Santa Fe
Original post date: 2 June 1987
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
Part two of The Austrian Trilogy which, incidentally, is titled Where To and Back? Anyway, this flick has about as much to do with Sante Fe as Brazil had to do with Brazil and Paris, Texas had to do with Paris, Texas. First, I have good news and bad news about our friend Ferry. The good news is, he finally manages to get on a boat out of Marseille to Casablanca and then New York. The bad news is, he doesn’t have a visa to enter the U.S. and he and others in the same predicament can’t get off the boat. One woman is so desperate that she jumps off the boat, and Ferry goes in after her to save her and he drowns. Meanwhile, the story follows a friend of Ferry’s, Alfred Wolff (aka Freddy), who is able to disembark and whose dream is to head for Santa Fe, New Mexico, and become a Jewish cowboy. The film observes various Jewish emigrants in New York who are having varying degrees of luck in dealing with the trauma of what they have been through, a new country and language, and a scarcity of jobs even for the very skilled. Freddy thinks it’s a great country because they give free refills on coffee. But soon he is in a sweatshop where he gets fired because he does double stitching instead of single stitching. After walking the streets awhile, he is taken on by a European poet who is now running a delicatessen with his daughter. In the funniest and saddest scene, an emigrant actor gets a job in Hollywood playing Nazi villains. He gives a hilarious and ironic stereotyped sample of his acting to his friends in New York, but his performance sends a woman, who was in a concentration camp, into a screaming fit. By the end of this episode Freddy enlists in the U.S. Army and is waiting to be sent to Europe. Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion.
Rating: ✭✭✭✰
Part two of The Austrian Trilogy which, incidentally, is titled Where To and Back? Anyway, this flick has about as much to do with Sante Fe as Brazil had to do with Brazil and Paris, Texas had to do with Paris, Texas. First, I have good news and bad news about our friend Ferry. The good news is, he finally manages to get on a boat out of Marseille to Casablanca and then New York. The bad news is, he doesn’t have a visa to enter the U.S. and he and others in the same predicament can’t get off the boat. One woman is so desperate that she jumps off the boat, and Ferry goes in after her to save her and he drowns. Meanwhile, the story follows a friend of Ferry’s, Alfred Wolff (aka Freddy), who is able to disembark and whose dream is to head for Santa Fe, New Mexico, and become a Jewish cowboy. The film observes various Jewish emigrants in New York who are having varying degrees of luck in dealing with the trauma of what they have been through, a new country and language, and a scarcity of jobs even for the very skilled. Freddy thinks it’s a great country because they give free refills on coffee. But soon he is in a sweatshop where he gets fired because he does double stitching instead of single stitching. After walking the streets awhile, he is taken on by a European poet who is now running a delicatessen with his daughter. In the funniest and saddest scene, an emigrant actor gets a job in Hollywood playing Nazi villains. He gives a hilarious and ironic stereotyped sample of his acting to his friends in New York, but his performance sends a woman, who was in a concentration camp, into a screaming fit. By the end of this episode Freddy enlists in the U.S. Army and is waiting to be sent to Europe. Tune in tomorrow for the conclusion.
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