Tracing one's family tree is a constant source of entertainment for people interested in discovering their genealogical roots. Thanks to the power of science and the convenience of the Internet, genealogical DNA testing has now become a popular option marketed to the masses by such firms as Ancestry.com and 23andMe. DNA testing has also delivered surprising results to people who insist that they are racially pure.
While tracing one's ancestors through genealogy can provide startling results in an age of acute sensitivity to acts of cultural appropriation, most people blithely ignore the ways in which powerful stories have been adapted by different cultures, remade by different generations, and repackaged for the screen, stage, and video games.
Many people are blissfully unaware that the version of the Cinderella fairy tale that they were introduced to as children originated long ago as the story of Rhodopis in Ancient Greece. Stories from the Bible have led to numerous novels, plays, and adaptations, including Andrew Lloyd Webber's two musicals from 1970 (Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat) as well as Stephen Schwartz's 2017 musical, The Prince of Egypt.
L. Frank Baum's novel entitled The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) was the inspiration for a 1925 silent film entitled The Wizard of Oz; the beloved 1939 movie entitled The Wizard of Oz; and a 1982 Japanese animé adaptation of The Wizard of Oz;
Stage musicals based on The Wizard of Oz debuted on June 16, 1902 at the Chicago Grand Opera House; in the summer of 1942 at the St. Louis Municipal Opera (MUNY); in 1987 at the Royal Shakespeare Company; and on March 1, 2011 at the London Palladium.
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| Program from September 8, 1902 for The Wizard of Oz |
On January 5, 1975, The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" made its Broadway debut at the Majestic Theatre and went on to win seven Tony Awards (including the Tony Award for Best Musical). The original cast included Stephanie Mills as Dorothy, Hinton Battle as the Scarecrow, Dee Dee Bridgewater as Glinda, André De Shields as The Wizard, Mabel King as Evillene (the Wicked Witch of the West), and Phylicia Rashad as a Munchkin. The 1978 film adaptation starred Diana Ross as Dorothy, Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow, Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man, Richard Pryor as The Wiz, and Lena Horne as Glinda. Uncredited appearances included Robin Givens as a guest at Aunt Em's party, Quincy Jones as the pianist in Emerald City, and Luther Vandross as a member of The Wiz Singers Adult Choir.
Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, was adapted for the musical stage and made its Broadway debut on October 30, 2003. The original production recently passed the 6,100 performance mark (making it the sixth longest-running musical in Broadway history) with numerous productions having toured internationally. A film version is currently in the works.
Long considered one of Ancient India's greatest epic poems, the Ramayana has inspired all kinds of spinoffs, including Nina Paley's delightful 2008 animated cartoon entitled Sita Sings The Blues.
Among the waves of European immigrants coming to America in the early 20th century were Jews who had been forced to leave their homes in Russia due to the Tsar's violently anti-Semitic pogroms (which, under today's laws, would be categorized as hate crimes). As a thriving Jewish community developed in New York, many great works of Western literature were translated into Yiddish. Not only were Shakespeare's plays performed in Yiddish, many actors in the Yiddish theatre took great pride in how much they had "improved" the Bard's writing.
The 2018 San Francisco Silent Film Festival featured two programs linked to impressive literary legacies. One was based on tales taken from the Mahabharata (one of India's most famous epic poems). The other followed its protagonist from an Eastern European shtetl to the heights of 19th-century Viennese society. The contrasts to modern times (coupled with the fact that these silent movies were made in an era when filmmakers were still learning how to use the new medium) made them of special interest to the audience gathered in the Castro Theatre.
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Beautifully directed by E.A. Dupont, The Ancient Law premiered on October 23, 1923, just days after some anti-Semitic riots broke out in Berlin. The film served as the inspiration for 1927's silent version of The Jazz Singer, in which Al Jolson effectively broke the cinematic sound barrier. Further remakes of The Jazz Singer were released in 1952 (starring Danny Thomas and Peggy Lee), in a 1959 television version (starring Jerry Lewis and Anna Maria Alberghetti), and a 1980 version that starred Neil Diamond, Lucie Arnaz, and Laurence Olivier. |
| Ernst Deutsch (Baruch Meyer) and Avrom Morewski (The rabbi) in a scene from 1923's The Ancient Law |
The story begins in a Galician shtetl as the rabbi’s young son, Baruch Meyer (Ernst Deutsch), is portraying the King of Persia in a Purim play. Although Baruch’s father (Avrom Morewski) is outraged by his son's participation in the event, a traveling peddler named Ruben Pick (Robert Garrison) encourages Baruch to pursue his artistic dream of becoming an actor.
