The Singing Blacksmith

Edgar G. Ulmer touches on Jewish match-making and the male ego. I really liked the setting here. Might only be a basic romance dilemma, but the rural Jewish settings and the characters themselves made the most of it and I found myself loving a lot of this.

The camerawork is wonderful. He shoots his little Yiddish village (it's the same sets as the rest of his Yiddish films, which gives the whole set a sorta Spoon River anthology kind of feel) with globs of noirish shadow and striking close-ups. Ulmer crafts unusual amounts of sympathy from side characters, like the village's first blacksmith and his dying wife in the lovely opening scene. It's a real sense of life, life which goes on beyond and between our leads.