A few years back I saw one of the most startling documentaries I had ever seen. It was called AN EMPIRE OF THEIR OWN- HOW THE JEWS INVENTED Hollywood, and it was based on a bestseller.
It was brilliant. It not only showed how Hollywood was started by Jews, literally, but also showed how, the more successful Hollywood became, the less Jewish everyone wanted to be. The message seemed to be that assimilation and success went hand in hand. The writers even used Superman as an example -- invented by two Jews, Superman actually used a "secret identity" to keep the world from learning that he was "different." Wow.
Zweig's film here is successful entertainment but FOR ALL THE WRONG REASONS.
I cannot easily recall another film where the film-maker is such an annoying presence and the viewer so wishes he would just take an extended lunch so we could spend more time with some the greatest comics of the last century, many of whom we have not seen for so long.
(Age is now and always will be scarier than any Hollywood villain. Shelley Berman, for example, sounds like himself and is sharp as a tack, but at 90 he looks nothing like the imposing comic presence he was on the Ed Sullivan show where by sheer force of will he dragged a whole generation into an appreciation of his "phone call" comedy.)
Zwieg meanwhile presents, ironically, the least comic moments in the film as he harasses and annoys these professionals into trying to get them to admit that the world is not as funny as it was because Jews are not as Jewish as they were...
Ignore Zweig and you will actually enjoy this.
