Hester Street

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.

With its black-and-white cinematography, soundtrack music, and Jewish characters, this film at times reminded me superficially of a Woody Allen movie. But writer/director Joan Micklin Silver made an original film here. If you like a movie that immerses you in a less-familiar culture you might give 'Hester Street' a try.

Steven Keats plays a Russian emigre who prides himself on the way he's molded himself into a real Yankee in the USA, though the world he lives in, New York's Lower East Side in the late 19th century, is almost exclusively populated by other Jewish immigrants. When his wife (Carol Kane) finally arrives in the New World, however, she has a lot of assimilating to do. This causes the tension which drives the movie along, though it maintains a fairly light atmosphere most of the time.

Keats and Kane do fine jobs in their roles; in fact, Kane was nominated for an Academy Award. Dorrie Kavanaugh and Doris Roberts are among the good supporting cast.

I saw this movie when it premiered in 1975, and enjoyed it. Thanks to DVDs, we can watch and re-watch movies whenever we want. My wife has also become a fan of this film. The DVD's commentary by director Joan Micklin Silver and her producer husband, Raphael, is fascinating. If you are interested in the process of making movies, these commentaries are always a treasure trove of information and insight into the craft. Silver also directed Crossing Delancy, another classic, especially for anyone of the Jewish-American subculture, or familiar with it, though anyone who likes a love story will enjoy it as well.

To learn that the entire budget of Hester Street was $500,000 is astounding. This is a beautiful little movie that is driven by it's story and characters. Here is an unknown Carol Kane, who got the best actress nomination for this one, surrounded by great performances by veteran actors and first time non-actors alike. Doris Roberts does a fantastic job in a big role as the neighbor.

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.

Around 1975 I saw this movie with my mother and aunt, born in 1902 and 1903 respectively. They watched it as if it were a replay of a life that they had known, having come to this country just about the time of the characters on the screen.

My mother soon descended into the long goodbye of Alzheimers disease. So this is a memory I especially value. My Aunt, kenehora, is still with us.

They discussed it mater of factly, not so much as a work of art, but a documentary. I can think of no greater compliment to all who were involved in creating this very special film.

Al Rodbell