Over the Brooklyn Bridge

In the opening scene, as the title "Over the Brooklyn Bridge" splashes across the screen, the main characters are shown (in a dramatic shot) driving across the... Manhattan Bridge... I witnessed this egregious error in a Brooklyn theater, back in the day. I swear, if the director or producer had been present, they would have been ripped apart (literally). Anyway, It all goes down hill from there... the cast although usually talented fail to deliver in this one, they simply sleepwalk through a cookie-cutter Hollywood plot, doing the minimum to earn their keep. This film is a tedious bore, full of cliché lines and cheap devices. it is best sent to the "lost forever" bin.

This movie was a disaster of sorts in that it failed miserably at the box office perhaps due to its very strong Jewish content. Nevertheless for the Jewish audience it is a fantastic comedy where we laugh at ourselves. There are some flies in the ointment. As always the Jewish boy in question can not have a Jewish girl-friend. Hollywood does not accept the fact that Jews marry Jews and Alby ( a rather fat Elliot Gould!!) is no exception, but his shiksa is worth her weight in gold. A Jewish mother would kill to have a daughter-in-law as caring as Elizabeth is to her diabetic shlemiel of a son. Margaux Hemingway (may she rest in peace) is wonderful in this role. We lost a terrific actress here. The Family is a pastiche of all the stereotypes we Jews love and hate so well: the rich uncle who is a tough businessman with a heart of gold and his bitch of a wife and useless son. The usual hangers-on and assorted nebbishes who work for him are there - God this fits my family to a "T" !!! The scene at the synagogue is wonderful and the Lubliner Rebbe is well interpreted by the great Zvi Scooler. The celebration at the Rumanian restaurant is word for word exact of whatever we had in the 1950's. Shelly Winters is a great actress her role is a treat to watch. Her outburst at the restaurant is the hit of the show. When we heard the audience gasp (99% Jewish) I felt that the movie was an effective comedy - but I also knew that a 99% gentile audience would not see the humour and sadly I was right.

This is a marginal film and must be accepted as such but that is too bad because there is enough in there to amuse everybody. Elliot Gould and his friend Nick played by my favorite cro-magnon Burt Young are a pair of shleppers that you have to love - that piss scene is wild. The scene in Uncle Benjamin's house with the plastic on the chairs must be preserved in a Jewish museum - that is exactly how we were!!! Sid Caesar is Uncle Benjamin and is a delight. His acting ranges from shtick meshuga to Shakespearean pathos. Anyway grab a copy at the local Blockbusters or whatever and invite the family and...enjoy!! To hell with the bad reviews - what do "they" know ?????

Alby Sherman (Elliott Gould) owns a small Brooklyn deli. He's desperate to buy an upscale Manhattan restaurant, but he needs an investment from Uncle Benjamin (Sid Caesar). In exchange for $60k, Benjamin wants him to dump his Irish girlfriend Elizabeth Anderson (Margaux Hemingway) of two years and marry a nice Jewish girl.

Director Menahem Golan is most well known for co-owning The Cannon Group. This is not his usual B-action movies, but he does do plenty of other stuff. I'm guessing that he has an affinity for Uncle Benjamin as a character. I do question Elizabeth who has never met his mother or been to his deli. That's not a good look for her. She's also too quick to do the dumping. Margaux does not project such weak will. The love story needs some work. As for Alby, his bad business sense is more frustrating than funny. Otherwise, Elliott Gould is really good. Carol Kane has some fun. The big dinner scene is really interesting although I would do it slightly different. There is no denying Sid Caesar's greatness. This is a fine slice of New York kosher pizza.

OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE is probably not well recalled by most people today, but the film is only twenty two years old, and certainly captured a spirit that is rarely seen in American films. For all the so call liberalism of the American cinema, certain aspects of ethnicity are quietly buried. Anti - Semitism was attacked in GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT, but the anti-Semitism under scrutiny was a social form (you can't join certain clubs, you can't get certain jobs, you can't register in certain four - star hotels) which is annoying but somewhat bearable compared to European or Middle Eastern versions. Except for one notorious incident (the Leo Frank trial, and lynching) in Georgia in 1915, it is rare that the degree of anti-Semitism in this country has gotten so hot as to make Jews literally fear for their lives. In the case of the Frank affair, the Anti-Defimation League of B'Nai Brith was created. But that was the real highpoint of rabid anti-Semitism going so far.

One of the misguided ways that Hollywood has acted to reduce the tension is to ignore or make fun of it or concentrate on other side issues. So if we see Jewish lives at home, it is done in a funny manner. For example: in MY FAVORITE YEAR Alan Swann the famous movie star is invited to a Jewish home for dinner, and he is well treated, but the family act like a bunch of clumsy oafs in their reactions to the polished (if drunken) Swann. Most of the time Jews don't act so stupidly, but not in Hollywood comedies.

OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE tried to mingle the comic with the dramatic in a study of religious bigotry and financial muscle. Alby Sherman (Elliot Gould) is a coffee shop owner in Brooklyn who has been saving his money and planning to buy a fancy eatery on the east side of Manhattan. To do this he is dependent on the good will of his Uncle Benjamin (Sid Caesar), who has made a good living in the clothing trade. Benjamin is very fond of Alby, looking at him as the son he always wanted (Benjamin has a wife and son, but the son is a smirking non-entity, and certainly not one to have a wife and children). However, Benjamin is very conscious of being Jewish, and he wants Alby to marry a Jewish girl. Alby is currently shacked up with Elizabeth (Margaux Hemingway), who is a "shiksa" (a non-Jewish woman). Ben is not happy about this, and basically lets Alby know that if he wishes to get financial assistance from his uncle he has to drop Elizabeth.

To his credit Alby does not do so - he tries to find alternatives to going to Ben (even toying with a loan shark). Ben, in the meantime, presumes to meddle further by confronting Elizabeth and asking if she really wants to hurt Alby or sacrifice their love to enable him to succeed. Ben, of course, does not see his meddling in a bad light. He even has a replacement for Elizabeth in mind - Alby's distant cousin Cheryl (Carol Kane), a schoolteacher who lives with her elderly father, and appears to be demure and quiet.

The film follows the twists and turns of our hero and his family and Elizabeth. We see a world that Jews are fully aware of, where members of families know each other's business whether they should or not, and where diplomatic maneuvering is as vital on a small scale as the same maneuvers would be between nation states.

The film had many funny moments. One I cherish is meek little Cheryl finally cutting loose with the wrong person. Another is when Alby is desperate enough to make a late night phone call from Time Square, turn down the silent request of a derelict for some change, and get a commentary on his generosity he never expected.

But to me the most interesting part is watching Sid Caesar's performance. Usually playing comic roles, such as in THE BUSY BODY or in Mel Brooks' SILENT MOVIE, Caesar has always showed how to exaggerate successfully for a laugh. Only he would introduce a drunken woman to a dummy as his friend Matthias Kreplach, the millionaire, in THE BUSY BODY. But here, despite some mild comic touches (his dealing with the Japanese businessmen) most of his performance is serious. In fact, OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE was Caesar's best straight performance in a motion picture. The scene when he finally collapses and explains why he relied on Alby towards the end of the film was a small marvel, as he literally collapses in tears admitting to decades of personal disappointments.

Aside from that the performance of Margaux Hemingway haunts me a little. Made less than a decade after her first film (LIPSTICK) she should have been having a first rate career. In many ways OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE represented the highpoint of her career, as most of the other titles were far more obscure. She seemed to have the world open to her in 1984, and few could tell that it would be over so badly in twelve years.

For her, the glimpse into Jewish life and real problems, and for Sid Caesar's best dramatic work, I give OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE a "10".

My review was written in January 1984 after viewing at a Midtown Manhattan screening room.

"Over the Brooklyn Bridge" is producer-director (and Cannon Group chairman) Menahem Golan's love letter to New York City: a warm and pleasant romance similar to the type of films topliner Elliott Gould (and George Segal, as well) used to make 10 or 15 years earlier. Boasting an outstanding (and promotable) supporting performance by Sid Caesar as Gould's bossy uncle, the picture (geared to the audience that attended "My Favorite Year") should do okay business when released later this year through MGM-UA, following its current debut in Tel Aviv.

Screenplay by the late Arnold Somkin (who died in 1982 before production began, and to whom "Bridge" is dedicated) is short on laughs but very effective in portraying a loving, romantic view of New York and its melting pot of ethnic groups. As directed by Golan, and cheerfully lit by cameraman Adam Greenberg, the Big Apple is a paradise where even 42nd Street and the subways are sources of glamor rather than the cliched eyesores they represent in most recent N. Y.-lensed films.

Gould stars as Alby Sherman, owner of a Brooklyn eatery who dreams of buying a posh restaurant on the East Side in midtown Manhattan. His love affair with an aristocratic Catholic girl from Philadelphia (Margaux Hemingway) raises the ire of his Jewish family, particularly the patriarch Uncle Benjamin (Sid Caesar), a women's underwear manufacturer who would rather have Alby marry his fourth cousin Cheryl (Carol Kane).

The basic conflict, as Alby must choose between his dream girl and career advancement (Uncle Benjamin offers a key loan with strings attached0 is not developed beyond the plot gimmick stage, but "Bridge" works well as an actors' vehicle. Leads Gould and Hemingway are solid in the central roles, with standout support from a large cast. Given perhaps the best opportunity in an off-and-on film career to date (including his starring assignments for William Castle in the 1960s), Caesar is very funny as a man who tries to run everyone else's lives for them. He is extremely moving at the film's moment of catharsis, enduring Gould's ultimate rebellion in a strong last reel scene set at an engagement party.

Kane is delightfully droll as the virginal intellectual whose demure exterior hides a rather kinky fatnasy-sex life. There are also nice spots for an Italian pal played by the ubiquitous Burt Young and a variety of other ethnic types.

Release title is a bit weak, with the dialog plugging most of the discarded monikers for this project: "Alby's Special", "Alby's Delight" and "My Darling Shiksa". The marketing challenge is to find an audience for a nice little film which avoids contemporary hooks in favor of romantic-comedy formulas that worked well in the late 1960s.