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“I’ve had someone say to me, ‘Let’s not forget what Hollywood is made up of. Be careful,’” Guy Pearce told a Jewish writer at Vanity Fair in response to a question about his attacks on Israel.
In an industry where talent has been cancelled for the most minor perceived offenses against political correctness, Pearce’s remarks went unnoticed and he was rewarded with an Oscar nomination for playing an antisemite both on screen in The Brutalist and in real life.
Contrast that with the backlash against ‘Karla Sofia’ Gascon, a transgender man starring in Emilia Perez, the Oscar frontrunner, over old Spanish-language tweets speaking out against Black Lives Matter and Islam, which he has already apologized for several times.
Pearce’s friend was wrong. He had nothing to worry about from Hollywood. Jews however have plenty to worry about from Hollywood as the Oscar nominations once again show.
The Brutalist, a fictional exploitation of an equally fictional Holocaust survivor oppressed by American capitalism and racism, has received ten nominations. Brady Corbet, who wrote, directed and produced the movie, is non-Jewish and has promoted an anti-Israel documentary.
Like last year’s nominee, Zone of Interest, the movie exploits the Holocaust to score points against America. Most current Holocaust movies see Jews as vehicles for leftist agitprop by non-Jewish liberals or Jews like Zone’s director Jonathan Glazer or A Royal Pain’s star Jesse Eisenberg who symbolically shed their Jewishness as part of their promotional campaigns.
“We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness,” Glazer had declared at the Oscars last year. Jesse Eisenberg, whose movie’s depiction of the Polish role in the killing of Jews borders on Holocaust denial, told Bill Maher that he had obtained dual citizenship in Poland.
“A lot of American Jews of Polish descent, you know, have this kind of like negative attitude towards Poland that Oh, it’s anti-Semitic,” Eisenberg complained.
The symbolic shedding of Jewishness, the criticism of Jews and the embrace of antisemites has become an almost mandatory ritual in an industry formerly created by Jews, but where it is trendy to despise Jews and career suicide to stand up for them.
“From ‘A Real Pain’ to ‘The Brutalist’ and beyond, Jewish movies were everywhere in 2024. What does it mean?” the JTA asked. What it means is that these movies aren’t Jewish. They are the work of people who hate Jews and Jews who hate themselves. Two years after life fundamentally changed for Israeli and American Jews, the industry continues to roll out highly fictionalized prestige Holocaust movies and neurotic shlock about Jewish hipster losers.
Only one movie, September 5, the story of the media coverage of the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, dealt with anything remotely relevant to Jews in the present day.
And it was limited to one Oscar nomination.
The Academy Awards did not choose to recognize any of the documentaries about Oct 7, but did nominate, No Other Land, an anti-Israel agitprop doc also promoted by Brutalist’s Corbet.
It would be tempting to pretend that this is a recent problem, but it’s an old Hollywood tale.
The Pawnbroker, a 1964 Oscar nominated movie about a Holocaust survivor, featured a grotesque antisemitic stereotype played by Rod Steiger and ripped from the pages of Der Sturmer whose experiences in the Holocaust have made him selfish and miserable, exploiting minorities for money, until he is finally redeemed by unselfishly coming to care for them.
Call it a liberal Christmas Carol parable for Holocaust survivors who needed to get over it. The New York Times compared the movie’s Jewish Holocaust survivor protagonist, to “the somber shadow of the legendary, ageless Wandering Jew… who taunted Jesus on the way to Calvary and was condemned to roam the world a lonely outcast until Jesus should come again.”
The Pawnbroker and Nazi propaganda shared the conviction that Jews were horrible people, where they differed was the idea that liberalism could redeem the Jews from damnation.
Understand that and you also understand Glazer, Eisenberg, Hollywood and the pathologies of Jewish liberalism which came to welcome any taunt and act of contempt from the Left.
Jews created Hollywood and were disproportionately responsible for its golden age. They could bring legends to life, invent gangsters, swoosh heroes across the screen, and even make iconic Christmas movies, but the one thing they could not do was talk about themselves.
After the Holocaust, two movies about antisemitism fought it out at the 20th Academy Awards.
Gentleman’s Agreement made by Darryl Zanuck, who was not Jewish, after being barred from joining the Los Angeles Country Club because members assumed he was Jewish. Gregory Peck serves as Zanuck’s much more handsome stand-in as a non-Jewish man whose life falls apart when people start believing that he is Jewish. The movie was sympathetically directed by Elia Kazan, another non-Jewish Hollywood figure who was also often mistaken for Jewish.
