Word: schlemiel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Again he takes a familiar, almost mythical theme, turns it upside down and irradiates it with originality. His hero is Morris Bober, an aging Brooklyn grocer who is clinging to solvency by his fingertips. But Morris is also that legendary Jewish figure of misfortune, the schlemiel, whose fate has been told and retold from the Old Testament to Sholom Aleichem. Bobers good intentions gain him nothing but hard knocks. The only dangers he escapes are imaginary ones. Yet, through all his woes, there shines unblinkingly the steady light of a good heart...
Unfortunately the film fails, like most of its predecessors, to exploit Jerry's unusual gift for "gallows laughter," the rich, traditional Jewish humor of the schlemiel* which he is sacrificing for the easy money in pun and jargon and in the barefaced leer...