Product Details

• Actors: Robbie Barnett, Lynda Baron, Danny Brainin, Renata Buser, Allan Corduner
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: December 31, 1992
• Run Time: 132 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (108 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301978587
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,356 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #10 in	Video > Drama > Love & Romance > Marriage
  #20 in	Video > Drama > Love & Romance > Love Triangle
  #30 in	Video > Kids & Family > Adapted from Books > Feature Films

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Barbra Streisand made her directorial debut with this 1983 adaptation of the Isaac Bashevis Singer story about a young Eastern European woman (Streisand) who disguises herself as a male at the turn of the century in order to get an education. Except for an excessive musical score with too many songs and Streisand's tiresome tendency to play characters who suppress their beauty, the film is crisp and engaging, and the gender-bending love story complications are fun, if gimmicky. Streisand gives a smart, vulnerable performance and gets fresh work from costars Mandy Patinkin and Amy Irving. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why isn't this on DVD!, July 8, 2000

By	Shelley Shay (Denton, TX **(God Bless the USA!!)**) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I just adore this movie. Great acting, sweet story, lots of culture and absolutely fabulous music... I listen to the soundtrack all the time.

Barbara Streisand is perfect at playing an intelligent, yet vulnerable woman in a time and place in which women were supposed to be illiterate and considered to be silly. Her father was a more forward-thinking man in a culture that considered teaching a woman to read something perverse and criminal. When her father dies,she loses everything... women can't read, own property or make decisions concerning the course of her life.

She decides that her persuit of knowledge of the holy scriptures is too important to let the opportunity slip through her fingers, so she cuts her hair and lives life as a male Rabbinical student. Life takes a twist she doesn't expect when she falls for her classmate and subsequently is forced to marry a young girl.

There are a lot of laughing-out-loud moments, but this is mostly just an extremely sweet story of love, sacrifice, tradition and freedom. It's definitely a feel-good movie that will put a lump in your throat. I highly recommend this film.

110 of 116 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yentl Is A Classic!!!! Release On DVD Please!!!!, August 24, 2004

By	Bradly Briggs (TOLUCA LAKE, CALIFORNIA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

There are moments in your life you never forget and this is definitely one of them!! Why no release on DVD????? This is crazy when so much crap is out on DVD but not a classic once in a lifetime motion picture like Yentl!!!! Please wake up!!!!!

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I'm ALL FERKLEMPT!, October 9, 2003

By	IAN STAHLHUT (Queensland, Australia.) - See all my reviews

As an impressionable young guy from Sydney, who was into his "Streisand" phase, I won two tickets to see the premier of Barbra's film "Yentl". My brother picked myself and my date up in a limousine and drove us right to the red velvet carpet of the Sydney Cinema where we witnessed this cinematic miracle.
Yentl on the big screen was a joy to behold, and quite touching in it's controversial story. For years, I have patiently waited to see this classic once again in widescreen and stereo, but alas, we have never seen this on DVD. Barbra's film is a tour de force of song and story and cinematic excellence, the true ultimate movie going experience.
Set in the turn of the century Europe when the world of study belonged only to men, a young Jewish woman disguises herself as a man in order to learn more of the world around her, and finds the most powerful of lessons, love.
Please, whoever is releasing titles in DVD, PLEASE put Yentl into production, and find the marvelous documentary of it's making, and include it on the end, I still have this on Video
and treaure it. Barbra wandering around with a small movie camera finding just the right locations is priceless, her interview on Australian 60 minutes about editing the film is also worthy of inclusion.