Over the Brooklyn Bridge

Ok, this is not a classic, but it has enough nice touches to make it enjoyable. Sometimes good actors make a so-so film less enjoyable because you end up grieving over the waste of talent. Not so here. If you like Carol Kane, Elliott Gould, Shelley Winters, Margaux Hemingway, or Sid Caesar (who gives a knockout performance), if you liked 'Enter Laughing' or 'Crossing Delancey', or even 'Used People', you'll like this. Worth a rent if you're in the right mood.

"Over the Brooklyn Bridge" is an okay movie...at best. Much of it is because the story is about a guy who is really difficult to like or care about his plight. Had they made Elliott Gould's character at least likable, it could have been a much better film. As it was, I found my interest in the film waning the more I watched.

Alby (Gould) runs a grubby little restaurant in Brooklyn and wants his uncle (Sid Caesar) to help him buy an upscale eatery in Manhattan. However, the uncle is hesitant to give him money because Alby is dating a shiksa (non-Jewish woman). Much of Uncle Benjamin's concerns seem valid...mostly because Alby NEVER has introduced the woman (Margeaux Hemingway) to the family and he seems ashamed of her. However, if Alby drops this two year relationship, the uncle will give him the money. What is Alby to do?

Alby NOT introducing the girlfriend is pretty shameful. But he also just seems like a putz throughout the story....someone who wants to make good but who the audience STILL doesn't care about in any meaningful way.

The direction and editing are choppy and could be much better in addition to the script problems. After all, director Menahem Golan (and his business partner, Yorum Globus) were known as hacks who promoted schlock films during the 1980s. Don't believe this? Try watching their first film "The Apple" or any of their later explosion-riddled action movies!

By the way, the print they showed of this film on Turner Classic Movies is VERY dark and in need of restoration. However, considering it's not exactly a beloved masterpiece, I doubt if this will ever happen.

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.

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".

So OK this is not a great film, but there are several excellent moments here, and at the end you feel you have watched something worthwhile.

Elliott Gould stars as a luncheonette owner making a living in Brooklyn. He has a doting mother (Shelley Winters), a domineering uncle (Sid Caesar), and a non-Jewish girl friend (Margaux Hemingway). He's also overweight, diabetic, and Jewish.

While this seems a lot like Woody Allen territory and their are plenty of comic moments, there's a dark underside of "otherness" here that gives depth to this film, a serious took at perhaps passing as a White American but being always aware of otherness.

Of course all of Gould's extended family here are Jewish stereotypes: the language, the gestures, the work ethic, etc. Gould straddles the fence, White but Jewish, Brooklyn but with an eye toward Manhattan. In the Orthodox wedding scene, Gould wears a baseball cap over his yarmulke. His best friend (Burt Young) is Italian. His employee (Robert Gossett) is Black.

There are two surprising and extraordinary scenes in this film, both quite memorable. One has Gould wandering New York in the wee hours and making a call from a phone booth when he is approached by a speechless derelict gesturing for smokes. He tries to wave him off but eventually hands the old man cigarettes after the old man has urinated on him, a slight twist to doing a good need and getting urinated on for doing it.

The other is the engagement party scene where Caesar pontificates about the upcoming marriage of Gould to his cousin (Carol Kane) unaware that Gould has no such intentions. Caesar thinks the marriage will take place because of a loan he's giving Gould to buy a Manhattan restaurant. He's also gloating for keeping Gould in the fold, i.e., marrying a Jewish girl.

But Gould rebels, stands up for his love for Hemingway, and hands back the check. Caesar tries to bully him and slaps him in front of the astonished guests. Gould does the unthinkable. He literally strikes back, reducing Caesar to a tearful rage that ends in a bear hug of anger, fist pounding, and paternal love. Extraordinary. It's all one scene, no cuts, no editing.

Co-stars include Francine Beers as Ruth, Lynnie Greene as Cynthia, Jerry Lazarus as Caesar's weird son, Zvee Scooler as Rebbe, and Lou David as the loan shark.

Not for all tastes, but this is a surprising film and worth seeking out.