Green Fields

The Yiddish title of this film was Grine Felder. This was the first film of Collective Film Producers, Inc., called, in a Hollywood Reporter news item, a "co-operative outfit." Executive producer Roman Rebush earlier had handled distribution on the Ukrainian language film Natalka Poltava (see AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1931-20; F3.3081), which had been directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. According to modern sources, Rebush had also been the head of Amkino, Inc. and Ludwig Landy had been a 16mm film distributor. Other films planned by Collective included Yankel der Schmid (see The Singing Blacksmith below) and three which were never made, Uriel Acosta, Riverside Drive and Yankee Boile, the latter two based on novels by Leon Kobrin. According to a modern interview with Ulmer, Green Fields was produced for $8,000 (which the producers raised from Household Finance by hocking their furniture) in a five-day shooting period, after six weeks of rehearsals. It was filmed on a farm in New Jersey and in Producers Service Studios, also in New Jersey, and only 15,000 feet of film (or approximately 166 minutes) was shot. Ulmer stated when that the lab that processed the film threatened to foreclose on the film because their bill had not been paid, he went to see Abraham Cahan of the Yiddish newspaper Forverts, who suggested he contact David Dubinsky, head of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Dubinsky liked the rough cut of the film and agreed to pre-purchase 75,000 tickets, which would allow Ulmer to pay off the lab and to finish post-production on the film.
       Ulmer, in the modern interview, stated that he knew no Yiddish at the time of shooting. According to modern sources, writer Peretz Hirshbein allowed Collective to make the film under the condition that Jacob Ben-Ami, who played the Talmud student in the 1919 New York stage production and was one of the original members of Hirshbein's Theater Troupe in Odessa, play the same role in the film. However, because Ben-Ami's age would not have fit the role any longer, it was agreed that he would co-direct and oversee the acting and atmosphere to see that it was faithful to Hirshbein. According to the pressbook, many of the cast were members of the Artef Theatre or Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre. A pre-production news item stated that Ariane Roma was to be in the cast. No information regarding her participation in the final film has been located.
       The plot summary in the pressbook ends with the following statement: "And thus Green Fields records a rapidly disappearing phase of Jewish life. For, whether it be on the fields of Palestine or Biro-Bidjan [an area in the Soviet Far East that in 1934 was declared a Jewish autonomous region], the Jewish agricultural worker is no longer ignorant and superstitious, nor awestriken before the stoop-shouldered and world-weary symbol of the Jewish scholar. Moreover, in the fusion of [Levy Yitzchok] and Tzineh, the healthy and strong-willed peasant girl, the symbol of a new Jew is being born, a new Jew fighting for a new life." According to modern sources, Hirshbein attended the film's premiere and introduced it with the statement, "Twenty years ago, the play Green Fields marked the beginning of a better Yiddish theater in America. May the film Green Fields mark the beginning of a better Yiddish film." Most reviews hailed the film for its artistry. Film Daily stated, "Here is an outstanding production that will find wide appeal outside of the Jewish race." New York Post remarked, "This is the best Jewish folk picture yet seen in New York." William Edlin, writing in the Yiddish newspaper Der Tag, commented, "This first venture May be pointed to as the first step to Jewish film industry. It is a happy thing to see that at last a Jewish movie has been made, which can be shown in all theatres throughout the world, just like all the well-made pictures of France, Czechoslovakia or Hungary." Edlin stated that this was "the first time one sees an excellent portrayal of the life of Jewish farmers in old Russia," and praised "the beautiful Yiddish one hears. It is not a literary Yiddish, but good, healthy Yiddish." In the Yiddish paper Freheit, P. Novick commented, "This is the first time that we have a Jewish movie for which we do not have to find an excuse, for which we do not have to apologize....Green Fields is not a movie in the ordinary sense. The Hollywood laws of rapidity, tempo, are not contained here." Frank S. Nugent's mixed review in New York Times was deemed "anti-Semitic" by Ulmer in the modern interview. In the review, Nugent wrote that the film is "a pastoral, moving with bovine complacence down the rural byway of gentle comedy." He remarked that the film's many conversational "thrusts and parries, although gayly received by those in the linguistic know, unfortunately sailed well above this goyishe kopf, for the English dialogue captions are the merest X-ray of a fatly worded script. When beard waggles at beard and farmers' wives stand chin to chin for a full two minutes, one is bound to feel like a tribal stepchild when the titled explanation proves to be 'You don't know what it means to have a man of learning in the family' or something equally incomplete. Peretz Hirshbein's folk tale has an ingenuous charm, however, even though it has, in this case, made its hero a rather ridiculous figure....The picture unquestionably would have profited by having a different leading man. Michael Goldstein carries Levy-Yitzchok's unworldliness to the point of imbecility-a better word for him, possibly, would be schlemiel. The others do more credit to the occasion...." Although Ulmer stated that New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger fired Nugent because of the review, this was not the case, as Nugent continued to write reviews for the paper, many of which were caustic and offensive to producers, until he left in 1940 to join Twentieth Century-Fox.