Customer Reviews

Hester Street

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a wonderful look at Jewish immigrant life in the 1880's in New York's Lower East Side. Carol Kane is terrific as Gitl, who comes over with her young son from a Russian shtetl to join her husband, Jake (Steven Keats) who immigrated five years earlier. He's become "Americanized" and she clings to the old ways. Jake has a job, has cut his hair and shaves, likes to dance and play around with the girls. When he came over to get established in the new world, his wife and baby stayed with his father. Now his father has died and Jake has done the right thing. He's borrowed some money for a small furnished flat and sent for his wife and son. Gitl, however, is "religious." She speaks only Yiddish. Because married women do not show their hair, she always wears wigs or scarves. Going to parties and dancing is something she feels so uncomfortable with she cannot take part. Jake, of course, has had girl friends and wants the freedom of the life he discovered when he came over. He begins seeing again one of them, Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh), who teaches dancing. And to help make ends meet, he takes in a boarder, a shy scholar named Mr. Bernstein (Mel Howard). You can see where this is going.

Hester Street is a very humane, warm movie. There are no dramatic climaxes or screaming arguments. Carol Kane plays Gitl as a shy, gentle young woman who wants to please her husband but feels deeply about the religious customs she grew up with. She's marvelous, with her pale, delicate face and those big, dark eyes. And Jake is no one-dimensional philanderer. He truly is puzzled over his wife's inability to embrace the freedoms and excitement of their new life. While he stays pretty much the same, Gitl slowly changes, becoming stronger and more confident. The movie closes with Jake paying Gitle for a divorce so that he can marry Mamie and they'll start a dance studio. And Gitl and Mr. Bernstein will marry and they'll open a small shop. Selling what? They're not sure, but Gitl will sell so that her Mr. Bernstein can study.

The movie evolks with great warmth the life of Hester Street, where so much of people's lives were lived on the sidewalks and curbs. One long sequence, with only background music and street sounds, has Jake and his young son, Yossele, whom Jake has renamed Joey, leaving their apartment and walking hand in hand up Hester Street. The street is filled with people and shops, horse carts, shopping stalls. Kids are playing, couples walking around, men sitting on steps and talking. Everything is being sold, chickens, shoes, potatoes, dresses, apples, lotions, sweets, you name it. Romanticised? Undoubtedly. Highly effective? It sure was.

The movie was shot in black and white, which suits the period and the story. The DVD image is first rate and there are interesting interviews with Joan Micklin Silver, her husband, Raphael Silver, Carol Kane and Doris Roberts, who played a secondary role.

This film tells the story of a young Russian Jewish immigrant woman, excellently played by Carol Kane, who arrives in New York's crowded Lower East Side slums at the turn of the century. She has come to join her husband, whose stay in America has resulted in a new love interest and disenchantment with his old-world wife's traditional ways. But they have a boarder in their tiny apartment--a traditional Jewish man whose dedication to Talmudic study draws the wife's interest as her marriage crumbles. The film vividly portrays the sense of the teeming slums and tenements of the time, the problems of the dislocated immigrants struggling to preserve their culture while adapting to a new one. It is both an entertaining story of personal triumph--Carol Kane is a winning heroine--and an interesting historical period. If you are descended from immigrants from any country, you owe it to yourself to see this. END

Based on the short story Yekl by Forward Editor Abraham Cahan, Hester Street perfectly captures the atmosphere, language, accents, lifestyle and traditions of the Eastern European Immigrants who settled on New York's Lower East Side in the late 19th century. It's a movie that's oftentimes funny as it is sad and moving. In short, it's a history lesson that doesn't feel like one and anyone with a passing interest in either Jewish-American life, independent films or just a great movie would enjoy Hester Street.

As for the extras on the DVD, there are recent interviews with Carol Kane and Doris Roberts about their experiences making the film and what it meant to them as Jewish Americans decended from the world and people who they represent on screen. It also contains fascinating interviews with the film's Director and Producer and the unique challenges they faced as a female director attempting to sell, distrubute and market a small, unusual independent film in the 1970's. Lastly, an excerpt from Heritage - Civilization and the Jews, focusing on the Lower East Side is included. It's worth watching for a number of reasons, but most importantly to put the experiences of the characters in Hester Street into context with the world they lived in, as well as to see some fascinating archival footage of the late 19th and early 20th century New York.

I actually rented this movie on Netflix, but I loved it so much and can watch scenes from it over and over again, so I will most likely buy it from Amazon.com at some point in the future. I suggest you do the same.

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.

Excellant movie! I am currently taking a course on Eastern Jewry and Immigration to America. This movie was very helpful in portraying a picture of what it was like for jews to arrive in the promised land. From what I have studied it is very true to life.

