Product Details

• Actors: Elya Baskin, Henry Bronchtein, L.J. Dollinger, Gayle Garfinkle, Shelley Goldstein
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Unknown), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: September 3, 2002
• Run Time: 120 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000696I7
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #40,802 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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• For more information about "Enemies, A Love Story" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote often about despair and redemption, the subjects of his novel on which this Paul Mazursky film is based. Ron Silver plays a Holocaust survivor who has moved to America and married the Polish gentile who hid him from the Nazis. An intellectual, he is not satisfied with this simple peasant woman and so he has an affair with a sultry émigré (Lena Olin). His life is then made more complicated by the reappearance of his wife from the old country (Anjelica Huston), who he thought had died in the Nazi death camps. Mazursky and his terrific cast find the pain, irony, and sad humor in this material, capturing Singer's tone and bringing it to life. --Marshall Fine

Product Description

Herman Broder (Ron Silver) is a Holocaust survivor in postwar New York, wed out of gratitude to the peasant woman who hid him from the Nazis. He carries on a mad affair with a concentration camp survivor (Lena Olin), only to find out that the snappish wife (Anjelica Huston) he thought had died in the war is miraculously alive.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars grief, love, forgiveness, July 30, 2003

By	Karen Sampson Hudson "Karen Sampson Hudson" (Reno, NV United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Enemies, A Love Story [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I saw this movie after reading Steven Pinker's non-fiction book on socio-biology, "The Blank Slate." Pinker recommended this movie based on a tale by Isaac Bashevis Singer, for its study of the human condition, ripe with irony, seasoned with despair, love and forgiveness.

The casting is excellent, and the acting is first-rate from beginning to end. Male viewers will wonder how Herman Broder gets so lucky, having three different but highly appealing women in love with him. Tidily, the three women are from three boroughs of New York City, a typical Singer touch, and the movie includes a scene where Broder stands at the subway entrances deciding which direction to take.

Highly recommended.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Making the Best of an Awful Situation, December 27, 2006

By	David Thomson "Second Rate Eric Hoffer Imitator" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Enemies, A Love Story [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Life is not always fair. One must often play the cards they are dealt. The Nazis severely damaged the stable relationships of many European Jews. Herman Broder (Ron Silver) has emigrated to New York. His wife (Anjelica Huston) is presumed dead and he feels an obligation to serve as a husband to the woman (Margaret Sophie Stein) who previously was the family housekeeper. She is attractive enough and well meaning, but dumber than the proverbial door nail. Herman is also having a passionate affair with a woman who hasn't quite divorced her own husband. Can things get any more complicated? The answer to this question is a resounding yes. It turns out the original wife is still among the living. What can be done? Somebody is obviously going to get hurt. Who will it be? A saintly man would be desperate to find a morally and pragmatic solution---and Herman is not even close to being a saint. Might he wish to get advice from his rabbi (Alan King)? This particular religious leader, sadly, is not exactly a paragon of virtue. He is only a step away from being a total rogue. Alas, Herman inevitably seems doomed to make matters even worse. Isaac Bashevis Singer's story is filled with much humor and pathos. The well known post 9/11 blogger Roger L. Simon wrote the Academy Award nominated screen play. This movie should be on your must see list.

David Thomson
Flares into Darkness

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great film, awful DVD, November 21, 2002

By	Leucippe (new york, ny USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Enemies, A Love Story [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I concur with other viewers who found the DVD unacceptable in sound quality. Oddly enough, it gets excellent reviews as a DVD transfer. They must have had a different copy. But the film itself remains as fresh and exciting as when it first was issued. Mazursky captures the spirit (if not all the nuances) of I. B. Singer's marvelous novel about Holocaust survivors in New York in the 1950s. None of the reviewers here seem either to have read the book or really understood the point of the film -- Herman Broder, ghost writer, who was hidden during the war by the Polish servant who saved him and marries her (Jadwiga), finds passion with Masha, who survived the camps with her mother (Eros and Thanatos certainly go together here), and discovers his first wife (Tamara), who was shot with her children by the Einsatzgruppen and left for dead, is actually alive. Each represents a different facet of the catastrophe, conveniently divided among the New York boroughs. Anyone, by the way, who has read anything of Singer, including this book, would recognize his very typical take on male sexuality. I would advise viewers to see this film (or see it again) and think more deeply about what's at stake in this ironic tragicomedy than look for mindless and shallow entertainment.