Educational Media Reviews Online

This film essay presents a well-reasoned argument concerning the stereotypical depiction of Jewish mothers on the screen. The ambition of the argument is considerable, combining a wish to see on film a more honest story similar to the life of the film maker’s mother, with a critical analysis of the Hollywood depictions of Jewish mothers that she grew up with.

The main argument, concerning American cinema, is effectively supported by a series of articulate academic and motion picture production experts, Professor Patricia Erens, authors J. Hoberman and Michael Medved, Sharon Rivo from the National Center for Jewish Film, actress Lainie Kazan, and directors Larry Peerce, Paul Mazursky, and Paul Bogart. The interviews are extremely well focused in their content and editing. The film maker has engaged with them at a high level, and effectively arranged their testimony around an historical outline. Underlying the thesis, but unnoted, is the work of Neal Gabler in his book How the Jews Invented Hollywood -- unnoted perhaps because those ideas have been treated in another documentary, known variously as Hidden Hollywood or Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream. The argument begins with Erens explaining the domineering, tedious mother as a fantasy of Jewish male writers working out their own conflicts and desire to be accepted in mainstream middle class American society. As the child inevitably rebels, the mother holds on tighter and becomes comic relief in her grief. The “American dream” of independence and self realization created in movies by the early Jewish producers was in direct conflict with Jewish values of family dependence and so further fueled the neuroses of Hollywood producers and writers.

Sharon Rivo, from the National Center for Jewish Film, describes the silent films’ depiction of Jewish mothers as symbols of immigrant victimization and their resilience and strength in fighting against poverty. J. Hoberman relates the rise of Yiddish films during the 1930s (most made on the East coast) and depiction of the triumph of family values in opposition to the dominant Hollywood story of progress through assimilation and rejection of parental and religious restrictions. But by the beginning of the war the audience for these stories was gone, and the fame of postwar Jewish authors who focused on the theme of a mothers’ control – Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, each of whom had books made into mainstream films – made the stereotype even more prevalent. Larry Peerce, the director of Goodbye Columbus, relates these authors’ ideas to the shame of men who deny their roots in pursuit of class status. Paul Mazursky, director of Next Stop Greenwich Village, follows up with a stunning putdown of his own mother, who he jokingly claims to have feared into his adulthood. Lainie Kazan and Paul Bogart bring poignancy to the “terrible problem” that Hollywood producers have with mothers. In between scenes of Torch Song Trilogy, Bogart explains there are no honest portrayals of Jewish mothers in American cinema, only the “easy stuff,” hysteria and loudness. He claims accuracy for the stereotype in Torchsong, relating the omission of the mother’s earlier trials during her emigration from the Russia to the U.S. Finally, he asserts that though the stereotype has faded, it lives on in depictions of mothers of other ethnic and racial backgrounds.

This well illustrated argument is interlaced with more inchoate scenes and voice over describing the film maker’s mother, (who succeeded in freeing her husband from Dachau and immigrating to Australia) and her relationship to her young son. This theme is illustrated with arbitrary, unexplained scenes of New York, interviewees walking to their offices, and untitled scenes from (presumably) the contemporary Israeli films included in the credits. All of these interludes are very short, however, and do not mar the general effectiveness of this film in explaining a very complex cultural phenomenon. The longer version may better elaborate on this theme. The film is technically excellent with film clips dating back to early Yiddish cinema Mirele Efros (1939) and Mothers of Today (1939), to American films such as Hungry Heart (1922), Come Blow Your Horn (1963), Where's Poppa? (1970), Portnoy's Complaint (1972), My Favorite Year (1982), and The Jazz Singer (1927).

The usefulness of this film for classrooms and cultural centers goes beyond Jewish studies and media studies into women’s studies of mothers and history in general. Recommended.