The Song And The Silence

Poor handling of a very intense subject seldom dealt with, genocide, sinks Cohen's first attempt at a feature film. The former NBC television cameraman has to take most of the blame, however, because he wrote the original story and screenplay, produced, directed, and even handled the camerawork for the film. The movie's major statement focuses on the treatment of Polish Jews in 1939 and the view that non-Jewish Poles just stood by and permitted the killing of their countrymen. Cohen leads into his subject with a story about a rabbi's attempt to convince one of his students to marry the rabbi's daughter. Although the young man would rather finish school first, the t...