Hester Street

source: Hester Street

This is one of those "small" movies that hardly anyone has apparently seen, but deserves a much wider viewing. Carol Kane, in one of her first roles, is perfect as the Jewish immigrant trying to make sense of life in the New World. Trying to hold on to her traditions, she must decide what accommodations to make to modern life in turn-of-the-century New York City. Her husband's philandering is handled with warmth and humor, and there are no villains in this movie. . The scene between Carol Kane and the lawyer negotiating a divorce settlement is, I think, one of the funniest in all cinema, and the ending is bound to make you feel good about the possibility of justice in the world.

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.

Saw it on local PBS station many years ago not expecting much. A wonderful and charming movie. Acting, Sets, costumes, plot, and ironic ending make this a great movie that anyone can enjoy without being deluged with sex, violence, strong language. Carol Kane and Steven Keats were marvelous. I just about fell off my sofa laughing at the end. A true gem!

It's pretty tough to build a realistic set of the Lower East Side, New York City, 1896. The Godfather films did the best they could. When directors shoot the distant past of our great grandfathers, they usually shoot in tempera hue antiquing the scenes, so we feel we are looking through a time machine. In the case of Joan Micklin Silver's, Hester Street, she shoots with black and white stock. All I'm saying, audiences won't believe it is the past without a newsreel or spooky tempera projection. The documentary feel to Hester Street, the authentic clothing and dialect, the old Russian to English dialect fills the viewer, especially Jewish filmgoers with a weird sense of nostalgia since no one today, in 2006 is alive to tell the immigrant story. The poverty, crowded conditions, popular prejudices, and alienation were a fact of life. It is amusing that these immigrants assimilated, learning English, building jobs, and business within two generations; all hardship forgotten consciously, but I would assert, not unconsciously. Carol Kane, Gitl, is a wonderful young country wife flabbergasted by the modern, secular ways of America. Her husband, actor, Steven Keats has left the greenhorn, religious Jew nonsense behind as he takes on a new girlfriend, a hottie for her day. His wife arrives with child unexpectedly thwarting his plans. Keats rejects her old world ways. Waiting in the wings is a boarder, a religious man that admires Gitl. A simple plot, no, but satisfying.

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.

Americanized Jake and the more Old World Bernstein are recent immigrants eking out a meager living. Then Jake's wife arrives unexpectedly from Europe with Jake's young son, and ends up in the middle of her husband's love affair and ends up falling in love with Bernstein. A loving reconstruction of life at the time, though seemingly cleaned up and also somewhat restricted by a low budget. The acting is fine and the story is moving.

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.

Its not true that there as many ways of seeing a movie as there are people. The art depends on there being only a few ways. But still, you have choices. If what you want is a dramatic exercise you may like this, because that's its intent. But it relies on storytelling gimmicks that you have to decide how to take. The story is about Jewish Immigrants in New York in the 1890s, and one husband and wife. I chose to see it as an adventure into a world I do not know. It rewarded somewhat, perhaps less so than "The Jazz Singer" which was made near that era by people who lived in it. Here, all the clothes, faces, teeth are clean. There's no defecation and disease, no Jewish mafia and petty crime Jew-on-Jew. No bad people of any kind in fact. Somehow, squalor, crime and deprivation have been erased from history. Everyone on the street is happy. Still, it was a voyage for me. But the film announces otherwise. It depends on memory of that very same stuff that I valued because I don't have them. In fact, this film seems to have been made by Jews for Jews, and mostly shown in Jewish venues rather than general release. Its a celebration of strength and adaptation, of the new layered on a preserved old, of the supposed special nature of these self-proclaimed special people. So its a bit schitzo: part theme park and part nostalgic history lesson for those in the history. Too bad, because Carl Kane was engaging. Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

. . . observes recent Russian immigrant Gitl Podkovnik (Carol Kane) in 1896, when there was no need for 12-ounce bottled water here because the U.S. had not yet been "fracked," and all our earthquakes were "natural." I've watched hundreds of films released by the Edison Manufacturing Company in the 1890s and 1900s, which feature a wide cross-section of the same sort of Jewish characters that HESTER STREET tries to recreate from a distance of seven decades. While HESTER STREET writer\director Joan Micklin Silver produces a somewhat-romanticized feature aimed at the tiny "Jewish ROOTS" niche market, Thomas Alva Edison's very hands-on productions brought depictions of this era of the American Jewish Experience home to the U.S. gentile masses AS IT WAS HAPPENING IN REAL TIME! It's one of History's great tragedies that Mr. Edison passed away just as his anti-Semite Michigan camping buddies Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were chumming around with and influencing Germany's increasingly prominent Adolf Hitler. Had Tom been there to balance out Hank and Chuck's rabidly misanthropic viewpoints, it would have been less likely if not impossible to have The Holocaust.