Get the latest gossip
Michael Cieply: Searching For The Jewish Soul In The Academy’s ‘Hollywoodland’
The Academy Museum has cleaned up the harsh notes in its new 'Hollywoodland' exhibit, but hasn't quite found the movies' Jewish soul.
Our hero is almost always an outsider—someone who is knocked off a pedestal, beaten down, and kicked around, all the way to the bottom of the second act, before rising in triumph (e.g. Rocky) or existential martyrdom ( Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) to win our hearts and minds forever. It’s the way we think after generations of having laughed, cried, cheered and shuddered for the Little Tramp, King Kong, Mr. Smith, Hildy Johnson, Joe Gillis, William Powell’s “Forgotten Man,” Brando’s Terry Malloy, Thelma and Louise, Axel Foley, Danny Ocean, Oskar Schindler or the kid who saved E. T. But what it mostly missed, other than a flicker of passion in a clip of Capra’s Jimmy Stewart speaking truth to power, was the instinctive, deeply personal outsider, underdog, populist urge that the founders embedded in the movies.
Or read this on Deadline
