Hester Street

Telling a tale of culture and love amongst Jewish immigrants in the late 1800's, this picture works perfectly well as what it is meant to be: A nice, little film. The story by Abraham Cahan is cut to the screen in such a way, that can only be described as "pictures of atmosphere". The reality of the story is given some importance in both setting, choice if actors and so on. Background music is almost only used, when storyline is at an halt f.ex. when the characters are to go from one place to another or when the focus are on the setting. The music used is, as well as everything else, highly influenced by popular music of that time in which the story is supposed to take place. and the result of all this is a lovely period piece and therefore I have chosen to give it 10/10, because even though it is not a masterpiece, it is everything it means to be, and should be recognized for this. And if you ask me, they make too few movies like.

Carol Kane never really found her niche in the movies--only when she switched to sitcoms did her googly-eyed craziness really come off. But in 1975, before we'd gotten used to her comic bravado, she turned in a lovely, Oscar-nominated portrayal of an immigrant Russian Jew in New York that still stuns, even today. Quiet emotions permeate this careful, low-budget, somewhat slight film set on New York's East Side in 1896. Writer-director Joan Micklin Silver has a genuinely sly eye for detail that results in some amusing moments, but for the most part it's a human drama in a thoughtful key which builds momentum as it goes along. **1/2 from ****

If you're a Carol Kane fan, and haven't seen this film, run out and rent it now (if you can find it). But don't expect the usual eccentric comic character Ms. Kane usually plays.

Filmed in black & white, this is a very atmospheric period piece about a traditional Jewish wife in turn-of-the-century America, whose husband is dissatisfied with her and wants a more modern woman. Carol Kane plays a quiet, thoughtful wife who somehow commands the screen just by sitting there and watching the selfish, thoughtless people rant and rave about her. She is a truer definition of a hero than any of the action heroes that have come out of Hollywood in the past 30 years; thoughtful, indefatiguable and irrepressible, despite the fact that she is firmly part of the traditional Jewish community where women subjugate themselves to men.

This is not an action piece; it's a character and period piece about surviving with dignity despite poverty, repression and injustice. This is the best performance by Carol Kane I have seen, not because she can't do better, but because she hasn't been given another role this thoughtful and dynamic. If she is given more roles like this in the future, she will again prove she is one of the best actresses in the country. A great film and a great performance.

Eight out of ten stars.

I think the best adjective for Hester Street is beautiful. The way immigrant life, with all of its complexities and nuances, is depicted is very poignant. It is not so long ago that many of our ancestors displayed bravery by leaving for a faraway land that they knew little of. Their struggle to escape persecution or poverty and to assimilate into a foreign culture is part of the American experience.

I love the way this film captures the duality of life in the Jewish section of New York. Despite the fact that only Jews live in this area, we see both the Americanized lifestyle and the orthodox lifestyle, existing side by side and evolving daily.

Carol Kane is wonderful in the part of Gitl, the wife who must adapt to a new world and put up with a husband who has abandoned all principles in his adoption of American ways.

Hester Street feels like a "small" film. Much of the action takes place in the cramped apartment of Gitl and her family (and the boarder). This is Gitl's new world, a reality that she might be content with, if her husband were loving. The street scenes remind us that Gitl's apartment is just a small part of a bustling neighborhood situated in a huge city in a corner of the new world.

Joan Micklin Silver is an unheralded, enterprising US indie filmmaking, a pathfinder for women daring to break the glass-ceiling in the probably most sexist post in the film industry. Her debut feature, produced by her late husband Raphael D. Silver, is based on Abraham Cahan's 1896 novella, an exclusively Jewish tale about immigrants who come to Lower East Side of NYC, and their acclimatisation of a new life in the land of hope, where the collisions of culture, religion and moral codes escalate attendantly.

Jake (Keats), whose yiddish name is Yankle, is a young Ashkenazi Jew from Russia, assimilates himself to the American lifestyle quite smoothly, staying in a tiny room on the titular street in Manhattan and earning his living as a seamster, he hooks up with a single dancer Mamie (Kavanaugh), who is also a Jewish immigrant, in a dancing ball during the opening sequences, where the vintage tactility honed up amazingly by Black-and-White graininess and yesteryear finesse, instantly charms and attracts viewers as a comedy skit from the silent era.

Jake is rakish, all spruced up, he is determined to erase his ethnic traces and aims to be a real Yankee, proudly. Through his impertinent jokes about a greenhorn, Silver seems to inform us, he is not a character we should show a certain amount of appreciation. Steven Keats comes into his own to characterise a stomach-churning impression defies any sympathy.

Jake's carefree bachelor days are over once his wife Gitl (Kane, who was Oscar-nominated for her brilliant calibre in seething intensity trapped inside a serene mound, and it is one of the most inspiring nominations accredited to the often publicity-steered Academy) arrives with their son Yossele (Freedman), whose name is changed to Joey under his insistence. In order to provide a place for the family reunion, Jake borrows Mamie's savings with an unwittingly false promise, and takes his co-worker, a bookish bachelor Mr. Bernstein (Howard) as a room to split the expense.

Gitl is a beautiful, unassuming and sensible girl, in everyone's eyes, she is the perfect wife should be cherished by her husband, especially to the neighbour Mrs. Kavarsky (the late Doris Roberts, thrust by her spitfire probity), her stalwart protector. But not for Jake, Gitl represents everything he is eager to jettison, their conjugal bond is flimsy with Mamie hovers around under the pretext of collecting her money. It always takes two to tango, at this step, if Mamie still wants Jake, and is willing to help him get out of the marriage, what else can we say? They truly deserve each other.

On the other hand, Gitl and Mr. Bernstein finds some kindred spirits under the aegis of Silver's tender characterisation confined in their cramped apartment. The third act can be captioned as "a divorce: Jewish style", improbably farcical thanks to the committed recreation of the scenario. Don't expect Gitl to relent under the influence of sentimentality or for the old time's sake, she might be a shrinking violet but never stupid, Jake is good-for-nothing, but at least, he has the knack to provide a handsome alimony for jilting his family.

HESTER STREET superbly overreaches its ethnographic demography and it is not merely a film for Jews only as it has been merchandised since its self-sustained distribution, in the eyes of a local Chinese who has never been to America or familiar with Jewish culture, the film enchants, seduces and competently relishes in a woman's self-reliant awakening in a foreign land, moreover, it teaches an edifying lesson about how important to preserve one's own distinctive traits without becoming homogeneous. Surely, it is a humdinger of a greenhorn's debut enterprise.