False Alarm

Facts are no substitute for reality. No matter how skilled, the photographer never reaches the revelations of the great painter--and the documentary-film maker never touches the plane of pure fiction. In his first feature film, The Song and the Silence, director-writer-photographer Nathan Cohen tries to re-create the world of Polish Jewry just before the Nazi holocaust of 1939. To summon up the past, he meticulously compiles scene after scene of scholars poring over the Talmud, women dancing the hora, rabbis lecturing--and finally, Germans plundering. At almost every turn, Cohen, a television news cameraman, betrays his background. Amateur performances only serve as bridges between static reconstructions; when there is action, it is the characters who are moved, not the audience.

Despite its incalculable tragic dimensions, the drama of the European Jew remains elusive to all but a handful of films--notably The Shop on Main Street and The Fixer. By being frankly fictional, both films create their own transcendent reality. By trying to be real, The Song and the Silence sings false, proving Santayana's perception: we have to change truth a little in order to remember it.

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