Currently Browsing: Hollywood 7 articles
“No Jews were harmed”
Nathan Abrams reviews a new book about the work of the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen. In a review about the Jewishness of the films of the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, it would be far too easy to devote attention just to A Serious Man. This is their most obviously Jewish film and probably […]
All About Eva
In this exclusive extract from his new book, All About Eva: A Holocaust-Related Memoir, with a Hollywood Twist, Vincent Brook reminisces about his German Jewish parents’ experiences in Nazi Germany and their early years as refugees in Los Angeles, where Vincent’s mother, Eva, had an extramarital affair with famed Polish Jewish actor Alexander Granach. When […]
The Jewish Actor Accused of Being a Nazi Spy
To mark the publication of his new biography, James Downs explores the life of Anton Walbrook. It must be fairly unusual for someone who was referred to as a ‘Jewish actor’ and was admired for his generous support of Jewish refugees during World War II, to have also been boycotted by Jewish groups due to […]
Mank the Mensch
Nathan Abrams offers another view on David Fincher’s latest movie that reveals the hidden Jewishness behind the film. Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) is widely regarded as a classic, if not the best movie ever made. It’s routinely taught at universities; indeed, I have taught it many times. Rarely, though, until now, has it been […]
Citizen Mankiewicz’s Hyper-Jewishness
Vincent Brook reviews David Fincher’s biopic Mank. Commenting on the cast of Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980), film historian Patricia Erens observed, ‘The rolling credits probably contain the largest list of Jewish names in film history, apart from the Yiddish cinema of the 1930s’. David Fincher’s Mank (2020), about Herman ‘Mank’ Mankiewicz’s writing contribution to Citizen Kane, may not compete with Allen’s film in the number of Jewish actors (Mank himself is played by […]
The Secret Jewish History of Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was released 60 years ago last month, and it has a secret Jewish history. The film was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch who was a Jewish author. Bloch based his story around the real-life serial killer, Ed Gein, who himself was influenced by Nazi atrocities. He had fashioned household items from the remains of his […]
Is Clueless Really Jew-less?
Clueless celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this week but its director, Amy Heckerling, has denied that its iconic lead character was even Jewish. ‘I wasn’t thinking in terms of this being a Jewish story’, she said in an interview with the JTA. ‘I was taking the plot of Jane Austen’s “Emma” and translating it into that world.’ And, […]