A bissel of this, a bissel of that, Kol Nidre has a little bit of everything, combining family melodrama and romance with popular songs, cantorial music and comic bits in an inventive pastiche of themes and styles. The film stars Lili Liliana and Leon Liebgold, the husband and wife Polish actors from The Dybbuk, comedienne Yetta Zwerling, Motl the Operator star Chaim Tauber, and entertainer Cantor Leibele Waldman, with music by Sholem Secunda. Long lost, Kol Nidre has been restored with new English subtitles, using the sole surviving 35mm nitrate print ...

Kol Nidre marks the on-screen reunion of Leon Liebgold and Lili Liliana, the husband and wife Warsaw actors famous for their roles as the young lovers in 1937's The Dybbuk. Also featured are the comedienne Yetta Zwerling, Motl the Operator star Chaim Tauber, and popular entertainer and cantor Leibele Waldman ...

Like many shund (low budget, over the top) Yiddish dramas, Kol Nidre is an inventive pastiche of themes and styles, combining family drama and romance with songs and cantorial music. The film opened at the Clinton Theater on New York's Lower East Side on September 7, 1939, two weeks before Yom Kippur (when the prayer Kol Nidre is sung) and one week after the Nazi invasion of Poland.

-- The National Center for Jewish Film

Clinton Theatre, 80 Clinton St., Telephone: Orchard 7-0513.
"Now playing for the first time, the new Yiddish talkie, 'Kol Nidre,' with the main artists of the Yiddishe Bande, and Cantor Leibele Waldman. With a large chorus. Music by Sholom Secunda."