2000 Judaism has always played a supporting role in the movies. a BENYAMIN COHEN Special to the Jewish News od is everywhere — espe- cially in the movies. His most recent incarnation comes today with the film Keeping the Faith, telling the tale of a rabbi and a priest who duke it out for the love of the same woman. The romantic comedy, starring Ben Stiller and Edward Norton, follows in the holy footsteps of many movies that have tried- to tackle Jewish issues. Since the inception of celluloid, Judaism has played a role in the movies. Not too surprising, consider- ing that almost all the founding fathers of cinema were Jewish. Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation, .4/14 2000 98 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Brothers all were founded by a group of Jewish immigrants, fresh off the boat from Eastern Europe. Scholars who follow the way Jews are portrayed in film explain that there are basically three phases of Jewish portrayal in cinema, the first covering the first half of the 20th century. Most of the early movies, which were all silent, dealt with Judaism in a way that "could appeal to any immi- grant group," explains Sharon P. Rivo, the executive director of the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University. Early films made by non-Jews por- trayed the Jew as a sympathetic char- acter struggling in America. There were wonderful images made by Jews as well, she says. Films like Humoresque and Hungry Hearts are two examples of silent images that appealed to a broad section of the movie-going public. But, until World War II, most Jews who were involved with mainstream culture put their Jewishness aside, sometimes even running away from it. Many Jews in the first half of the 20th century were trying to shed their Jewish roots and retrofit themselves to the American dream. A classic cinematic example is one of the first full-length talking films, The Jazz Singer, which had a different resolution than some of the earlier silent works produced in New York, says Rivo. The movie tells the story of a young man who became a popular singer rather than the cantor his father wanted him to be. Based on Al Jolson's life, the film, in a deeper sense, was the story of children break- ing with their past for fame and for- tune. It was the story of almost all of Hollywood's patriarchs. In the second, post-World War II wave of "Jewish film", Jewish artists began to address their own concerns. "In 1960," explains Professor Rivo, "with Exodus, you've got a real, won- derful coming out of Jews proud of the new Israeli." Rivo, who teaches a college course called "The Images of Jews on Screen," goes on to explain that in the- mid-1970s the federal government began to allow ethnic agencies to Benyamin Cohen is a sta writer at our sister publication the Atlanta Jewish Times.