Isidore Cashier

The Light Ahead is possibly the greatest of Edgar G. Ulmer’s shtetl films. Here, the director counterpoints his pastoral Green Fields to criticize the poverty and superstition that oppress a pair of star-crossed lovers. Made on the eve of World War II, The Light Ahead is at once romantic, expressionist, and painfully conscious of the danger about to engulf European Jews. Impoverished and disabled lovers Fishke and Hodel dream of life in the big city of Odessa, free from the poverty and stifling old-world prejudices of the shtetl. The benevolent and enlightened bookseller Mendele helps them, turning small-town superstitions to their advantage. Based on Mendele Mokher Seforim's story of love frustrated by small-town ignorance, this luminous allegory of escape marries Edgar Ulmer's masterful direction with superb acting by members of New York's Artef and Yiddish Art Theaters.

This musical drama marks the screen debut of Moishe Oysher, in a film critic J. Hoberman calls an "anti-Jazz Singer." Oysher stars as a wayward youth who makes his way from his Polish shtetl to New York's Lower East Side where he is "discovered" and becomes a well-known singer. Ultimately, he returns home to the Old Country and reunites with his parents and his childhood sweetheart.

When handsome actor Eddie Wien decides to marry, his uncle Oscar Stein warns that all women are frivolous and selfish, only on the lookout for a fat pocketbook. To prove him wrong, Eddie woos shop girl Golde Blumberg while disguised as a repulsive old millionaire “Herman Weingarten.” Golde initially resists “Herman” but, forced to escape her dire financial situation, she finally accepts. A second bet is devised and the elaborate farce continues. In the end, the lovers triumph over deceptions and mistaken identities.

Ulmer's soulful, open-air adaptation of Peretz Hirshbein's classic play heralded the Golden Age of Yiddish cinema. When an ascetic young scholar ventures into the countryside, searching for the city of "true Jews," he learns some unexpected lessons from the Jewish peasants who take him in as a tutor for their children.

A Jewish writer in Czarist Russia is forced to flee when the government comes after him for his "objectionable" writings. He emigrates to the US, where he settles in New York City's Lower East Side.

The classic conflict between the traditional Jewish way of life, and the modern life of the 20th century comes alive in this story of a young cantor who brings home a future bride, when he has already been betrothed by his parents to someone else!