Silent Sunday: His People (1925)

"Scattered for centuries, these people have come from the four corners of Europe, each bringing a dream of prosperity and happiness, but finding only the reality of hard work, suffering, and privation."

This slice-of-life story of one Jewish family's hardships in a ghetto in an unnamed American city features one of the early stars of Jewish theater, Rudolph Schildkraut, who's probably best known as Caiaphas, the high priest of Israel in DeMille's 1927 epic The King of Kings, but whom I had never heard of before renting this film. He's quite an actor, or at least quite a presence, and the film uses his eminence well.

It's a bit of a shame that this film is only available on a $72 "for educational use" DVD published by Brandeis University's National Center for Jewish Film, because it deserves a larger audience. It's a really interesting look at a group of people who didn't get much favorable coverage from mainstream films.

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