Green Fields (film)

Green Fields Yiddish , trans. Grine Felder is a 1937 American comedydrama directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and Jacob BenAmi.

OnDecember 1936, Yiddle with His Fiddle opened in New York. Its success convinced producer Roman Rebush that Yiddish cinema had a large potential market. Rebush was joined by distributor Ludwig Landy, and the two hired director Edgar G. Ulmer. He had much experience with the East Coasts ethnic film industry, which manufactured lowcost pictures for immigrants in their native languages. OnJuly 1937 they formed Collective Film Producers. The company chose to adapt Green Fields, a play by Peretz Hirschbein which was very popular with Jewish audiences after its 1918 premiere in the Folksbiene. Each one of the three shareholders claimed in later interviews the idea had been his. They approached Hirschbein, who granted permission on one condition Jacob benAmi Shimshirin, who was the most acclaimed actor to portray the lead role of Levi Yizchak, had to reprise it. Ulmer accepted though he knew benAmi was much too old. Hirschbein later agreed to forgo his demand and allow benAmi to supervise drama as codirector. In a similar fashion to Ulmers former films in Ukrainian and Spanish, of which he was as ignorant as he was of Yiddish, he would have dealt mainly with technical aspects.The director later claimed that his budget was no more than 8,000, though at the time of release the figure 30,000 was given. While film scholar G. Hoberman judged his accounts to be somewhat unreliable, he did not contest that Green Fields was made under harsh conditions. Principal photography was performed at Ridgefield, New Jersey in August, taking merely five days according to Ulmer, who told his fee was 300 and that his associates mortgaged their furniture to receive money from Household Finance. Their funds supposedly allowed for purchasing only 15,000 feet of film, forcing a tight shooting ratio of 1.251. The actors rehearsed diligently for six weeks prior to commencing shooting, to insure minimal waste of negative. A partner supplied Ulmer with an advanced portable Mitchell Came

Source: Wikipedia