One of these areas included movies targeted at minorities. During the late 1930's and early 1940's Ulmer directed Moon Over Harlem (1939) for blacks-only cinemas and Cloud in the Sky (1940), for Spanish-language movie houses. However, the primary minority to whom he catered were films for Yiddish-speaking audiences. The Light Ahead (1939) was one of two Yiddish-language films Ulmer made during 1939, a key year in which the world he created on film would be destroyed by the coming war.
The Light Ahead is the English-language title of a film that was marketed to Yiddish theaters as Di Klyatshe (The Old Mare) and Fishke der Krumer (Fishke the Cripple). Based on stories by Mendele Mocher Sforim, The Light Ahead tells the tale of Fishke, a lame peddler, and the blind girl he loves. They dream of marriage but their poverty prevents it until a cholera epidemic breaks out. What is a tragedy for the village becomes a blessing for the couple since old Jewish tradition says the epidemic can be stopped if a couple marries at midnight in a cemetery.
For the lead role of Fishke, Ulmer selected a young actor from New York's Yiddish theater, David Opatoshu. The actor, then only 21-years old, would go on to be a fixture in numerous American movies and television over the next five decades, winning an Emmy for his performance as Max Goldstein on the series Gabriel's Fire (1990-1991). Helen Beverly, later the wife of actor Lee J. Cobb, portrayed the beautiful blind girl.
The Light Ahead was only a moderate success when it appeared in a then-crowded market of Yiddish films on September 28, 1939. The movie's sometimes downbeat look at life in a Jewish village hit an inappropriate chord during the same month that Nazi troops were rolling through those villages in Poland. And by the end of the forties, all prints of the film seemed to have disappeared completely.
That TCM is able to show The Light Ahead is solely due to the efforts of film collector Herman Axelbank. Deeply moved by the movie when he saw it at its premiere, he spent thousands of dollars and searched five continents for a copy, discovering in the early seventies what is a not quite complete but probably the only remaining copy of the film in Amsterdam. Donated by Axelbank's heirs to the National Center for Jewish Film, The Light Ahead can shine again with a vision of a world long gone.
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Writers: Chaver Pahver, Edgar G. Ulmer, Shirley Ulmer based on the stories of Mendele Mocher Sforim
Cinematography: J. Burgi Contner, Edward Hyland
Editing: Jack Kemp
Cast: David Opatoshu (Fishke), Helen Beverly (Hodel), Isidore Cashier (Mendele Moicher Sforim), Rosetta Bialis (Drabke), Anna Guskin (Gitel), Wolf Mercur (Getsl).
BW-94m.
by Brian Cady
