Our new series, “They Came to America,” comprises three films dealing with the subject of immigration to the United States. Films on this topic have been around since the early days of the film industry, unsurprising considering that immigration reached its peak at 1.3 million in 1907 when the film industry was in its nascence. Between 1880 and 1920, an estimated 20 million immigrants flocked to America.
The films produced during this period of rapid growth reflect the bustling, vibrant tapestry of a nation woven together by the clashes of cultures and the spirit of immigrants who forged their paths in the heart of American metropolises. You can get a sense of this vibrancy in the opening scene of the 1931 film Taxi (dir: Roy Del Ruth) in which a Jewish immigrant tries to explain his situation to an Irish cop, aided by a sympathetic cab driver, played by Jimmy Cagney — speaking Yiddish!
In 1930, only 50% of the US population lived in urban areas, but you wouldn’t know it from the movies being made, most of which took place in the big city, not on the farm. That proclivity isn’t surprising since it reflects the experience of the people who were making the films of this era. In fact, the title of this series, “They Came to America,” could just as easily refer to the men and women who came to this country and built the film industry. Many of the major film studios today had their origins in the early decades of the 20th century, and nearly all of those were founded by immigrants:
Universal Film Studio is the oldest surviving American film company, founded in 1912 in Fort Lee, NJ. Its first president and co-founder was Carl Laemmle, born Karl Lämmle in Germany in 1867.
In 1912, the Famous Players Film Company was founded by Adolph Zukor (born Czukor Adolf in Hungary in 1873). It soon merged with American born Jesse Lasky’s Lasky Feature Play Company to become Famous Players-Lasky and then acquired a distribution company, Paramount, by which it is still known today.
Fox Film Corporation was founded in 1915 by William Fox, nee Wilhelm Fried Fuchs, born in Hungary in 1879. It later merged with Twentieth Century Pictures, founded in 1933 by Joseph M. Schenk (born in Russia in 1876) and American born Darryl F. Zanuck, to form Twentieth Century Fox.
United Artists was founded in 1918 by director D. W. Griffith and actors Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin. Griffith and Fairbanks were American born, while Pickford was born in Canada in 1892 and Chaplin in England in 1889.
Fairbanks, Chaplin, Griffith, and Pickford
Warner Bros. was founded in 1923 by four brothers:
Harry Morris Warner (born Hirsz Mojżesz Wonsal in 1881)
Abraham "Albert" Warner (born Aaron Wonsal in 1884)
Samuel Louis Warner (born Szmuel Wonsal in 1887)
Jack Leonard Warner (born Jacob Warner in 1892)
The first three brothers were born in what is now Poland, and Jack was born in Canada.
MGM was formed in 1924 from the merger of three companies: Metro Pictures (a distribution company), Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures. Goldwyn was Samuel Goldwyn, born Szmuel Gelbfisz (Samuel Goldfish) in Poland around 1879. Louis Mayer was born Lazar Meir in the Russian Empire in 1884.
In addition to studio heads, many prominent directors, writers, and actors were immigrants. Some arrived here as nobodies, like Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguella, better known as Rudolph Valentino, born in Italy in 1896; Josef von Sternberg, born in Vienna in 1894, who brought his discovery Marlene Dietrich to Hollywood in 1930; and Frank Capra, born in Italy in 1897, who won three Academy awards in just five years for It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and You Can't Take It With You (1938).
Many who came had already established careers in Europe, but came to Hollywood enticed by bigger salaries and greater technical resources.
The Polish-born silent film star Pola Negri, seen here at a costume party with Rudolph Valentino, was the first actress to be lured to Hollywood, signed by Paramount in 1922.
Swedish born Greta Garbo was signed by MGM in 1925. Swiss born actor Emil Jannings came in 1926, and became the recipient of the first-ever Academy Award for best actor.
Among the prominent directors were Michael Curtiz (born Manó Kaminer in Hungary in 1886) who came to Warner Bros. in 1926 and went on to direct classics like Casablanca (1942); F.W. Murnau (born in Germany in 1888) who was signed by Fox in 1927 to make Sunrise, considered by many to be one of the greatest films of all times; Ernst Lubitsch, born in Berlin in 1892, who came to Paramount in 1929 and went on to direct classics like Shop Around the Corner (1940) and Ninotchka (1939); and Alfred HItchcock, born in England in 1899, who was brought to Hollywood in 1939 by David O. Selznick and whose first American picture, Rebecca, won the Academy award for best film.
Another wave of filmmakers, fearful of the rumblings of war and the growth of anti-semitism, arrived in the years leading up to WWII.
Such was the case with Fritz Lang who fled Germany in 1933 after Joseph Goebbels offered him the position of head of the German studio UFA. He arrived in the US in 1936, where his expressionist style in films like Scarlet Street (1945), The Woman in the Window (1944), and The Big Heat (1953) formed the basis for the genre that became known as film noir. His Hollywood career lasted 20 years.
