The Frisco Kid

From Viennale

In 1850, Avram Belinski (Gene Wilder) is sent from Poland to San Francisco to become the rabbi of the Jewish community. However, upon his arrival in Philadelphia, he finds himself forced to cross the continent, a journey that leads to a series of picaresque adventures in which the trusting immigrant is only able to hold his own thanks to the support of a good-natured bandit (Harrison Ford). Aldrich stepped in at short notice as director of this Western comedy, and its tone is unusually optimistic. Yet beneath the amusing surface lies another ambivalent meditation on democracy and civilisation, both of which are threatened by corruption. Wilder, playing an Aldrich style outsider who remains true to his principles, delivers one of his finest performances, and the result is an unorthodox mini-classic of Jewish cinema. As president of the Directors Guild of America, Aldrich had fought for groundbreaking new contracts with improved wages and creative rights, to which certain Hollywood power players retaliated by making it difficult for him to get his own projects off the ground. So he was happy to take on THE FRISCO KID, with Aldrich’s son William recalling that “he fell in love with it […] and was very disappointed that the picture wasn’t more successful.” (Christoph Huber)