Long before JDate parodies, Yiddish cinema was poking fun of Jewish assimilation, values both “traditional” and “American,” and the desire to settle down, or, at least, get a date.
Amerikaner Shadkhn (American Matchmaker), made in the Bronx in 1940, depicts the saga of Nat Silver, a wealthy businessman who has been engaged seven times. When his eighth engagement fails, he reinvents himself as a matchmaker, though he refuses to charge his clients money, angering the matchmakers’ union (yes, a real thing). Leo Fuchs, who played Silver, was known as the “Yiddish Fred Astaire,” so it’s a musical as well as a mad-cap love story.
As the last of director Edward G. Ulmer‘s Yiddish-language films (not speaking the language didn’t stop Ulmer—he made a version of the Ukrainian story Natalka Poltavka as well), American Matchmaker lets old-world methods prevail, in spite of Silver’s American business acumen, and looks ahead to the figure of the neurotic protagonist, a la Woody Allen.
The original New York Times review panned the film, calling the first hour “tiresome,” much like many dates today.
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Watch a clip from American Matchmaker:
Watch a version of Natasha Poltavka:
Watch an awkward recap of a JDate:
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