Jewish studio heads, including Sam Goldwyn, had pleaded with Zanuck not to make the movie to avoid causing problems for Jews. Instead it won a bunch of awards and everyone agreed that now that it was done with, Hollywood never needed to talk about Jews or antisemitism again.
Up against it was Crossfire, a much more baffling movie about an antisemitic murder, whose plot only makes sense if you understand that it was originally about gay men in the closet.
You can see why the saving grace of Hollywood was that it didn’t make movies about Jews.
Holocaust movies safely boxed off the Jews as hollow figures, convenient victims on stage to provide commentary about some larger social or political issue, a handful of Zionist movies that quickly came and went in the sixties, and then a parade of neurotic postmodern creeps.
Hollywood’s Jews don’t like being Jewish. And so they don’t like Jews very much. Their idea of a Jewish character is a neurotic, because they’re neurotic, and grotesque because they see Jews as grotesque. The handful of Jewish talent who defy the Hollywood establishment and stand up for Jewish issues, Ben Hecht during the Holocaust, and Debra Messing, Julianna Margulies and Selma Blair after Oct 7, damage their careers while the ‘Guy Pearces’ flourish.
Jews showing up in Hollywood movies is rarely something to celebrate. And the Oscars will invariably dole out some awards to The Brutalist or A Royal Pain whose awardees will use their moment in the spotlight to denounce the Jewish State. The Hollywood Jews who couldn’t bother to be heard after Oct 7, or to even stand up for the handful of their colleagues, Jewish (and non-Jewish like Patricia Heaton), will applaud and help fund the next horrible ‘Jewish’ movie.
Hollywood would rather that Jews not exist. Jews should return the favor.
Saw Gentleman’s Agreement only once, many years after it was made. I found the film over-weening and grotesque. The worst line of dialogue:
“You’re no more Jewish than I am”.
Maybe Hollywood should make a film about Norm Eisen, the failed, reprehensible Obama Lawfare freak who always makes Jews look bad. He always seems to be palling around with Hollywood types when he isn’t going after Trump.
Really? I was in grade school when I saw it and I liked it. I didn’t even know what anti Semitism was. I thought Jews were all like Buddy Hackett and Don Rickles.
Try watching it now that you are older and wiser, if you can even find it anywhere.
Steven Spielberg’s ex-wife, Amy Irving, mede a wonderful small film about a young liberal Jewish woman with intellectual pretentions who is brought down to earth by a smart traditional mother and a down to earth kosher pickle maker with no pretentions.
The film is called “Crossing Delancy” and I highly recommend it.
Also, “The Chosen” and “Ushpizin” are highly recommended.
A French language film, LEVY ET GOLIATH (1987) is an extremely vulgar farce, but the protagonist is a young Chassidic Jew who behaves, throughout the film, with vourage, honesty, and honor
Crossing Delancey has a certain amount of charm, though Irving’s character was really obnoxious.
Though Ushpizin wasn’t made in Hollywood. It was made in Israel and the directore, who also stars along with his wife, are Orthodox Jews. He refused to make the movie with anyone else playing his wife. A Hollywood product it is not.
At Jewish Film Festivals, we can adopt it.
Hollywoid tried to ram “A Price Above Rubies” down our throats. “Ushpizin” can be the corrective.
I second THE CHOSEN. A terrific film. Deals honestly (and evenhandedly) with the differences of opinion between the orthodox and secular Jews circa 1940s-1950s.
I watched “crossing delancy” in real life in arizona !
A delightful young girl in college chased by a few wealthy guys with
HOT CARS !
In the background was a boyhood friend who ” was in the neighborhood ”
when her bicycle/horse/brother’s horsedrawn carriage needed fixin !
Guess who married the delightful young girl ?????
yahoo to “The Pickleman”
Eddie…..aka…..tzvi
So who still bothers to watch The Oscars anymore and The Hollywood has replaced the Nazis and Gobbels as Chief Anti Semite Propagandists
“Hollywood would rather that Jews not exist. Jews should return the favor.” But Hollywood has pretty much ceased to exist already. Having chosen politics over art, Jews and non-Jews alike have failed to produce one single quality item for ages. Amazing how so many talented, seemingly intelligent silver screen artists, both side of the camera, can prove so abysmally stupid when it comes to politics – which they insist in shoving down the pubic’s throats.
