Frisco Kid - Manifest Destiny at the WMJFF
By Gordon Bennett
Manifest Destiny
The Frisco Kid, the second film of the 2024 White Mountain Jewish Film Festival season, is labeled as a comedy. The guest speaker, Dr. Stephen Soreff, got more laughs. During his remarks at the patio reception hosted beforehand by Sharon Heyman and Barry Zitser and Robin and Tom Greenlaw, Dr. Soreff regaled the crowd with a string of one-liners reminiscent of the movie Airplane’s non-stop jokes. Still, The Frisco Kid is a good watch and raises profound questions about Jewish Identity in America. I left ruminating on my own and the largely non-orthodox audience’s response to an observant rabbi’s ongoing commitment to halacha despite assimilation pressures and life-threatening encounters.
The movie is a buddy Western starring Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford (John Wayne declined the role over a salary dispute). Wilder plays a bottom-of-his-yeshiva class rabbi named Avram Belinksi, sent by his teachers from Poland to serve a San Francisco community, thus ridding themselves of a troublesome student to a location appropriate to their perceived understanding of his chochmah. Disembarking from a ship in Philadelphia with a small stash of cash, a small Sifrei Torah, and great emunah in HaShem, we follow his travails as he makes his way across the country to the promised land of Califonia and a promised bride.
Along the way, he encounters Amish, who he mistakenly takes for landsman after being robbed by swindlers. Like Avram, they are also outsiders and god-fearing and treat him kindly by providing cash to help with his journey. Inadvertently, he becomes an outlaw, taking part in a bank robbery. Subsequently, he is befriended and protected by the gunman (Harrison Ford as Tommy Lillard). In a memorable scene, they wait anxiously for the sun to set because Avram insists on not saddling up on Shabbat as they outrun a pursuing posse intent on stringing them up. Indians capture and nearly kill them, saved only when the tribe’s chief, Gray Cloud, recognizes Avram as a holy man. The efficacy of Avram’s prayers confirms the chief’s intuitions as rain follows his petitions, bringing water to the parched land (umorid hageshem). And he shoots and kills one of the bandits while simultaneously rushing to save a burning Torah over his friend and guardian angel, Tommy.
Perhaps the movie's climax is a scene near the end. Having reached San Francisco and dining in a ritzy establishment dressed in cowboy attire, he questions whether he can be a rabbi after causing the death of another and is, in turn, questioned by the leaders of the Jewish community whether he is the rabbi they had been waiting for. In answer, he strips the layers of his outfit and removes his Stetson to reveal a black kippah and dark garb with white tzitzit spilling out. Despite his American trappings, he is still a proud observant Jew. In reflection, perhaps the joke is actually on the audience: what are we wearing underneath? In any case, the movie is indeed a comedy, fulfilling an essential requirement, marriage: he gets the girl in the end, one even better than the bride promised.
Gordon Bennet is a BHC member and former president of Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline, MA . He is a Cannon Mountain host and plays the saxophone, most recently at the Gala for Dave and Dorothy Goldstone. He is married to BHC board member Lucy Goodhart.