Rhapsodies

This week I decided to dip into a very small pool and watch comedies about Rabbis.

The film that inspired me to go with this theme was the first film on my list, Gérard Oury‘s The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob. Starring Louis de Funès and Claude Girau.

Rabbi Jacob (Marcel Dalio) is a beloved Rabbi in New York who is going back to his hometown in Normandy to attend a great nephew’s Bar Mitzvah.  But this is not his story but not quite. We meet Victor Pivert (de Funès) a rich businessman and obnoxious bigot who is rushing to get to his daughter’s wedding. On the way, he gets mixed up with Arab revolutionist leader Mohamed Larbi Slimane (Claude Giraud) who has been captured by agents of his government.  Pivert finds himself dragged along in Slimane’s escape. They run into Rabbi Jacob in the airport and get the idea of disguising themselves as the Rabbi and his assistant. At this point, things start getting really weird. 

This was a piece of broad slapstick with most of the humor coming from Funes hamming it up, for the which I mostly found myself wanting more. I was hoping more from Rabbi himself but instead he’s mostly an innocent bystander.

The next film on my list Robert Aldrich’s The Frisco Kid. (Not to be mistaken for 1935 western film starring James Cagney) tells the story of Rabbi Avram Belinski played by Gene Wilder. A young polish rabbi fresh out of his yeshiva at the bottom of his class who’s been sent to America to answer the request for a Rabbi in San Francisco’s small Jewish community. 

He arrives in Philadelphia where he is quickly robbed of all his money. On the plus side, he runs into  Tom Lillard (Harrison Ford) a bank robber with a soft side, who agrees to be his guide across the west to San Francisco.

Mostly this was a by the numbers picaresque buddy film putting a complete innocent in the wild west. Wilder plays Avram as a quiet sweet man of faith. A faith that’s not mocked even though the inconvenience of it is played for laughs. (Not being able to ride on Saturdays is not convenient when you’re being chased by a posse.) Ford’s Tom Lillard is essentially Han Solo as a cowboy. (Yes I know, technically Han Solo was always a cowboy but you know what I mean.) All in all it was… okay.