Decades ago in Europe, I used to be a movie goer of the kind that would exitedly pick their favorites ones from the new releases published in a Movie Guide every Friday, then hop from one movie theater to the other on Saturday to watch them all from noon to midnight. Now I wouldn’t touch one of the trash they routinely produce with a 10-foot pole. Thank God, I still have my DVDs library to remind me of the golden days.
Indeed. Next to nothing worth watching these days. The industry is a decade away from turning into AI generative software creating IP digital cartoons.
Guy Pearce is a total disgrace as are Marc Ruffalo and John Cusack. I am hoping their careers fade away. If I go to any music performance and the singer is wearing that ugly table cloth of a scarf, I walk out. I have had it with the moral preening of the Islamonazis and the Far Left. It’s ironic that the lead of Emilia whatever is having to censure herself for having said a couple of correct things. Spain is a TOTAL MESS thanks to its leftwing government and coddling of Islamists.
The Gregory Peck charecter, in GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT, pretends to be Jewish for a magazine article he is writing.
How would the none Hollywood Woody Allen fit into this picture? Some of his Jewish characters are not nice people. Of course Allen is probably best known for comedy, but so is Mel Brooks.
Great question. “Annie Hall” would be the subject of most such debate, and not be resolved due to the various possible interpretations of the scene when he complains that her parents likely see him simply as a Jew…..and the film cuts to him in Orthodox dress….and is that to be taken as pro- or anti- -Traditional, or did he not mean anything in particular by it.
“Stardust Memories” could be seen, otoh, as taking a swipe at liberal pretentions about psychology…..which is widely seen as the Jewish left-wing form of medicine in which much argumentation takes place over who is a quack and who is not. Woody makes delightful sport of the infighting, including my personal favorite: [iirc] “I have nothing against intellectuals. They are like the Mafia. They only kill their own.”
The only thing I took away from Stardust Memories was the idea that pretentious artists never want to be remembered for any comic material they may once have written. I’m certainly won’t psycho analyze Woody Allen, and say he is the pretentious artists. I defer to the professional movie reviewers, to make fools of themselves on that account.
“I am a psychiatrist!”
“THIS is my pipe!”
…was funny as hell. ~ 😃
Call it pretentious if it makes you feel better, bet never forget that “I AM a psychiatrist! ….and I HAVE a pipe to Printove It!” 😆
#@¢%•$# “autocorrect!” …
I’ve never been a Woody Allen fan because when I was a kid, his movies all seemed to be about angst ridden annoying people in NYC but “Scoop” with Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson and Ian Mcshane was good.
Hello again, Dr. Greenfield. You say “A lot of American Jews of Polish descent, you know, have this kind of like negative attitude towards Poland that Oh, it’s anti-Semitic,” Eisenberg complained
Tell me about it – to coin a phrase. Though to be fair, it’s not just Hollywood, isn’t it also America’s media and its Academe – the most powerful in the world?. These days you would almost assume that WW2 began when the Evil Axis Powers of Poland, Poland, Poland, and Poland, along with their allies (Poland and – repeat Poland for as many times as the Current Version of WW2 calls for) invaded and occupied the quivering country (thus) of Europe, until, With One Mighty Bound, the Gallant Allies, America, America and America (shortly to be joined by Germany in the Current Version?)…
In the Original Version of WW2, the Polish Army (my father, a para, among them) fought on the Allied Side. And the Axis Side was quite different.
In any case, I have tried to avoid the product of Hollywood for many years now – including those ceremonies in which it tells itself how wonderful it is and awards itself prizes. Only it does seem to go out of its way to spit right in the face of the moral values taught in the Inspired Scriptures, both Hebrew and Christian Greek.
“You can see why the saving grace of Hollywood was that it didn’t make movies about Jews.”
What about “Jews in Space?”
Well, Guy Pearce is one of the best actors alive if not THE best, so he deserves ten best actor Oscars for his talent. He used to be my favorite actor until today. It only took me a few seconds after I read your reference to his insinuation that dem Joos rule Hollywood to find lots of links to his hatred of Jews disguised as hatred of Israel. What a let down for me. He spouts the same shit Hamas and the hard left do. Fantasies about the Israeli War of Independence being a land grab followed by an occupation, oppression, murder of “innocent Paleosimians, blah, blah, blah.
As surprised as I was about Pearce, I was even more surprised about Karla Sofia’ Gascon, who I’d never heard about until tonight. I’d thought trannies were completely off limits and above any criticism. If he were to pretend to be a Moslem, all would be forgiven, no doubt.
