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No shvitz: documentary explores our fathers' steam baths
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Reviewed by LILA HANFT, Staff Reporter
“He took a steam bath and was born again.” — Russian proverb
Generations ago, Eastern European Jews brought the steam bath or shvitz to America.
At one time dozens of bathhouses thronged the Lower East Side of New York, Coney Island, Brooklyn, and other places Jews congregated. Now only a few linger on.
Jonathan Berman's 1993 documentary “The Shvitz,” released this week on DVD, explores the once-ubiquitous bathhouse through personal reminiscences and vintage footage.
More remarkably, the film takes us behind the closed doors of a still-functioning bathhouse, into a male world of jokes, food, vodka - and sweat. So much sagging, bloated, wrinkled male flesh! But it is displayed so unselfconsciously by people who, even stripped bare, convey honesty and charm. (In the director's commentary, we learn that the camera crew worked naked to put their subjects at ease.)
Filmed over a decade ago, the movie itself captures a moment in American Jewish history that, like the bathhouse, is mostly gone. It was the early 1990s, when Brighton Beach was first being called “Little Odessa” and groups of Yiddish-speaking “alter cockers” gathered on the Coney Island boardwalk, observing the world going by with hard-earned shrewdness.
The film's shape comes entirely from the tension provided by the faces and voices of the people Berman interviews: the voluble excitement, reluctant gruffness, or dry wit of people as they recount bathhouse stories. Little interchanges with innate comic timing bring to life the joyous camaraderie of the shvitzers, a plain bunch of heimish menschlikeit (comfortable, good folk) who kibitz and boast about how much heat they can tolerate.
Though never center stage, the female shvitzers enrich Berman's portrait of the steambaths. “We tell jokes, we talk about intimate things, we talk about men,” says an older women who joins her friends for regular visits to the shvitz at the Brighton Beach Club. “Even though we're seniors, we still have the zest to make life joyous.”
The rituals of the bathhouse seem to put the men - who are not all Jewish - in touch with a lost paternal heritage. One young man boasts that his great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and my father came to this same bathhouse. “And now I come here. I'm 21, and I've been coming since I was 5.”
The men don't seem to mind the bathhouse's gritty appearance, with its crumbling walls, sweaty benches, and the tin bucket which holds hot soapy water and the oakleaf broom used in the traditional pleytze, a cross between a scrubbing and a massage.
In fact, the grunginess helps trigger the feeling of letting go that shvitzers crave (one woman says the shvitz is more therapeutic than the psychiatrist's couch). “It's like being a dope addict,” says another shvitzer, as he takes a break from the heat to flop on a cot. “You come here once and you'll come every week.”
Filmed in black and white, “The Shvitz” is notable for its beautifully composed shots, particularly those on the boardwalk, where the lighting brings attention to people's facial expressions and body language more than their words.
In the director's commentary, Berman recalls the film stock and Bolex 16mm camera used to make “The Shvitz,” and conjectures that much of the footage taken inside the steambath itself probably couldn't have been captured using the digital equipment now standard.
Looking back at the film after more than a decade, Berman surmises that it is really about “the changing of the generations as seen from the institution of the shvitz” as well as “my history as a Jewish male.”
“The Shvitz” DVD includes two vintage shorts Berman chose because they are also about “the evolution of how and where we live,” he told the CJN from his home in Encino. The visually stunning “Third Avenue El” finds unexpected beauty in a train ride; “The City,” a polemic against urban life, is a tour de force of propaganda that inadvertently turns on itself.
lhanft@cjn.org
“He took a steam bath and was born again.” — Russian proverb
Generations ago, Eastern European Jews brought the steam bath or shvitz to America.
At one time dozens of bathhouses thronged the Lower East Side of New York, Coney Island, Brooklyn, and other places Jews congregated. Now only a few linger on.
Jonathan Berman's 1993 documentary “The Shvitz,” released this week on DVD, explores the once-ubiquitous bathhouse through personal reminiscences and vintage footage.
More remarkably, the film takes us behind the closed doors of a still-functioning bathhouse, into a male world of jokes, food, vodka - and sweat. So much sagging, bloated, wrinkled male flesh! But it is displayed so unselfconsciously by people who, even stripped bare, convey honesty and charm. (In the director's commentary, we learn that the camera crew worked naked to put their subjects at ease.)
Filmed over a decade ago, the movie itself captures a moment in American Jewish history that, like the bathhouse, is mostly gone. It was the early 1990s, when Brighton Beach was first being called “Little Odessa” and groups of Yiddish-speaking “alter cockers” gathered on the Coney Island boardwalk, observing the world going by with hard-earned shrewdness.
The film's shape comes entirely from the tension provided by the faces and voices of the people Berman interviews: the voluble excitement, reluctant gruffness, or dry wit of people as they recount bathhouse stories. Little interchanges with innate comic timing bring to life the joyous camaraderie of the shvitzers, a plain bunch of heimish menschlikeit (comfortable, good folk) who kibitz and boast about how much heat they can tolerate.
Though never center stage, the female shvitzers enrich Berman's portrait of the steambaths. “We tell jokes, we talk about intimate things, we talk about men,” says an older women who joins her friends for regular visits to the shvitz at the Brighton Beach Club. “Even though we're seniors, we still have the zest to make life joyous.”
The rituals of the bathhouse seem to put the men - who are not all Jewish - in touch with a lost paternal heritage. One young man boasts that his great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and my father came to this same bathhouse. “And now I come here. I'm 21, and I've been coming since I was 5.”
The men don't seem to mind the bathhouse's gritty appearance, with its crumbling walls, sweaty benches, and the tin bucket which holds hot soapy water and the oakleaf broom used in the traditional pleytze, a cross between a scrubbing and a massage.
In fact, the grunginess helps trigger the feeling of letting go that shvitzers crave (one woman says the shvitz is more therapeutic than the psychiatrist's couch). “It's like being a dope addict,” says another shvitzer, as he takes a break from the heat to flop on a cot. “You come here once and you'll come every week.”
Filmed in black and white, “The Shvitz” is notable for its beautifully composed shots, particularly those on the boardwalk, where the lighting brings attention to people's facial expressions and body language more than their words.
In the director's commentary, Berman recalls the film stock and Bolex 16mm camera used to make “The Shvitz,” and conjectures that much of the footage taken inside the steambath itself probably couldn't have been captured using the digital equipment now standard.
Looking back at the film after more than a decade, Berman surmises that it is really about “the changing of the generations as seen from the institution of the shvitz” as well as “my history as a Jewish male.”
“The Shvitz” DVD includes two vintage shorts Berman chose because they are also about “the evolution of how and where we live,” he told the CJN from his home in Encino. The visually stunning “Third Avenue El” finds unexpected beauty in a train ride; “The City,” a polemic against urban life, is a tour de force of propaganda that inadvertently turns on itself.
lhanft@cjn.org
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