This movie is, in a loose sense, a ghost story with a familiar theme: malevolent fate works through human passions, destroying our protagonists, who do not realize until too late what lies ahead. A fine melodrama, no matter how creaky the production might be. What makes it even more poignant, however, is the historical context. This world, which was fading already when the story was first written, was wiped out entirely by Hitler's Endlösung shortly after the movie was made. The film functions as a ghost story in more ways than one.
Review of The Dybbuk