I read a synopsis of “The Brutalist” and the movie is obviously brutally shitty. And I I’ve already seen “Deliverence” so I don’t need to see another movie where a guy gets butt raped.
I used to go to a cool luxury theater every weekend until the scamdemic nixed that but I haven’t been back since and just stream movies. I wouldn’t watch any of the anti-Jew movies you mentioned anyway and Jesse Eisenberg has always annoyed me so much I just want to punch him when I hear him talk. He sucked as Lex Luthor.
“Gentleman’s Agreement” is a good movie and Gregory Peck was a great guy. Somebody I used to know met him and so did one of my brother’s limo driver friends and they both said he was a gentleman’s gentleman. He doubtlessly meant the best but It seems Goldwyn was right about the Hollywood reaction.
I assume “Cast a Giant Shadow” Was one of the “handful of Zionist movies that quickly came and went in the sixties.” Hell, Kirk Douglas even got his buddies John Wayne and Yul Brynner to be in the movie. That’s a great movie. It had Frank Sinatra, that tanned and hot Jewish chick named Senta something and Angie Dickinson in it too. Can you believe Kirk was 50 when he made that? I thought he was 35 or 40 back when I saw it.
I always thought Jews were safe in Hollywood but I guess you people are going through a bad phase right now. Hopefully it’s only temporary.
That one slipped my mind. …
“Cast A Giant Shadow” is highly recommended, as is “Exodus” AND its soundtrack.
Senta Berger? She was in some of my favorite movies. Such as “The Swiss Conspiracy”.
Hollywood has always been an industry which was dominated by Jews. You can thank these liberal Jews for the stereotypical character traits they used to depict Jews: whiney, weak, funny looking, liberal. In other words, every Jew was Woody Allen.
Much of the filth from Hollywood is blamed on Jews. For example, 99 out of 100 movies with an interracial couple has the man as black and the woman as white. They continued to put this out there until society and white women fell for it.
If Jews don’t want to be Jews then don’t be. Get baptized and become a Christian, or Muslim. Almost all Jews are of European descent and have no affiliation with the Jews from the Bible/Levant.
Jews get blamed for many things as if all Jews think monolithicly. Yes, they vote 70% and upwards Democrat, but many times they are unfairly blamed.
Today it’s more huge corporations that run Hollywood. Although Jews are certainly over represented
Translation — “I hate Jews and Israel”
Think of “Exodus” — together with its soundtrack — as a positive/positive Jewish Black Jazz partnership … Ernest Gold to Dizzy Gillespie to Bob Marley (whose son Ziggy (“Tomorrow People”) has come full circle and had his son (with his Jewish wife) Bar Mitzvahed in Israel.)
I was hoping that “Cast a Giant Shadow” would be a better movie than it turned out to be. The fight for independence is a bit incoherent in it’s telling, and there was poor, maudlin acting in places, I watched it, but it wasn’t great. Now, “Exodus” was great and was true to the history except in stances (the ship “Exodus” never sailed out of Cyprus for instance).Who knows how Leon Uris would tell the story now. Crossing Delancy — cute movie. I recommend it.
Now for a real stinker I have to mention “O Jerusalem”. The book was fantastic. Couldn’t put it down when I read it in the 1980s. The movie was a complete rewrite of the story, total schlok, History becomes in the movie a progressives’ fantasy about Jew and Muslim uniting, livin’ together, etc. When history is shredded to serve a fantasy political narrative it annoys me beyond belief.
Cast a Giant Shadow tried to tell the story of the fight for independence through the perspective of an American. The scenes of the actual war are better than the Kirk Douglas material.
And it was saddled with a director who had mostly done comedy.
Re: The Pawnbroker
I just finished reading the book and did not come away with any of the negative views made in reference to the movie version, quite the opposite. It is another case of what I have found to be true 99% of the time – if you liked the book, don’t bother with the movie, or adjust your expectations.
I have seen the movie but still did not see the problems noted (although it was one of the 99%).
I can’t stand the way movies and television portray Jews. I would prefer there be no Jewish characters than to see the way Jews are portrayed.
Good instinct.
The films that I have recommended are well worth seeing, and I include the criticisms of those films as well. Take away the uplifting ending of “Crossing Delancy” for example, and Mr. Greenfield’s assessment of Amy Irving’s character as being obnoxious is spot on …..especially in the middle of the film when she re-gifts the hat …..but that is all I will give away here.