Billy Wilder (born in Austria) arrived in Hollywood in 1934, along with several friends and collaborators: Fred Zinneman and Edgar G. Ulmer (also born in Austria) and Robert Siodmak (born in Germany). Wilder began as a screenwriter with scripts for, among others, Ernst Lubitsch (Ninotchka), before establishing himself in the top tier of directors for both dramas (e.g Sunset Boulevard) and comedies (e.g. Some Like It Hot). Siodmak with films like Phantom Lady (1944) and Criss Cross (1949) and Ulmer with films like The Black Cat (1934) and Detour (1945) were instrumental, along with Fritz Lang, in developing the film noir genre.
And then there were those who came essentially as refugees, fleeing their countries as they were invaded by the Nazis. The great French director Jean Renoir arrived in 1940, but found it difficult to find suitable projects. His best film of the period is probably The Southerner (1945). German director Max Ophuls struggled to find any work at all, but eventually made several notable American films, especially Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)(starring immigrants Louis Jourdan and Joan Fontaine.)
So what about the films that were made by this influx of foreign talent?
Many made films that observed the lives of their newfound compariots. Their attention to the details of American lives may well benefited from their perspective as outsiders. Thus the German Ernst Lubitsch portrays a decades long marriage with warmth and humor in Heaven Can Wait (1944) and the Italian Frank Capra makes the quintessential celebration of small town America in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
while the British Alfred Hitchcock sharply observes its underbelly in Shadow of a Doubt (1944).
Even when their characters are not necessarily immigrants or refugees, their experiences as outsiders is often reflected in their characters, like the lovers on the run in Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937) or the mute woman targeted by a serial killer in Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase (1946).
But unsurprisingly, the studios founded by immigrants, producing films often directed, written, and starring immigrants, made many films that are directly about the immigrant experience.
Our film series is divided into three sub-categories: The Arrival, The Journey, and The New Life. We can find historical examples of each.
The Journey
The film we are screening, Sin Nombre (2009 dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga), is one of the few that deals exclusively with the journey. (It’s also one of the few films that deals with illegal immigration.) But many other films do include substantial sections that focus on the journey to America. Among the first, if not the first, is Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917), in which his character of the Tramp is found on a steamer bound for America with other hopeful immigrants. The first half of the film takes place entirely onboard the ship.
Another immigrant, Elia Kazan (born Elias Kazancioglu in Turkey in 1909), made his most personal film America America (1963) about the struggles of his uncle to raise the money needed to get to America. As he states in voiceover, “My name is Elia Kazan. I am a Greek by blood, a Turk by birth and an American because my uncle made a journey.”
The Emigrants (1971 dir. Jan Troell) is not an American film, but it is about the journey to America. This is a Swedish film about a group of struggling farmers who decide to journey to America for a better life. .\This is an epic, two-part film. The second film, The New World (1971) depicts their struggles to establish a farm in their new home in Minnesota.
The Arrival
The film we are screening for this theme is The Immigrant (2013, dir. James Gray), which begins with two Polish sisters who arrive at Ellis Island only to be separated. The opening scene of the film reflects accurately the experiences of immigrants who came through this portal, as shown in this excerpt from a documentary on the subject:
Another film that deals with the same subject matter is An American Tail (1986 dir: Don Bluth). Yes, it’s an animated children’s film, but it is about a family of Russian Jewish mice who journey to America. Upon their arrival the youngest mouse, Fievel, gets separated from his family.
Moscow on the Hudson (1984 dir Paul Mazursky) depicts a different kind of arrival. Robin Willilams, in one of his best roles, plays a Russian saxophonist traveling with a circus to New York who decides to defect. The cast includes Cuban-born Maria Conchita Alonso as well as an actual Soviet defector, Saveliy Kramarov, playing a KGB agent.
The New Life
Many films portray the struggles of immigrants to adjust to their new lives in America. This is certainly the case with our third film, Man Push Cart (2005 dir Ramin Bahrani) in which a former Pakistani rock star struggles to support himself with his vending cart.
This theme of struggle can be found early on in film history. For example, The Italian (1915 dir Reginald Barker) depicts a young immigrant couple whose dreams are crushed by the harsh realities of their new life in America.
More crushed dreams can be found in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945 dir Elia Kazan) which depicts life in a tenement through the eys of a young Irish girl whose desire to transfer to a better school is thwarted by her alcoholic father.
A more lighthearted approach to the same theme can be found in I Remember Mama (1948 dir. George Stevens) which depicts the struggles of a immigrant family from Norway
In addition to the struggle to survive, many films about immigrants also portray the difficulties in adjusting to the culture of their new country.
Hester Street (1975, dir Joan Micklin Silver) portrays the tension between assimilation and tradition for Jewish immigrants to New York in the late 19th century. Part of that tension is language. Many of the characters speak Yiddish, a language rarely heard in films of that time, but in the 1930s and 40s, many low-budget films were made entirely in Yiddish, catering to an audience of YIddish speaking immigrants. Examples include The Light Ahead (1936) and Americaner Shadchen (1940), both directed by German immigrant Edgar G. Ulmer. (Ulmer also directed films in Ukranian for the Ukranian immigrant community, as well as films for the African American community.)
Gran Torino (2008 dir. Clint Eastwood) portrays the cultural clash through the eyes of the “American” character (actually a veteran descended from Polish immigrants) whose racist attitudes make it difficult for him to accept the refugees from Southeast Asia who have taken over his neighborhood.
This is hardly an inclusive list of all the films that could be provided as examples. I invite you to share your own favorites.