The Singing Blacksmith

About The Film

Newly restored by The National Center for Jewish Film, and starring celebrated cantor and actor Moishe Oysher, THE SINGING BLACKSMITH is the 1938 musical screen adaptation of David Pinski’s popular 1906 Yiddish stage play Yankel der Schmidt.

Singing, dancing and flashing his eyes, Oysher gives his most robust performance as a passionate shtetl blacksmith in Czarist Russia, who must struggle against temptation to protect his happy marriage and become a mensch. Resisting the lure of the woman-next-door (Florence Weiss), Yankel strives to live righteously for the sake of his sickly wife Tamare (Miriam Riselle). Director Edgar G. Ulmer lends the film a starkly expressionistic grandeur that defies its low budget. He helmed this and several other Yiddish-language films before cementing his reputation as a cult moviemaker with such sci-fi and horror entries as The Man from Planet X and The Black Cat.

The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival is proud to present a special 75th Anniversary screening of this lively folk operetta and valuable recording of Jewish culture.