Kishon, who is the director of Salah Shabati, brings a hilarious satire story to us with exquisite subtlety and impressive personal style. It amazes me as both a domestic hit and international success by depicting how the family of Shabati struggled hard to blend in the new society and try to be accepted by a different culture and norm.
The Shabati’s was a Yemenite Jewish family that was flown to Israel during “Operation Magic Carpet”. The Israel government welcomed all incoming Jews after they arrived, but in fact, these new immigrants didn’t get much support from the authority. Just like how others were treated, the Shabati family were put into internment camps without jobs and had hardly any ways to make money.
Shabati was portrayed as a simple-and-straightforward-half-witted-father who always kept trying to make money and get better housing for the whole family in a country that can barely provide for its own and was in the midst of absorbing thousands of Jewish refugees. The continuous failures that struck Shabati revealed the hardship he met in the new society.
Though the movie uses a rather hilarious way showing how Shabati messed up with his first forestry job、how he was tricked by some officers to vote for them who had orally promised his family could be moved into bigger houses……, these fun plots came with the same deep、bitter sorrow when the audience got to find this Jewish family set in a torn and yet un-structured society.
We can obviously view the difference between two groups of people based on the scene where new comers were often mistreated by people who were more familiar with the system. To be more specific, the immigrants faced challenges in acclimatizing to rules and by contrast older settlers were more familiar with how system works.
The musical Kazablan also portrays the difficulties facing the new settlers and the key issue of assimilation and adaptation in the process of immigration and absorption can be seen in both Kazablan and Sallah Shabati.
Even from the perspective which is nearly 48 years distant from when this film was made, Sallah Shabati will be remembered as a landmark film in the history of Israel Cinema for its elaborating the light-hearted manner in which it shows varieties of hilarious solutions to housing problems of Jewish people after the independence of Israel.
The history and sociology lessons are there if you want them, but Shabati is, before anything else, simply a brilliant film.
