Arts & Entertainment
RESTAURANT
Exile To Hollywood
PBS doc distills path of Jewish
filmmakers from Europe to U.S.
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Jewish News
January 1 • 2009
f you've never heard of Ernst
Lubitsch or Peter Lorre or Billy
Wilder — or didn't know these
movie greats were Jewish — the PBS
documentary Cinema's Exiles: From
Hitler to Hollywood revisits the period
in world and movie history when
some 800 Jewish film artists fled
Europe and attempted to continue or
forge their careers in America.
As far back as the mid-1920s, when
the German director Ernst Lubitsch
and the Hungarian Michael Curtiz
came to America, Hollywood wel-
comed new talent from Europe. The
pace of Jewish immigration picked up,
of course, after Hitler came to power
in 1933.
The typical refugee path ran from
Berlin to Paris, where some filmmak-
ers found steady work until the war
began, to London, New York and, ulti-
mately, Los Angeles.
Some of the Jews who emigrated
were leading lights of the German cin-
ema, including director Joe May and
actor Peter Lorre. Others, like writer
and aspiring director Henry Koster
and cameraman Fred Zinneman, were
just starting out.
Cinema's Exiles doesn't explore the
question of whether the Jewish artists
who fled were unusually cognizant of
the Nazis' plans, or were simply for-
tunate enough to have cash in pocket
and contacts in America. However, the
film business was one of the first that
the Nazis purged of Jews, depriving
people of their livelihood and sending
a chilling signal.
Once in America, the refugees had
to deal with learning a new language
and customs and adapting to the
American studio system. We can
scarcely imagine the shock of trad-
ing the cultured life of Berlin for
Hollywood's pool society.
Unfortunately, like so much else
in this two-hour film, the picture we
get is a sketchy overview drawn from
numerous experiences. There would
seem to be ample time to devote 10
minutes here and 10 minutes there
to focusing on one person or family's
story, making for a richer, more inti-
mate experience. Indeed there would
Publicity still of Billy Wilder for
Sunset Boulevard
be, if the filmmakers hadn't included
chunks of Curtiz's Casablanca and The
Adventures of Robin Hood, Lubitsch's
Ninotchka and To Be Or Not to Be,
Zinneman's High Noon, Wilder's
Double Indemnity, Fritz Lang's The Big
Heat, and others.
The clips are utilized to draw paral-
lels between the artists' experiences
and politics — in the 1938 Robin
Hood sequence, Errol Flynn rallies his
allies in the forest to fight a dictatorial
king — with varying effectiveness.
Cinema's Exiles continues beyond
the war years and the Holocaust
(which claimed family and friends
of practically every Jewish refugee
in Hollywood). Director Robert
Siodmak's application of German
Expressionist techniques laid the
groundwork for film noir, while
writer-cum-director Wilder parlayed
triumphs like Some Like It Hot into a
35-year Hollywood career.
❑
Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler
to Hollywood, airs 9:30 p.m.
Thursday, Jan.1, on Michigan
Television-WFUM with repeats
Jan. 2 at 2:30 a.m. and Jan. 3 at
3 a.m. It airs midnight Saturday,
Jan. 3, on Detroit Public
Television-WTVS.