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| Avrom Morewski (The rabbi) and Robert Garrison (Ruben Pick) in a scene from 1923's The Ancient Law |
After leaving home and his childhood sweetheart, Esther (Marguerite Schlegel), Baruch travels to Vienna, where his performance with a small acting company as the romantic lead in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet draws the attention of Archduchess Elisabeth Theresia (Henny Porten). She arranges for the aspiring actor to audition before the famous director of Vienna’s Burgtheatre, Heinrich Laube (Hermann Vallentin). Soon enough, Baruch is impressing audiences with his passion and dramatic flair.
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| Baruch (Ernst Deutsch) makes an auspicious role debut as Hamlet in a scene from 1923's The Ancient Law |
It doesn’t take long for the young actor (who has already cut off his peyos) to suffer a cultural crisis. If, as an Orthodox Jew, he performs the title role of Hamlet on opening night, he will be violating the Sabbath (the holy day of rest). If he doesn’t, he will be fired from the Burgtheatre. The Ancient Law follows Baruch's rise from a budding actor to a celebrated star who, rather than dressing like a Jew from the shtetl, looks more like an elegant Viennese gentleman. When the Archduchess makes it clear that her social status would not allow them to marry, Baruch returns to the shtetl, only to be rejected by his father (who has declared him dead).
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| Henny Porten (Archduchess Elisabeth Theresia) and Ernst Deutsch (Baruch Meyer) in a scene from 1923's The Ancient Law |
Baruch's mother (Grete Berger) and former girlfriend are not so keen on ostracizing him from their lives. When, at the suggestion of Ruben Pick, an opportunity arises for them to bring the ailing rabbi to Vienna to see his son perform, Baruch's father gets to witness firsthand the impact that a stage drama can have on an audience. As the leader of a congregation that looks up to him for leadership, he understands the similarity of his son's craft as an actor.
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| Marguerite Schlegel (Esther) and Ernst Deutsch (Baruch) in a scene from The Ancient Law |
“Scholars studying the Jewish presence in German silent cinema have written extensively about the tension generated by the story’s contrast of traditional shtetl life with the protagonist’s apotheosis as an assimilated Jewish theater star in mid-19th century Vienna. What is unquestionably new is just how much our appreciation of both the story and the film’s visual artistry have increased following the brand new restoration by Berlin’s Deutsche Kinemathek, which began with the discovery of the original title cards," explains film historian Jay Weissberg. "Once these were found, a call was made for all surviving material, which turned up a number of nitrate prints throughout the world that were not only longer than the previous restoration but followed the original edit and were also tinted and toned.”
For today's audiences, much of their experience with shtetl life comes from reading the work of Sholem Aleichem and watching Fiddler on the Roof. Because The Ancient Law premiered 15 years before Kristallnacht, few who viewed the original film had any idea that the Holocaust would occur within their lifetimes. As anti-Semitism became increasingly unavoidable during the 1930s, Deutsch left Germany, but returned to Berlin after World War II. After fleeing to the Soviet Central Asian republics, Avrom Morewski lived in Latvia before joining Ida Kaminska in Warsaw, where she ran the State Jewish Theater.
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| Henny Porten as Archduchess Elisabeth Theresia in a scene from 1923's The Ancient Law |
Among the actors who appeared in The Ancient Law, Henny Porten (who had been widowed during World War I), had married a Jewish doctor and film producer named Wilhelm von Kaufmann in 1921. Although she made several films during the Nazi era, when their home was destroyed by an aerial bomb in 1944, the couple became homeless because it was forbidden under German law to shelter a full Jew (Porten survived World War II and died in 1960 at the age of 70). Grete Berger (who portrayed the rabbi’s wife) died in Auschwitz. The film’s screenwriter, Paul Reno, was murdered by the Nazis in Bergen-Belsen on June 25, 1944. In his program essay, Weissberg notes that:
“Reno (born Pinkus Nothmann) was partly inspired by the 19th-century actor Bogumil Dawison, who had been hired by the actual Heinrich Laube at Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1849. Laube held very firm notions about Jews in modern society (assimilation or expulsion) and refused to give Dawison major roles in classic tragedies, claiming that the actor over-sentimentalized them. It was a prevailing anti-Semitic put-down, associating outward displays of emotion with Jewish traits. Reno veered significantly from the historical record when inventing his characters.”
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| Poster art for The Ancient Law |
“Curiously, writers on the film largely fall into two camps: those like Lotte Eisner who practically ignore the story line and focus on the aesthetics, celebrating the way director E.A. Dupont and cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl seem to emulate the light and shadow of a Rembrandt etching, and those who bypass the palpable beauty to analyze what the film is saying about the clash between demonstrable Yiddishkeit and the quality of ‘passing.’ It’s a shame that so few scholars bring both perspectives together. Hiding from the film’s fascinating treatment of Jewish life misses a key reason why The Ancient Law is so special. Sidelining the aesthetics to address only the story line relegates the movie to that ghettoized subsection called ‘Jewish films.’”
