American Matchmaker

Restored 35mm Print with New English Subtitles

Selected Screenings

Neues Kino Theater, Basel Switzerland (2013)
Vancouver Jewish Film Festival (2012)
Edgar G. Ulmer Retrospective, Cinémathèque Française, Paris (2012)
International Yiddish Theatre Festival of Montreal (2009)
Edgar G. Ulmer Retrospective, Filmhouse Cinema, UK (2009)
Cape Town/ Johannesburg Yiddish Film Festival (2008)
Miami Jewish Film Festival (2006)
Phoenix Jewish Film Festival (2005)
UC Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley California (2005)
Montreal Jewish Film Festival (2005)
Vancouver Jewish Film Festival (2005)
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (2005)
Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York (2004)
British Film Institution (2004)
Musee d’Art de Histoire de Judaisme, Paris (2002)
Haifa Jewish Film Festival (2005)
Brooklyn Jewish Film Festival (2002)

Synopsis

Leo Fuchs, known on Second Avenue as “the Yiddish Fred Astaire,” plays an elegant and eligible bachelor who can never seem to close the marriage deal. Edgar G. Ulmer’s last Yiddish movie was also his most modern, an art deco romantic comedy about male ambivalence and Jewish assimilation. With its urbane, neurotic hero, American Matchmaker looks ahead to the films of Woody Allen.

DVD includes bonus short I Want to Be A Boarder starring Fuchs comically paired with Yetta Zwerling, directed by Joseph Seiden.

NCJF Film Restoration

Restoration was completed with funding from The National Endowment for the Arts, Brandeis University, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, with additional support from The Rita and Stanley H. Kaplan Foundation and The Righteous Persons Foundation.

1998 Restoration © The National Center for Jewish Film
Executive Director Sharon Pucker Rivo
Associate Director Miriam Saul Krant
Technical Director Rich Pontius
Translator Moshe Waldoks
Educational Consultant Sylvia Fuks Fried
Title Animation Frame Shop
Laboratory Cinema Arts, Inc.

Critical Acclaim

“As in the best Yiddish theater traditions, there is a successful combination of humor and schmaltz with the sentimentality at the end well-earned by the comic insights along the way... None is more charming than American Matchmaker. The title says it all – a clash between the urbane, slick manners of the new country and the old, busybody communal ways of the shtetl.”
– Films, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1983

Credits

Director Edgar G. Ulmer
Screenplay S. Castle
Music and Lyrics Sam Morgenstern & William Mercur

Cast:
Leo Fuchs (Nat Silver / Uncle Shya)
Judith Abarbanel (Judith Aarons)
Judel Dubinksy (Maurice)
Anna Guskin (Elvie Silver)
Celia Boodkin (Nat's Mother)
Abraham Lax (Simon)

Purchase DVD

American Matchmaker
with I Want to Be a Boarder
$36.00 plus shipping
Home Use Only DVD (Not for Classroom/Institutional Use)
Does not include Public Performance Rights
Home Use Policy (pdf)

American Matchmaker
with I Want to Be a Boarder
$72.00 plus shipping
Classroom/Institutional Use Only DVD

Does not include Public Performance Rights
Institutional Use Policy (pdf)

Special Offer

Save when you purchase this DVD as part of the Edgar Ulmer Collection! More