The film was mostly coldly received. The Yiddish daily newspapers that were committed to the Jewish autonomist agenda were the least enthusiastic. Their critics commented on the film’s main characters, especially the Rebbe of Kock, complaining that the figure of the legendary rebbe was not sufficiently shown on screen. “We went [to the cinema] seeking the Kocker rebbe and found Berek Joselewicz,” complained the cinema reviewer of Haynt. ³⁵ This was the most popular Yiddish daily. ³⁶ Moreover, according to Haynt, Forbert’s Kocker Rebbe was “a Russian saint from Dostoyevsky’s Karamazov.” ³⁷ In such fashion, the Yiddish press expressed its disappointment over the Polonization (or Slavonization) of a Jewish topic: the film was simply “too Polish.”

The Polish daily press presented a range of reactions. The socialist Przedświt regarded the film positively: “The action of the film develops in an orthodox milieu, which on the one hand was imbued with talmudism and sanctimonious hypocrisy and on the other with tolerance toward religious questions, thanks to the encounter with Polish culture... and the tradition of the heroic legendary Jewish colonel of the Polish army, the Jew Berek Joselewicz.” ³⁸ The newspaper thus praised in a patronizing way the power of Polish culture to elevate traditional Jewish society. In this way, Jewish integration was presented as possible. The Piłsudskist weekly Głos prawdy similarly accepted the film’s patriotic premises.

By contrast, other dailies, while praising the scenes of the landscape (forest, roads, streams, lakes, hills) as “the most Polish element” in the film, simultaneously deprecated the civic component of the film’s story or minimized its human dimension in favor of its supposedly archetypal construction. ³⁹ For most Polish dailies, In poylishe velder was not a “Polish” film but a “local” (krajowy) one — that is, not Polish in the ethnonational sense but Jewish. Wieczór warszawski complained about the strange linguistic constructions used in the intertitles, which, it claimed, demonstrated the filmmakers’ “tribal foreignness.” ⁴⁰ Gazeta warszawska argued that the film was falsely patriotic. Worse, claimed the newspaper, it camouflaged the director’s Jewishness while at the same time idealizing the figure of Berek Joselewicz and hiding the ultimate failure of his efforts. Even so, both Wieczór warszawski and the ultranationalist ABC praised the characterization of Berek Joselewicz by Jerzy Leszczyński, the main actor and the only non-Jewish one the set. ⁴² For most of such Polish dailies, then, the film was “too Jewish.”

Unlike their counterparts in the daily newspapers, critics who wrote in the specialized press devoted to the cinema, in Yiddish and in Polish, lavished superlatives on the film. To be sure, this press was partially maintained by the film producers, so praise was to be expected. ⁴³ Even so, it is interesting to note precisely what it was that they commended. In the first place, the film was lauded for the way it addressed the topic of Polish- Jewish coexistence and depicted Jewish commitment to Poland’s symbols and traditions. Cinema critics not only focused on the main characters but also gave special attention to secondary characters who moved from one social group to the other. ⁴⁴ Accordingly, they emphasized the friendship between Strahl and Komorowski, “which is not only a friendship between two persons but also between two nations heading toward union.” ⁴⁵ Strahl, a maskil, was said to have been attracted to “the Polish szlachta that adhered to the ideas of Towiański and Hoene-Wroński, who dreamed about complete brotherhood with Israel and liberty for the fatherland.” ⁴⁶ Other, similar, characters were mentioned in this way: the Frankist Jerzy Jeleński, the Jew Kahane (“the spiritus movens of the emigracja and insurgent movements”), and the prince Zamojski (“the continuing living idea of the liberation of the Fatherland through the brotherhood of Jews and Poles”). ⁴⁷

These critics noted with favor “the mutual interaction of both cultures” depicted in the film. ⁴⁸ These writers stressed the openness of certain social groups that had led to a mutual cultural exchange. In reality, they were praising their own social circle. Critics writing in Yiddish in specialized periodicals devoted to cinema noted that local circumstances in Poland, especially in the heady days of 1863, had had a positive impact on the development of Jewish culture. ⁴⁹ These critics also stressed that because the film was silent (even at a time when silent cinema was becoming archaic), Poles and Jews could interact with one another as human beings undivided by language, while at the same time “we [Jews] can come to the wider world and show [it]... our own literature and particular features.” ⁵⁰ In other words, critics who wrote in Yiddish argued that the film was a vehicle to promote Jewish culture among non-Jews. ⁵¹ In summary, the specialized film periodicals, both in Yiddish and in Polish, saw the film as “Polish-Jewish” or “Jewish-Polish.” For them, the third space was a viable option leading to integration.

