Had more fun watching a film today than I've had in ages (since "Ratatouille"). A combination of film, setting and audience made it a wonderful experience. The film was Edward Sloman's "His People," a silent film about the Jewish Lower East Side from 1925, and it was screened with a live performance of a wonderfully swingy new musical accompaniment composed by Paul Shapiro. The setting was the Museum at Eldridge Street - the first synagogue built by Eastern European Jews in America. Recently renovated, after sitting forgotten for years as the area became Chinese, Eldridge Street is a luminous 
space, a joyous mix of Baroque and Romanesque and Moorish, and has been lovingly renovated. Between the pews you can still feel the indentations caused by generations of Orthodox men rocking back and forth in prayer."His People" tells an iconic story of a scholar from Russia, reduced to selling things from a handcart in the New World. His favored older son Morris is sent to school and becomes a lawyer, his school fees paid by money raised by the scrappy younger brother Sammy, who's a newspaper boy - and becomes a prize fighter, to the horror of his father. But it's Morris who goes bad - falling in love with a rich girl uptown and, ashamed of his family, claiming he's an orphan - while Sammy (played by matinée idol-worthy George Lewis) continues to support his parents even though his father has disowned him. (Interestingly, Sammy's faithful girlfriend is Irish, while Morris's snooty fiancé is named Stein - a German Jew.) In the end, the father realizes Sammy is the truer son, but forgives a belatedly penitent Morris...
What became of the family after that is far from clear. Perhaps some of Morris' and Sammy's great grandchildren were in the audience!
