"The Man Without a World" presents an imaginary Polish shtetl

Written by Diane Carson

Billed as a once lost, now recovered artwork by legendary, controversial, 1920s Soviet director Yevgeny Antinov, “The Man Without a World” is a delightful tease. In its opening text, a fantastical story unfolds of the recent, miraculous discovery of this 1928 silent film, “from the mouldy oblivion of state cellars and dusty graves of Soviet libraries, thanks to Glasnost.”

Described as having fled to Cracow, Poland in 1927 because of trouble from Stalin, this secular, urban Jew made a film in a Yiddish shtetl, that is, a market town. However, the last known print ostensibly disappeared during the Holocaust until Glasnost liberated it from an obscure Odessa archive. Wow. What an astonishing story! Indeed, because, in fact, it is entirely invented by contemporary filmmaker,  Eleanor Antin, a visual arts professor at UC San Diego, writer/director of this 1992 black-and-white, silent film.

It does take place in a shtetl with riotous events as inventive as the backstory. A dybbuk (in Jewish folklore the malicious possession by a dead individual’s wandering soul) arrives just before a caravan, Antin playing the seductive ballerina. A patchwork quilt of disparate interactions unfolds, some successfully, some not, but all with wholehearted performance commitment. The grab bag of scenes includes multiple thefts and fights, a leering butcher enamored of the beauty Ruchele, who is also fawned over by Yiddish poet Zevi, identified as the title’s “Man Without a World.” Ruchele’s sister Sooreleh maintains a traumatized silence after a rape during a pogrom, several cemetery visits yield dramatic action, riotous debauchery occurs despite religious objections, and the Angel of Death hovers.

Vital issues are embedded within the narrative. Antisemitism rears its ugly head multiple times, tradition battles narcissistic indulgence, and factions fight for their ‘ism’: Zionism, socialism, communism, anarchy. Viewers who surrender to the uninhibited, at times jarring, flow of incidents with its slack structure will enjoy the madcap and occasionally chaotic creativity on full display.

With silent English intertitles and live score accompaniment by pianist Donald Sosin and violinist Alicia Svigals, “The Man Without a World” screens at Webster University’s Winifred Moore auditorium one night only, Friday, October 27, at 7:00 that evening, including a special appearance by co-star Pier Marton who plays Zevi. For more information, you may visit the film series website.