Both of Forbert’s films analyzed above addressed Jewish patriotism. They used the Vistula River or the city of Kazimierz as a place of memory to call to mind the myth of Polish-Jewish brotherhood. ⁵² Such films apologetically represented Jewish patriotism and loyalty to the Polish cause. Perhaps they indicated that those responsible for them had internalized Polish nationalistic rhetoric with its demand for Jews to prove their loyalty. Indeed, the films transferred the memory of the past to the present because the past seemed so relevant for the daily life of a social group living in the third space. And it was clear that group needed to manipulate the memory of the revolt. Thus the filmmakers resurrected the myth of the Polish-Jewish brotherhood, emphasizing the social elements bridging between cultures and societies, a theme so vital in creating in the social third space.

Nonetheless, collective memory is always selective, as Maurice Halbwachs, who first gave the term currency, has stated. The films presented a particular narrative of integration and assimilation, but not one in which Jews disappeared as such altogether. In this way, these films demonstrated Anatol Stern’s notion about Kazimierz: “Everyone finds there what he is looking for. It is like in a dream.” ⁵³ But in this case, the filmmakers eventually alienated themselves from most of their public, Jews and non-Jews alike. During the mid-1920s, there was still some receptivity to their program, but the cool public reception of In poylishe velder toward the end of the decade points, perhaps, to a polarizing process marked by heightened ethnic antagonism. Thus, like their makers, the films remained in the third space.

35. Ykhezkl Moyshe Nayman, “Alt Kotzk ofn film: tsu di oyffirung fun ‘di poylishe velder,’” Haynt, January 20, 1929, 6. ↩
36. Ibid.↩
37. Ibid.↩
38. “W lasach polskich,” Przedświt, January 12, 1929.↩
39. Epoka, January 12, 1929 (“Na ekranie: ‘W lasach polskich’”) explained that “the greatest value of the film is to be found in the beautiful landscape.” Kurier Warszawski, December 1, 1925, 21, observed that the film dealt with archetypes rather than with fully individualized characters.↩
40. “Z ekranu: ‘W lasach polskich,’” Wieczór warszawski, January 11, 1929.↩
41. “Wobec filmowanych legend,” Gazeta Warszawska, January 15, 1929.↩
42. “Z ekranu: ‘W lasach polskich,’”; “Przegląd filmów: W lasach polskich,” Przegląd wieczorny, January 13, 1929; “Prasa polska i żydowska o filmie ‘W lasach polskich,” Kino dla wszystkich, December 1925.↩
43. Barbara Gierszewska, Czasopiśmiennictwo filmowe w Polsce do 1939 roku (Kielce: Wydawn. Wyższej Szkoły Pedag. im. Jana Kochanowskiego, 1995), 156, 222.↩
44. “Pierwszy polski film mówiący: ‘W lasach polskich,’” Kino dla wszystkich no. 79, 27; Shneiderman [Emil, pseud.], “In varshtat fun ‘di poylishe velder,’” 6–7.↩
45. Ed. EK, “Społeczeństwo polskie a lasy polskie,” 18.↩
46. “Pierwszy polski film mówiący,” 27.↩
47. Ibid.↩
48. Ibid. Emphasis added.↩
49. “Di poylishe film produktsie,” Film velt 1 (1929): 6.↩
50. Shneiderman [Emil, pseud.], “Film hot a tifern zin,” Film velt 1 (1928): 8.↩
51. Shneiderman [Emil, pseud.], “In varshtat fun ‘di poylishe velder,’” 6. It is remarkable that a Yiddish periodical explained to its readers the importance of “Jewish” films not for internal consumption but for the non-Jewish world as well. Yiddish films could serve as a transmitter of cultural elements from one group to the other, thereby serving as an instrument of the third social space.↩
52. On the image in Yiddish and Polish literature of Jewish-Polish relations during the 1863 revolt, see Magdalena Opalski and Yisrael Bartal, Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992), 58–97.↩
53. Anatol Stern, “Miasto naszych snów,” in Adamczyk-Garbowska, Kazimierz vel Kuzmir, 158.↩