Cinema
The House on Chelouche Street
הבית ברחוב שלוש
Moshé Mizrahi · 1973
Synopsis
Tel Aviv, 1947, in the Neve Tsedek neighbourhood, under the British Mandate. Clara, a thirty-three-year-old widow who came from Alexandria with her four children, works as a cleaner; her mother and other relatives live around her. Sami, the eldest, fifteen, leaves school to work in an ironworking shop, where he befriends Max, a communist who starts a strike; he falls in love with Sonia, a twenty-five-year-old librarian from Russia, and pastes up Irgun leaflets. Efforts are made to find Clara a new husband, and a neighbour, Nissim, hunted by the British, also courts her.
Context
The film follows closely the life of its author, who arrived from Alexandria at the age of fifteen. Mizrahi wrote the screenplay with Rachel Fabien and Yerach Gover; Menahem Golan produced it, Adam Greenberg did the cinematography, Dov Hoenig the editing and Dov Seltzer the music, in which songs by Shoshana Damari are heard. Hebrew, Egyptian Arabic and Judeo-Spanish are spoken in it. Gila Almagor plays Clara, Michal Bat-Adam Sonia, and Shaike Ophir the suitor. It is the first Israeli film set in the time of the Mandate.
Who it is for
A little under two hours, in Hebrew, Arabic and Judaeo-Spanish. It helps to know that the director recounts in it his own arrival from Alexandria.
Prizes and reception
Nominated for the Oscar in the foreign-language category, won by Day for Night; its director had already been nominated the previous year.