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| Grete Berger as the rabbi's wife in a scene from The Ancient Law |
In addition to its depiction of shtetl life, The Ancient Law proved to be a highly effective tearjerker. I have to admit that the the live accompaniment by the Donald Sosin Ensemble (along with klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals) was much more appropriate and moving than what you can hear in the trailer for the restored print:
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Six years following the premiere of The Ancient Law, A Throw of Dice received its world premiere on August 16, 1929 in Berlin followed by its American premiere in 1930. The story focuses on two members of Indian royalty who have been friends since childhood. While King Ranjit (Charu Roy) is a handsome man with a beneficent approach to his people, King Shohan (Himansu Rai) is extremely competitive and has always been jealous of the love showered upon Ranjit. |
| Himansu Rai (Shohan) and Charu Roy (Ranjit) in a scene from 1929's A Throw of Dice |
Inspired by a tale from the Mahabharata, the two men (who are compulsive gamblers) end up betting which one can win the beautiful Sunita (Seeta Devi) as his bride. Needless to say, no one asked Sunita how she felt about being a trophy.
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| Charu Roy (Ranjit) and Seeta Devi (Sunita) in a scene from 1929's A Throw of Dice |
Shohan doesn't hesitate to use every bit of trickery at his disposal, going so far as to strip the impressionable Ranjit of all his wealth in addition to his bride. The plot twist that saves the story comes when a small child, recognizing that the dice being used by Shohan contain a trick mechanism, reveals his villainy. Shot on location in Rajasthan, the production used 10,000 extras, 1,000 horses, and 50 elephants from the royal houses of Jaipur, Undaipur, and Mysore. In his program essay, Jeff Stafford explains that:
“In many ways, A Throw of Dice can be seen as an early prototype of the modern-day Bollywood blockbuster, minus the musical numbers. The film has pageantry, spectacle, attractive leads, and an audience-pleasing good-versus-evil story arc enlivened with romantic passion, deceit, and intrigue on a grand scale. Director Franz Osten and cinematographer Emil Schünemann took advantage of the locations to stage some memorable set pieces, for instance, the opening jungle trek with its wildlife footage of monkeys, snakes, birds, and crocodiles fleeing the sound of the approaching hunters and the full-scale armed assault on Sohat’s kingdom by Ranjit’s forces. He skillfully uses montages to convey opulence and exoticism in two atmospheric segments that frame the wedding feast of Ranjit and Sunita. The first introduces an eccentric parade of jugglers, fire-eaters, sword swallowers, snake charmers, and other performers, while the second depicts the elaborate preparation of the main event with scores of metalworkers, weavers, florists, embroiderers, and elephant decorators frantically working in tandem.”
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| Seeta Devi as Sunita in 1929's A Throw of Dice |
“Osten’s attention to visual detail is often remarkably subtle, but effective in transforming inanimate objects like Ranjit’s stolen dagger and Sohat’s trick dice into supporting players in the royal drama. It is miraculous that A Throw of Dice exists today considering that most of the estimated 1,300 silent films made in India were destroyed in film vault fires, leaving only a handful of surviving movies. At some point in 1945, all three films in the Rai-Pal-Osten trilogy were deposited at the British Film Institute where they were forgotten until recent years, when a restoration effort began in earnest to preserve them. Together, they represent a remarkable transition period when impressive technical advances and epic tales of ancient India helped lead the way to a vibrant national cinema.”
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| Seeta Devi (Sunita) and Himansu Rai (Shohan) in a scene from 1929's A Throw of Dice |
Starting with such silent films as 1917's Der Yoghi (The Yogi) and 1921's two-part epic entitled Das Indische Grabmal (The Indian Tomb), film fans had also been intrigued by 1925's The Light of India. Of the 19 films Osten made in India between 1926 and 1939, A Throw of Dice (the final installment of a trilogy made by his partnership with India’s Himanshu Rai that began with 1925's Prem Sanyas and was followed by 1928's Shiraz) is often considered to be his greatest achievement.
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| Sarada Gupta (The Hermit) and Seeta Devi (Sunita) in a scene from A Throw of Dice |
Unlike such popular jungle adventures as The African Queen, the Tarzan franchise, and films featuring Sabu Dastagir (Elephant Boy, Jungle Book, Jungle Hell, The Black Panther, Man-Eater of Kumaon, Jaguar, Hello Elephant, The Treasure of Bengal, and Sabu and the Magic Ring), A Throw of Dice combines plenty of jungle beasts (including a free-roaming tiger) with the love affair between a hermit's daughter and a king (along with lots of palace intrigue and royal backstabbing). Special credit goes to the art direction by Promode Nath and the film's phenomenal (albeit uncredited) costume work. With live accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald and Frank Bockius, the screening of A Throw of Dice was a big hit with the audience in the Castro Theatre. Thankfully, you can watch the full movie in the following video:
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