There's a lot to love about The Dybbuk, a Yiddish film made in Poland in 1937, a rather extraordinary context. It's a romance, musical, supernatural tale, and exploration of Jewish culture all rolled into one, with some elements of Expressionism mixed in from director Michal Waszynski, former assistant to F. W. Murnau. It was based on a very popular play first performed in Warsaw in 1920, and provides a fascinating (and heartbreaking) window into the period.
The story has a couple of friends who are expecting to be fathers make a pact that their children will get married, provided one's a girl and the other a boy. One of the men dies shortly thereafter, but the babies who are born do inadvertently cross paths and fall in love 18 years later. Unfortunately, the surviving father has more interest in finding a rich boy for his daughter to marry instead of honoring his old pledge. Frustrated, the other young man turns to Satan via the Kabbalah. This leads to this fantastic exchange with his astonished friend:
"In every sin, there is holiness."
"Holiness in sin? How is that possible?"
"All of God's creation has within it a spark of holiness."
"Sin is the creation of the other side, not of God."
"And who created the other side? Also God. And once you say it's a side of God, it must be holy too!"
The film is steeped in Jewish customs, and hearing soulful renditions of songs of worship, including one of Solomon's Song of Songs, knowing what was in store for Polish Jews just a few years later, was deeply moving. It's also full of life. The dancing scenes at the wedding, including the dance of the dead, are absolutely marvelous, and anytime the beautiful bride-to-be was on the screen (Lili Liliana) the film tended to shine.
There is such life to some of the scenes that I wish it could have carried over throughout the film; as it was, those involving the central figures of judgment, the messenger (Ajzyk Samberg) and the rabbi (Abraham Morewski) tended to be too slow, bogging the film down. I also felt that while the setup to the story was good, how it played out was rather heavy-handed.
With that said, it was fantastic to see this film, and a miracle that it was pieced together from fragments from all over the world after the original negative was lost during the war. It works on many levels, and its significance for having been made when it was is impossible to not be profoundly touched by.
