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ABSTRACT
Just as Jews have been drawn disproportionately to progressive political and cultural movements, Jewish American filmmakers have played a seminal role in movies that deal with social issues. Among these directors, none has been more closely aligned than Sidney Lumet with a cinema dominated by "a deep and abiding commitment to social justice." The Jewish aspect is magnified by Lumet's unsurpassed number of Jewish-themed films-The Pawnbroker (1965), Bye Bye Braverman (1968), Just Tell Me What You Want (1979), Daniel (1983), Garbo Talks (1984), Running on Empty (1988), and A Stranger Among Us (1992). This essay examines the explicit and implicit Jewishness in Lumet's political films, drawing a crucial distinction between his socially conscious oeuvre and the more personal, philosophical work of another major Jewish-oriented director, Woody Allen-a distinction that underscores Lumet's historical position as America's political Jewish filmmaker par excellence.
Jews have been drawn disproportionately to progressive political and cultural movements-whether as a "substitute for religion," an extension of it, or a self-interested and empathetic response to oppression-since gaining entry into Western mainstream society in the late eighteenth century.1 Expressing this activist orientation in the United States, Jewish-American filmmakers also have played a seminal role in movies that deal with social issues: whether forthrightly, as in social problem pictures, or more obliquely, as in film noir. Regarding the former, Brian Neve's study of the "social tradition" in American film focuses on six politically oriented directors from the classical Hollywood period (1930s-1950s): Orson Welles, Elia Kazan, Abraham Polonsky, Robert Rossen, Joseph Losey, and Jules Dassin, of whom only Welles and Kazan were not Jewish.2 Jewish émigrés played a similarly predominant role in classical film noir (1940s-1950s), as I have detailed in Driven to Darkness: Jewish Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir, and as Alain Silver affirmed in his selection of the "ten best" noirs: "I did have one rule: a single movie per director, otherwise [Jewish émigrés] Siodmak, Lang, Wilder, and Ophuls might have overwhelmed the field and made it an all-émigré list."3
In the post-classical period (1960s on), Jewish neo-noir and politically oriented directors have continued to "overwhelm the field"-and Sidney Lumet has figured prominently in both groups. 4 Indeed, with the possible exception of three other Jewish directors-Stanley Kramer...