Menahem Golan’s hugely successful big screen adaptation of a stage musical of the same title, originally based on an Yigal Mossinson play. Kazablan drew well over a million viewers to cinemas and even snagged a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Feature Film. In the film, leading man Yehoram Gaon reprises the role he originated and performed on the Alhambra Theatre stage over 600 times. Director of photography David Gurfinkel’s camerawork meanwhile, transports the story out of the closed confinements of an auditorium into the streets of Jaffa, capturing the impoverished city in all its gore and glory. On the music soundtrack front, several of lyricists Dan Almagor, Haim Hefer, and Amos Ettinger’s greatest hits which they wrote to music by Dov (Dubi) Seltzer – including ‘Man of Respect,’ ‘There is a Place’, ‘Jaffa’ and ‘Rosa, Rosa’ all feature in the film, with brand new arrangements.
Yosef Siman-Tov (aka ‘Kazablan’) is a victim of Israel’s ‘melting pot’ assimilation and integration ideology, and the gross institutionalised discrimination Jewish immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries were subjected to. He left Morocco to come to Israel as a boy and even fought heroically in the 1967 Six-Day War; however, when fighting ended he found himself right back where he started – the same derelict migrant slums in Jaffa (aka ‘The Big Turf’) where he now leads a group of young troublemakers he has gathered around him. These rundown tenements are a sort of microcosm of Israeli society where one is likely to find living together – in varying degrees of peace and camaraderie – immigrants of both European and Middle Eastern/Arab origins.
Kazablan falls in love with Ashkenazi girl Rachel (Efrat Lavie), the daughter of one of the tenement leaders, however her father (Yehuda Efroni) is staunchly against the match. Meanwhile Janusz (Yossi Graber), aka ‘Goulash’ over his Hungarian roots, is also in love with Rachel. Goulash sends his men to beat up Kazablan and later, our hero is even wrongfully accused of stealing the money that the local residents had raised to save their homes – and is taken into custody.
In his holding cell, Kazablan meets police officer Josh (Misha Asherov) who had been his commander in the army and whose life Kazablan had saved. Kazablan bemoans how post-war, after he’d been so incredibly heroic, not one of his Ashkenazi unit mates had bothered inviting him round to their homes – and that everyone’s all but forgotten and turned their backs on him. Later, following his release, he tries to shake off the self-pity and sense of disenfranchisement and decides to head back to the tenements and win Rahcel over – as well as some long overdue respect from the residents. When he gets back the money Goulash had stolen and returns it to the people, Kazablan is once more crowned a hero.
