East and West (Ost und West)
Restored by the National Center for Jewish Film
Available for purchase & screenings: [ Ссылка ]
Austria, 1923, 85 minutes, B&W, Silent with English and Yiddish intertitles
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin and Ivan Abramson
Cast: Molly Picon, Jacob Kalish, Sidney M. Goldin
Video Music Score (1991): Henry Sapoznik
This delightful comedy opens as Morris Brown, a New Yorker better acquainted with his checkbook than his prayerbook, returns to Galicia with his very American daughter, Mollie (Molly Picon) for a family wedding. The bride, daughter of his traditionally observant brother, and Mollie, whose exuberant antics fill the film, could not be more different. But Mollie unexpectedly meets her match, an engaging young yeshiva scholar who forsakes tradition and joins the secular world to win her heart.
East and West features classic scenes of Molly Picon lifting weights and boxing, teaching young villagers to shimmy and stealing away from services to gorge herself before sundown on Yom Kippur. Underlying these hijinks is veteran filmmaker Goldin's affectionate appreciation of differences, for good-natured comedy shapes his portrayal of worldly Jews encountering traditional shtetl life.
