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FILM FOLK by Herbert G. Loft
Director Jan Kadar
HOLLYWOOD—
Jan Kadar, the Academy
Award winning Czech-Jewish
film director of “The Shop on
Main Street,” was in town for
the screening of his motion pic
ture “Adrift” made largely on
location on the banks of the
Danube. Filming was interrup
ted in the summer of 1968 dur
ing the Russian intervention,
and the already completed foot
age stored at the Barrandov
studios near Prague. Kadar
came to the United States to
make United Artists’ “Angel Le
vine,” starring Harry Belafonte
as the dark Jewish angel hover-
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ing over the elderly New York
East Side couple portrayed by
Zero Moetel and Ida Kaminska.
(The latter the star of “Shop on
Main Street.)
Early last year Kadar re
turned to Czechoslovakia to
complete “Adrift,” actually suc
cessfully reassembling the foot
age and recalling the scattered
cast and crew. The film is based
on a novel, “Something is Adrift
in the Water” by Lajos Zilahy.
It moves on several layers of
consciousness and is an allegori
cal fantasy with elements of
the real world as was entailed
in his first American film “An
gel Levine.” “Adrift”' deals with
the life of a rather simple fisher-
■ man who discovers a nude girl
in the river and brings her back
to his family only to learn that
she has the seed of destruction
for them and herself in her enig
matic personality. The charac
ter of Anada (portrayed by the
American actress Paula Pritch
ett) is akin to the “Lulu” of
yesteryear by the late Frank
Wedekind. It is noteworthy that
Josef Kroner, the Slovak car
penter of “Shop on Main Street”
appears in the featured part of
“The Stutterer” in “Adrift,”
while portraying the lead in the
earlier film.
In a special make-shift inter
view for JTA set up between
planes at the Beverly Hills Ho
tel, Kadar spoke to this column
ist about his future project “The
Lies My Father Told Me” a per
iod story with a Jewish family
background laid in Montreal,
Canada, from an original screen
play by Ted Allan, with Zero
Mostel in the central role. Jos
eph E. Levine’s Avco-Embassy
is financing and distributing the
screen comedy. It seems that
Kadar goes from one Angel Le
vine to another.
The film director who today
looks six years younger, not six
years older, than he did early in
1966 when I introduced him to
the Foreign Press Corps in
Hollywood, now is smartly
dressed, sunburned, wears his
hair longer and looks much hap
pier hnd more at ease. How
ever, he , complains that it is
much harder to set up a mo
tion picture production here in
dependently than it is anywhere
in Europe. We know it is tough
to raise money fora film in
Hollywood and New York, and
the red tape is almost unsur-
mountable and time-consuming.
As Kadar rightfully observes,
the creative film maker is al
ready worn out with pre-pro-
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duotion problems before he can
commence principal photogra
phy. On the other hand, Kadar
praises the high skill of Ameri
can casts and crews and the ded
ication to their jobs shown by
all, an element by far outweigh
ing the slow process of getting
started.
Kadar wants the readers of
the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
subscribers to know that he
feels badly about the Yiddish
Theatre in the country. Ida
Kaminska could not establish
the tradition of her 100-year-old
theatre group in New York and
was forced to go to Israel.
I asked the film director about
the impact of “The Shop on Main
Street” on the cinema of Europe
and he replied modestly that
the picture has been an artistic
success everywhere but he
couldn’t vouch for a financial
success especially not in Eastern
European countries. Budapest-
born, Jan Kadar actually grew
up in the environment of the
Slovakian countryside, before he
was picked up by the Nazis and
the Fascist guards of the Hlinka
collaborators.
He spent five years in a Ger
man slave labor camp while his
parents were deported to the ex
termination centers of Ausch
witz for their crime of being
Jewish. It was a daring step for
Kadar and his co-director Elmer
Klos (also collaborator of
“Adrift”) to select "The Shop on
Main Street” (from the novel by
Ladislav Grossman) as subject
of a movie to be made in Slo
vakia (a Catholic country with
a tradition of anti-Semitism),
because the environment was
too close to his own, the wounds
suffered too fresh, and the in
dictment for mass crimes en
compassing not 1 only the Nazis
but also their stooges whose kin
folk are still around in the vil
lages.
Copyright 1971, JTA
LflGH
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