Oscar Nominee Carol Kane gives a brilliant performance as Gitl, the wife of an immigrant, Jake, who moved to America and has embraced the culture. When Gitl and his son Joey arrive he is not sure what to do with his life. All through the film we want to smack Jake and feel sorry for Gitl, but in the end Gitl finds a way to become victor instead of victim. Carol Kane shines in this jewel of a role that she pours her heart and soul into. Kane may have won the Oscar if either the picture was released to more theaters or it they had spent more money on a campaign. She deserved the Oscar over Louise Fletcher for her SUPPORTING performance.

1975 ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION:
BEST ACTRESS-CAROL KANE

Joan Micklin Silver's directorial debut is a lovely, funny, warm, and observant historical drama-comedy about Jewish immigrants who left the little shtetl in Russia in the end of the 19th century for the hopes of better life and success in America. The film tells the story of a young couple, Jake (Steven Keats) and Gitl (Carol Kane). The husband came to Lower East End of Manhattan five years before his family and has gladly accepted American way of life making transition from Yankel to a Yankee, losing his beard and side curls on a way to become a real American and falling in love with Mamie Fine, attractive and independent young woman, an immigrant herself. When his wife Gitl and their son Yossi (Joey) arrive from Russia and join him in the flat at Hester Street, Jake is torn between his desire "to live like educated people in an educated country" and his wife's quiet but firm holding on to the traditions of Old Country. More likely, their marriage was arranged by their families in Russia and they don't have much in common when they meet after having lived separately in two different worlds for five years. The film concentrates on Gitl, quiet, gentle, pious seemingly fragile and naive young woman with huge dark eyes who has to make very serious decisions about her new life and how to make sense of it.

Everything about this small independent movie is fine - its authentic look that was achieved by beautiful B/W cinematography, its soundtrack that uses the music by Herbert L. Clarke, a composer and famous cornet player; the dialogs in two languages, English and Yiddish, full of very unique humor that still shines. There are not villains in the story and no stereotypes. All characters have one thing in common - one day, they took a chance to start over, to leave their past behind, to move to the absolutely new unknown world with the different language, customs, traditions, rhythm of life and to try to survive and succeed and not to lose their unique identity. Comical, moving, warm, lyrical, with the loving attention to the smallest details, with the love and understanding for its characters, "Hester street" is a perfect example of an independent art movie that was made on the shoe string budget, had difficulties to find distributors, but luckily did not get lost, found its way to the viewers, and brought Jewish ethnicity to the screen. One does not have to be an Art movie buff or an immigrant to enjoy "Hester Street". The simple story of a young traditional woman's transformation and coming to terms with her new life can be enjoyed by any viewer regardless their age, gender, or ethnic background.

Carol Cane is fantastic as Gitl and more than deserves her Academy Award nomination for the Best Leading Actress. Doris Roberts (Marie of "Everybody Loves Raymond") is equally good as Gitl's and Jake's neighbor, Mrs. Kavisnky who becomes Gitl's friend and adviser.

This film deserves five stars for a few reasons. As long as you take it for what it is -- an engaging story, quite non-Hollywood, made on a small budget -- it provides many pleasant surprises. Two scenes were particularly memorable to me, one involving a marriage proposal and the other a religious divorce ceremony. Each was understated, yet every word and gesture was laden with meaning, in an almost Jane Austen manner.

But what really stood out to me is the way the film defies the usual cliches. This film compares favorably, for example, to The Chosen, which is another film about the interplay of Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews. In The Chosen, all the good lines and good decisions in the movie lie on the side of modernity. In Hester Street, tradition and Orthodoxy receive their due, and I would even say the film has a slight tilt in their favor.

The film is excellent for couples. It is also suitable for teens and younger kids, but will not be liked by children who want car chases and similar action. The ending may be a bit too easy and happy for people who equate angst and suffering with "serious" art.

I saw this film this morning, and I was deeply moved by the intensity and mood. The people portrayed were human and alive. The language and mannerisms of the russian jewish people are accurately and superbly presented. A masterpiece of story-telling. Deftly and tenderly presented.

The relationships between the characters and their individual personalities in this lovely film are more complex than the editorial review would lead you to believe. The immigrant wife, so "green" and inexperienced, reveals a quiet strength and determination that at first is unsuspected. She will not be taken advantage of and one suspects that, although she asks for her new husband's advice at the end of the film, she will listen politely and then do exactly as she thinks is best: and will probably become a sucessful proprietor of their store. She has a lot of guts and intelligence that could only come to fruition in America. Carol Kane's character is a woman to be admired. The other characters deftly portray other immigrant types: some with ambition, those who want to be assimilated as soon as possible, those who cling to their old-world traditions. Although the people in the movie are Russian Jews, their experiences in dealing with a new country are undoubtedly universal.