The Return of Nathan Becker (russian: Возвращение Нейтана Беккера, Vozvrashchenie Neytana Bekkera) is a 1932 Soviet drama film directed and written by Rachel Milman-Creamer and

Boris Shpis Boris Vasilyevich Shpis (russian: Борис Васильевич Шпис; 1903–1939) was a Soviet film director and screenwriter. Biography Boris Shpis was a stage designer who joined Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg's (FEKS) in 1924 ...

. It is a Soviet film telling the story of a Jew who returns after 28 years in America. A bricklayer by trade, he ends up in a contest with his Soviet counterpart. Becker loses, but learns more about the “warm and welcoming” way of life in the Soviet Union. Notable mostly for the performance of

Solomon Mikhoels Solomon (Shloyme) Mikhoels ( yi, שלמה מיכאעלס lso spelled שלוימע מיכאעלס during the Soviet era russian: Cоломон (Шлойме) Михоэлс, – 13 January 1948) was a Latvian born Soviet Jewish actor and the ar ...

, one of the leading lights of Moscow State Jewish Theatre, and for being the only Soviet film ever shot in both

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

and

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

Plot

After 28 years in America, Nathan Becker (David Gutman) comes to his former homeland, now the U.S.S.R., not knowing what to do. He brings with him his wife (Yelena Kashnitskaya) and a black friend, Jim, (Senegalese actor Kador Ben-Salim). Becker’s father ( Solomon Michoels), has become an enthusiastic supporter of the Soviet Union. Still, when he first meets Becker’s friend. The film takes place during the time of the

first Five-Year Plan The first five-year plan (russian: I пятилетний план, ) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a list of economic goals, created by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, based on his policy of socialism in ...

, which was an attempt to increase productivity in the Soviet Union. The construction of the city of

Magnitogorsk Magnitogorsk ( rus, Магнитого́рск, p=məɡnʲɪtɐˈɡorsk, ) is an industrial city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River. Its population ...

is under way, and Becker gets a chance to work as a bricklayer. He scoffs at the way his Soviet counterparts lay bricks. “Soviet workers exercise before their working shifts. Bekker (sic) ridicules this idea: these are

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

dancers, not workers, he says.” Becker then challenges his Soviet counterpart to a contest which sets the mechanical American way of bricklaying against the Soviet method. “…the superior care given to the individual by state triumphs over mere mechanical efficiency.” Becker assumes when he loses that he will also lose his job and have to go home. But they ask him to stay, noting that they can learn “by adding his technical knowledge to their greater basic wisdom.”

Significance

The Return of Nathan Becker is “the only Soviet sound film made in Yiddish.” Peter Kenez wrote that the film “deserves detailed discussion because it is the best known of the ovietJewish films. The

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

liked the film for some of the things that were not central to the plot. “In the screen telling of this simple tale the directors have presented many highly entertaining incidents of Jewish life in the Russia of today and have refrained from dwelling too much upon the building activities. The acting of the principals is excellent. A feature of the film is the humming and singing of Yiddish folk songs, especially by Mrs. Becker, who to the very end has only a hazy conception of the new Russia.“ The beginning of the film was shot in the Jewish quarter of Vinnitsya, which had a typical ''

shtetl A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...

'' outlook.

Cast

David Gutman
as Neitan Bekker *

as Tsele Bekker * Yelena Kashnitskaya as Majke Bekker * Kador Ben-Salim as Jim * Boris Babochkin as Mikulich
Anna Zarzhitskaya
as NataВозвращение Нейтана Беккера (1933) Full Cast & Crew
/ref>

References

External links

*
Rachel Milman-Creamer on Kino-Theatre
{{DEFAULTSORT:Return Of Nathan Becker 1932 films 1930s Russian-language films Yiddish-language films Belarusian drama films Soviet-era Belarusian films Belarusfilm films Soviet black-and-white films Soviet drama films 1932 drama films Films about the Soviet Union in the Stalin era Films about Jews and Judaism Films shot in Ukraine 1932 multilingual films Soviet multilingual films