Uri Zohar, a brilliant comedian, artist, filmmaker, and
actor, died recently. In his memory, I went to an event at the Jerusalem
Cinematheque – film director and historian, Alon Gur Arye, was speaking on
Zohar’s life and work. There is no doubt
that he was a genius, and could have contributed so much more to Israeli
culture and society. However, his career
was cut short when, in a surprising turn of events, he became ultra-orthodox in
the late 1970s.
Uri Zohar directed some wonderful serious films. But he will be remembered for the form of
parody which he created, in which he attacked the sacred cows of Israeli
society.
Born in Tel Aviv in 1936, he grew up spending his summers on
the Sheraton beach of north Tel Aviv – today that beach is known as Mitzitzim
beach, named in honor of his famous beach comedy, Mitzitzim (Peeping
Toms, 1972). After serving in the entertainment troupe of the
Israeli army, he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An irreverent
comedian, Zohar lived in the bohemian, cultural world, performing in theater,
film and radio. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became one of the central
figures of the Israeli filmmaking scene and he is well-remembered as a
director/scriptwriter/actor in films which portray his beatnik lifestyle,
spontaneity and cutting sense of humor.
He directed 11 feature films and numerous shorts, and was the first film
director chosen to receive the prestigious “Israel Prize” for his cultural
contribution to Israeli life. There were
so many voices, however, opposing his receiving the prize that he graciously
turned it down!
I have chosen here to talk about a limited number of Zohar’s
films – his first solo directing effort: Hole in the Moon (1965),
the trilogy of beach comedies that he made at the end of his filmmaking career,
and the 1980s compilation film, Lool, made from his earlier Israel
TV sketches.
Hole in the Moon was a comic satire, using
improvised episodes which illustrate the clash between reality and
fantasy. The film is a parody of several
genres of filmmaking including the idealized Zionist style, westerns, Fellini
and gangster films. In a surprisingly political sequence, Arab actors ask the
filmmakers (in the film-within-a-film) for better roles because they are tired
of always being portrayed as the bad guys.
The filmmakers agree, turning positive into negative, black into white,
and the Arabs are given the role of pioneers, singing Zionist songs while they
work on the land! The film marked a major transition in Israeli cinema to an
openly rebellious and individualist approach.
Uri Zohar’s trilogy of beach comedies included Peeping
Toms (Mitzitzim, 1972), Big Eyes (1974) and
Save the Lifeguard (1977).
Peeping Toms is the story of a beach bum who
never grows up. Guta (played by Zohar himself) is a confirmed bachelor, living
the life of an aging beach boy, spending his days renting out beach chairs,
selling sodas and chasing young peeping toms from the windows of the women’s
dressing area. His friend Eli (Arik Einstein), married with a child, is a pop
singer and very successful with women.
Guta is envious of his friend, secretly yearning for a wife, yet
approaching women in a rough manner. On
the other hand, Eli envies Guta his freedom and uses Guta’s beach house for his
one-night stands.
With Peeping Toms, Zohar has created the
ultimate antithesis of the pioneering films which idealized the
self-sacrificing and larger-than-life heroism of the kibbutz enterprise. Here he dedicates an entire film to a
self-indulgent character portrayed by himself, who is the embodiment of the
individualistic, irresponsible adult who manages to avoid the commitments of
mature life. He is a pathetic figure, beset by sexual anxieties. Disinterested in living by the rules of
society and unable to function according to those rules, the hero’s milieu
consists of Tel Aviv beach front life, authentically evoked, in which there are
no inhibitions. Although not successful
at the box office when it was originally released, Peeping Toms
has become an Israeli cult film, perhaps due to its total embrace of the
secular lifestyle and its portrayal of the hedonistic and vulgar beach milieu.
In Big Eyes, the follow-up to Peeping
Toms, Zohar again centers his attention on the adult male, still living
his life as an adolescent, building his relationships on lies and trying to
obtain more than he is capable of holding on to. A comic drama, this film is
about love, jealousy and ambivalence in human relationships. Again, starring
himself and his friend, Arik Einstein, Zohar has portrayed two very different
male friends – the married man in conflict about remaining faithful to his
wife, and the bachelor wanting to be a family man.
Zohar’s final film, Save the Lifeguard,
reflects maturity and honesty. It deals
with a devoted family man who treats his wife with love and tenderness, while
grappling with his need for the attentions of other women. Zohar plays a sexy lifeguard on the Tel Aviv
beach, still tenderly in love with his wife. Somewhat jealous of his bachelor
friend, he also makes passes at the girls on the beach. Hilarious situations arise when his
disapproving father-in-law hires an American girl to try to seduce him and
bring back photographic proof of his exploits.
Although the domestic issue is seen in a comic light, the film has
serious moments and sentimental overtones.
Lool (Chicken Coop) was a compilation of
Israel TV vignettes or sketches which had been made by Uri Zohar, Boaz Davidson,
Arik Einstein, Tzvi Shissel, and others. The TV sketches were produced and
broadcast in the late 1960s and were compiled into a film in the 1980s. Each
sketch included wonderful songs sung by Arik Einstein and Shalom Hanoch,
archival footage from the TV archive, and brilliant comedy sketches. In the best-known sequence, Uri Zohar and
Arik Einstein satirize the basic fabric of Israeli society, a society built of
many layers of new immigrants, all of whom have come from varied lands. Uri Zohar
and Arik Einstein appear as early Jewish immigrants from Russia, who, as they
arrive, kneel down to kiss the land of Israel. There are two local Arabs (also
played by Zohar and Einstein) who are smirking at the new arrivals, mumbling in
a gibberish mixture of Arabic and Hebrew.
As the next group of newcomers arrives (again Zohar and Einstein), then
the earlier wave of immigrants (now old-timers) smirk and make fun of
them. Thus, the Polish Jews laugh at the
Yemenite Jews and their exotic foods, and the Yemenites make fun of the
“professor this and professor that” of the German Jews, and so on. In this sequence, which has been shown
repeatedly on Israel TV over the years, Zohar and Einstein have succeeded in
satirizing the “veteran” Israelis who look down upon the traditions, behavior
and speech patterns of each new wave of immigrants. Moreover, in playing all of the characters,
they represent a composite of all Israelis, so many of whom have gone through
the immigrant experience.
Having made a complete shift from the milieu and culture of
his upbringing to the hedonism and self-indulgence of Tel Aviv beach life,
Zohar decided to make another, more significant change in 1977. Negating the secularism and arrogance which
he had embraced so wholeheartedly, he left the world of film to become a newly
Orthodox Jew. Zohar came full circle,
from his university studies to the secularism and satire which shattered the
myths of his parents’ generation, then to the more mature filmmaker who used
vulgarity as a rebellion against religion and tradition, and finally to the
middle-aged adult who found solace and an end to his existential searching in
the form of study and commitment which brought him to the practices and
spirituality of the ultra-Orthodox.
Zohar’s authentically Israeli film style, as seen in his
slang, his creativity and his spontaneity, has left a lasting impression on
Israeli filmmaking.
