Cinema: False Alarm

Facts are no substitute for reality. No matter how skilled, the photographer never reaches the revelations of the great painter—and the documentary-film maker never touches the plane of pure fiction. In his first feature film, The Song and the Silence, director-writer-photographer Nathan Cohen tries to re-create the world of Polish Jewry just before the Nazi holocaust of 1939. To summon up the past, he meticulously compiles scene after scene of scholars poring over the Talmud, women dancing the hora, rabbis lecturing—and finally, Germans plundering. At almost every turn, Cohen, a television news cameraman, betrays his background. Amateur performances only serve...