Ask Tel Avivians about artists who have defined their city's cinema and they will mention Uri Zohar without fail. Zohar was one of Israel's most influential filmmakers. Starting as an actor and comedian in the fifties, he headed up an ad hoc troupe of performers and rock-'n'-roll-styled pacifists. In addition to establishing a celebrity image on both radio and television, he directed his own features, including the seminal portraits of Tel Aviv Metzitzim (also known as Peeping Toms) and Big Eyes. Together, these two films depict a counterculture Tel Aviv that is progressive and blessed with many delights, but also self-critical and perhaps a little exhausted by the push and pull of secularism and orthodoxy.
Benny Furman, the protagonist of Big Eyes, is played by Zohar, who offers himself up for a beating in the role of a basketball coach with a wife, a young child and an unparalleled lust for womanizing. Benny is a creature of habit, compelled through his days in the city less by domestic obligations or his team's schedule of practices and games than by the elaborate air-traffic control required to pull off his daily assignations with an array of women.
Big Eyes does a fine job revealing both the captivating local charm of the city and the era's sun-blanched sexual adventuring. In retrospect, it also shows Zohar leading a transformation of Tel Aviv cinema. By following a group of people who strive for happiness through their relationships with each other – not through politics, religion or larger forms of identity – he anticipates Tel Aviv's multi-character “network narratives” of the nineties.
With a breezy, direct camera that seems influenced both by John Cassavetes and the French Nouvelle Vague, Zohar confronts his protagonist's self-deceptions with remarkable candour. He also shows his own struggles to come to terms with his impulses and frustrations – both as a filmmaker and a man. A few years after he completed Big Eyes, Zohar left bohemian Tel Aviv behind and became an ultra-Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem.
Cameron Bailey
Uri Zohar was born in Tel Aviv and was a well-known comedian, actor and director. His films as director include A Hole in the Moon (65), Three Days and a Child (67), Every Bastard a King (68), Take Off (70), Big Eyes (74), Hatarnegol (71), Peeping Toms (72) and Lool (89). Later in life, he became a Haredi Orthodox Jew and rabbi.