Turner Classic Movies is airing a ‘Jewish Experience’ series of films this month

LINDA BUCHWALD | JTA

Turner Classic Movies admits that capturing the “Jewish experience” in a series of films is a daunting task, but the network is attempting to do so anyway.

Every Thursday night in January, the channel is showing movies spanning from the 1930s through the 1990s on the theme. According to an article on the TCM website, the series aims to show “how filmmakers have attempted to deal with such themes as assimilation, antisemitism, religion, family life and the Holocaust, sometimes with clarity and honesty, other times with varying degrees of distortion and caricature.”

There are a couple of films in the series set during the Holocaust, but notably none involve concentration camp settings. Instead, the general focus seems to be on portraying comedy, romance and the joy of everyday Jewish life.

Antisemitism does come up often in the Jewish experience, and that is reflected in the films, including in “Crossfire,” a film noir from 1947 about the murder of a Jewish man that helped kick off the series last week. The theme is also prominent in “Fiddler on the Roof,” which also aired on the series’ first night.

Here are the remaining movies to look forward to, in the order in which they will air in EST.

“GIRLFRIENDS” (1978), JAN. 20 AT 12 A.M.

This pioneering indie film — which according to The New York Times was the first independent American film to be funded primarily by grantmaking organizations — it also is notable for its portrayal of female friendship between Susan Weinblatt (Melanie Mayron), a Jewish photographer, and her ex-roommate Anne Munroe (Anita Skinner), who moves out to get married. Directed by Claudia Weill, who also wrote it along with Vicki Polon, the film is a precursor to so many contemporary indies, including Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig’s “Frances Ha.”

“THE FRISCO KID” (1979), JAN. 20 AT 1:45 A.M. Jews are not usually associated with Westerns. But in this comedy, Gene Wilder stars as a rabbi from Poland who is set to lead a congregation in San Francisco. He gets stuck en route in the Wild West and befriends a bank robber played by Harrison Ford. Some scenes don’t hold up in contemporary times, especially ones portraying Native Americans, but TCM doesn’t shy away from showing how stereotypes are part of film history.

“AU REVOIR, LES ENFANTS” (1987), JAN. 20 AT 4 A.M.

This French film is one of the few in the series that takes place during the years of the Holocaust. Louis Malle’s autobiographical film is based on his time at the Catholic school Petit-College d’Avon, at which the real headmaster Pére Jacques (Pére Jean in the film) attempted to hide Jewish children from the Nazis. The film focuses on the friendship of two fiction- alized 12-year-old boys, Julian Quentin (Gaspard Manesse) and Jean Bonnet, whose real name is Jean Kippelstein (Raphael Fejtö).

“BILOXI BLUES” (1988), JAN. 26 AT 8 P.M.

Neil Simon adapted his own play, the second in his semi-autobiographical trilogy about growing up in Brighton Beach, for the screen. Eugene Jerome (Matthew Broderick), a young Jewish Brooklynite, is drafted into the army during World War II and is sent to bootcamp in Mississippi. The movie is helmed by prolific Jewish film and theater director Mike Nichols, who was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States as a young boy in 1939.

“THE CHOSEN” (1981), JAN. 26 AT 10 P.M.

Many of the movies selected for this series unsurprisingly take place in Brooklyn,

SEE TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES, PAGE 18