The Death Mask of the Moderns: A Genealogy of New Sensibility Cinema in Israel

Cinematic Avant-garde Versus Political Avant-garde

Figure 1.

“This is the Land,” poster (1935). Courtesy of the Steven Spielberg Film Archive, Jerusalem

Figure 2.

From posters in the United States, advertising the film Sallah (1964) starring Topol. Of interest are two contrasting reviews: “We are rather dubious as to the wisdom of making films that could give the new Nation a black eye” (B’nai Brith Messenger); and, “It’s the kind of fun that convinces you that Israel is growing up, can laugh at itself and at its problems and bureaucracies” (California Jewish Voice). Courtesy of Palisades International Corporation

Figure 3.

Three Days and a Child (Oded Kotler, 1967), starring Uri Zohar. Courtesy of Judd Ne’eman

Figure 4.

The Dress (Judd Ne’eman, 1969), starring Liora Rivlin. Courtesy of Judd Ne’eman

Figure 5.

The Dream (Dan Wolman, 1970), starring Tuvia Tavi. Courtesy of Judd Ne’eman

The art of the cinema, which draws on the multiple significance of moving images as well as on shifts between time and space, represents modernism more than any other form of art. Modernism in all its artistic manifestations “looks up to realism in its broader sense, . . . [it is] a new kind of realism . . . more realistic, more pure, more concise. . . . Its efforts are directed at exposing, destroying and eradicating all that is perceived by it as flawed and distorted in the normal realistic praxis.” ¹ The great renovator of modernism in cinema, Jean Luc Godard, intentionally created in his films an atmosphere of distance and planted in the audience feelings of alienation and even inferiority. His films were made in the spirit of the avant-garde of Brecht, out of an aspiration, naively or not, to create “transformation from above—via spiritual, ethical, and intellectual constructs—rather than materialist transformation from below (via the proletariat or the id) [that] characterizes both modernism and the avant-gardes. . . . In both cases, the potentially anarchic forces down below in the mob or the psyche are carefully controlled and directed from above.” ² Under the influence of the French New Wave, Israeli film makers adopted a similar mode of cinema in the 1960s. But, unlike Godard’s “transformation from above,” the alienation and emotional distance that characterized Israeli modernist cinema emanated from totally different cultural sources.

This strategy of the avant-garde, as well as that of modernism, which also fostered social change from above, “associate[d] the artistic avant-garde with the Leninist avant-garde.” ³ The faith of the modernists in social engineering implicated the artists time and again in an unholy alliance with political avant-gardes from left and right. Such was the collaboration of futuristic artists with the Italian fascists: “in all of Europe fascism cultivated the futuristic values: modernism, youth, violence, vigor and heroism.” ⁴ Another case was the strong involvement with the October revolution of modernist poets, artists and, most importantly, the Russian avant-garde cinema. Trotksy stipulated that “the art of this epoch will be entirely under the influence of revolution,” ⁵ and the famous agitprop cinema groups led by Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, and Sergei Eisenstein produced documentary films about the revolution and the civil war: “Penetrating the combat zones in agit-trains, film makers, poets and artists (among them Dziga Vertov, Eisenstein and Mayakovsky) set out to polemicize the war.” ⁶ In the 1930s, this route-sharing of the cinema with the “unprecedented new society” turned into coerced collaboration with an unprecedented tyrannical regime. In the 1940s, Andre Zhdanov, a senior member of the Politburo of the Russian communist party, stated that “the innovative act of the petit bourgeoisie brings with it detachment from true art, true science and true literature”⁷ [my emphasis, J. N.]. Thus, modernism, whose main drive was toward more innovation, gave birth in the revolutionary society to an avowed anti-modernist school—Socialist Realism.

The...