Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the fi rst fi fty years of Zionist settlement in Palestine. It was the fi rst Zionist talkie produced
entirely in Israel.
Another key fi gure of the early period was Helmar Lerski, a German-born theater actor
and later a famous still photographer who became known for his award-winning portraits. He
worked as a cinematographer in the German fi lm industry and in 1935 was hired to direct a fi lm
on Zionist achievements in Palestine.
Avoda
was a documentary that followed a Zionist pio-
neer as he took part in building the Tel Aviv port, paved roads, drained swamps, and dug for
water. The fi lm is known for expressive cinematography that emphasizes the muscular bodies
and suntanned faces of the New Jews. It competed in the Venice Film Festival.
The Holocaust became a prominent theme in post -World War II fi lms, albeit with an em-
phasis on rehabilitating its victims. Among these fi lms were
The Illegals
(directed by Meir
Levine, 1947),
The Great Promise
(Joseph Lejtes, 1947), and
The Faithful City
(Joseph Lejtes,
1952). Holocaust survivors are depicted undergoing a conscious change and being reborn as
New Jews. The quick and successful repression of a traumatic past and “old identity” symbol-
izes the survivors' rehabilitation and their identifi cation with the Zionist vision as they turn
away from both the Jewish past and the more recent catastrophe.
War Films
The majority of fi lms made in the fi fteen years after Israel's independence in 1948 depicts its
struggle against the surrounding Arab states and portray an idealized Israeli warrior. This
heroic-national genre, as it was called, centered on mythic Israeli heroes — Sabras, kibbutzniks,
and soldiers — mainly in the context of the Israeli-Arab confl ict.
Most noted among these fi lms is
Hill 24 Doesn't Answer
(1955), directed by Assi Dayan,
about four fi ghters during the War of Independence who are assigned to hold a strategic hill.
Their life stories unfold in fl ashback, as does the story of their desperate battle against over-
whelming odds. This was the Israeli fi lm industry's fi rst major production, made with a con-
siderable budget of $400,000. It achieved critical and commercial success both in Israel and
abroad.
A key episode depicts the Sabra as a humanistic soldier who, in the course of a hard battle,
notices a wounded Egyptian soldier. Risking his own life, the Israeli soldier hurries to aid his
enemy, but while carrying him on his back to a safe place, the latter tries to kill him fi rst with
a pistol and then with a hand grenade. Finally, while fi nding cover in a nearby cave, the Israeli
soldier is surprised to fi nd out that the wounded “Egyptian” is actually a German Nazi fi ght-
ing on the Arab side. A quick circular camera movement shows the Jewish soldier again, this
time dressed as a Jew from the ghetto, wearing the yellow patch on his clothes that the Nazi
government required Jews to wear. The same camera movement turns him back into the Sabra
soldier. Yet he does not kill the man, who is already mortally wounded.
In no area of Israeli culture did Americanization have as much effect as in fi lms made after
1967 that borrowed from the epic style and “larger than life” protagonists of Hollywood war
fi lms. Such was the fi rst Israeli fi lm that dealt with the war,
Is Tel-Aviv Burning?
(Kobi Jaeger,
1967). Others following this pattern include
He Walked Through the Fields
(Yosef Millo, 1967),
based on Moshe Shamir's novel and play about Uri, a kibbutznik who is torn between his love
