Ost und West

Between 1919 and 1925 Austria produced a handful of films set in a Jewish milieu and tailored to Jewish audiences. These included Sidney M. Goldin’s outstanding comedy Ost und West, in which Eastern orthodox and Western assimilated Jews meet. Molly and her father, a millionaire who had immigrated to the United States, have travelled to Poland for the wedding of a close relative. The cheeky and exuberant young woman, who in her free time doesn’t shy away from donning boxing gloves, takes little interest in tradition and the simple life of the shtetl. Thus misunderstandings are preprogrammed when Molly stages a wedding ceremony with a Talmud student, Ruben, just for the fun of it. What was intended as a game suddenly becomes deadly serious because, according to Jewish rites, wearing a ring on her finger means that she is married... (Viennale)