THE SHVITZ
A film review by Linda Dubler
Copyright 1995 Linda Dubler
Near the end of THE SHVITZ, a young man remembers a Yiddish word that the old ladies of his childhood used to express their appreciation of a visit to the steambaths. "It's such a mecheieh," they'd say as they splashed water on their ample bosoms, "such a pleasure." The same can be said of Jonathan Berman's intimate and affectionate film. Shot in a loose, cinema verite style, suffused with spontaneous humor and propelled by a cast of natural storytellers, THE SHVITZ manages to make the act of filming a bunch of naked strangers look effortless. I suppose it is relatively effortless to turn a camera on whatever or whoever appears in front of the lens. But to capture one's subject in such a relaxed and casual a way, to present what would legitimately be called oral history as a vivid and personal encounter, is a challenge that eludes many documentarians.
What makes countless non-fiction films feel dull is the sense that they are closed before they even open--they're codified, defined, set up to deliver information and a point of view in the manner of a dictionary or encyclopedia. THE SHVITZ is dynamic in part because it is structured as an inquiry. Berman opens with the most fundamental of questions--what is a shvitz? From there, the filmmaker launches into a search for the shvitz experience. First stop is Coney Island in the winter--a near empty boardwalk edged by graffiti-splashed facades. A conversation with a guy who remembers the golden era when there were forty bathhouses in Coney Island alone leads to a meeting with Ruby Jacobs, the owner of the Atlantis bar, who once owned a number of baths himself. An interview with a pack of elderly fedora-hatted gentlemen, whose accents are as thick as their mufflers, yields little but the comment that the shvitz is too expensive now. More helpful is a tiny old women with a face like a dried apple doll's, who cheerfully extols the social pleasures of the steambath: "We tell jokes, we talk about intimate things, we laugh about the men."
Archival footage transports us back to the shtetl (village), to the roots of the tradition. A remarkably fit and sharp-witted man in his eighties, the son of a cantor, recalls his first visit to the baths at age four--"I couldn't take it" he says. And then we're stepping through the unassuming doorway of the Hope Avenue Russian Steambaths, into the clutter of an ante room that looks surprisingly domestic. A few steps away lies the inner sanctum. It's a simple chamber where the patrons luxuriate like lazy walruses in the 260 degree heat, attended to by a skinny naked man in a hat shaped like a flower pot, who lathers them with oak leaves, splashes them with water, and at one point turns to the filmmaker and says in stunning deadpan, "Kinda hot in here."
Just as the advent of modern plumbing brought to an end the widespread enjoyment of the shvitz, air conditioning has shaped a new, less communal South. THE SHVITZ may be a film about a northern, urban, Jewish subculture, but the reason for its being--the need to celebrate and preserve disappearing traditions--is close to southerners. Like an eager grandson, Berman has asked the right questions and in THE SHVITZ he shares with us the loving answers.
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