The poet and actor Avraham Ḥalfi (1906-1980) is the subject of a recent documentary, itself part of a “small flood” of films about the great figures of modern Hebrew literature. In his review, Michael Weingrad considers Ḥalfi’s work and notes the limits of film for conveying something about poetry:
As [the] documentary about the poet shows, Ḥalfi himself was something of a puzzle. A writer of bewitching intimacy, he nevertheless refused to describe himself as a poet or read his verse in public. He called himself an actor and had a long and successful theatrical career, with a late cinematic turn in the dark, absurdist 1972 film Floch, written by the distinguished playwright Hanoch Levin. . . .
Yet the documentary impulse eventually halts before the enigma of the poet’s personality and the sufficiency of his or her poems. . . . [This] film . . . amuses and entices but cannot explain Ḥalfi or the smoldering confidences of his verse. His poems are movingly revelatory, but what they reveal are further secrets, pregnant silences, reservoirs of unspoken loss.
Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/1971/a-cipher-and-his-songs/