Saturday Night Cinema: Hester Street

Tonight’s Saturday Night cinema feature was inspired by the Jewish New Year. Hester Street was a first-time film for writer and director Joan Micklin Silver on a minuscule budget. Truly a big “tiny movie.” Starring Carol Kane, Steven Keats and Dorrie Kavanaugh, Kane and Dorrie Kavanaugh give remarkable performances.

Beyond all the details there is the magnificent performance of Carol Kane as Gitl. Big-eyed, scared and inaudible at first, a spark of allure pops out here, a spark of anger there, until by the end of the picture she is a triumphant bonfire.

Gitl arrives in New York with her son to join her husband Jake, but whereas Jake has completely embraced America, his shy wife clings to her old country ways.

Variety: Hester Street deftly delves into Jewish emigration to the US just before the turn-of-the-century. Hester Street is a sort of mobile ghetto as Eastern European Jews pour in and go in for their Americanization before moving on to other NY boroughs or to further west US climes.

https://youtu.be/TF5Tg-PGsLc

Pathos and Wit Light Up Hester Street

New York Times, October 20, 1975

There is nothing very original about “Hester Street” except its loveliness. Literally, it is a small movie about the struggles and transformations of the Jews who settled in the Lower East Side and tried to reconcile the ordered values they brought along with the unmarked opportunities they found.The immigrant theme, with its anecdotes, its incongruities, its mixture of comedy and pathos, has been played through any number of stories, novels, memoirs, films. How, then, can this film be so good? Partly, it is because movies are performances as well as creations. The effect of seeing “Hester Street” is that of seeing a familiar play—”A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as done by Peter Brook or “The Wild Duck” as done by Sweden’s Royal Dramatic Theater—lit up by an intent and flowering mind.Performance doesn’t refer simply to the acting, though the cast of “Hester Street,” which opened yesterday at the Plaza Theater, is superlative, and Carol Kane in the starring role is extraordinary. It refers to the whole framing of the picture by Joan Micklin Silver, its author and director: the rhythms, the acute selection of incident and character.

“Hester Street” tells of the comic and painful Americanization of Jake and Gitl, an immigrant couple from Russia. In the opening scenes Jake, who has come over alone, is adapting whole-heartedly although with an aim that is slightly askew. Played with vigor and humor by Steven Keats, Jake has found himself a tailoring job, a whole bed for himself—actually, he confesses to a friend, it’s a couch, but he’s still ahead of others who have to double up—and a girlfriend.But then Gitl arrives and brings with her not only hideous complications for Jake’s love life, but also the dress, the bearing, the language and the customs of the Russian ghetto that Jake has so exuberantly put behind.They settle in: Jake, Gitl, their little boy, and a lodger. The lodger is a former rabbinical student named Bernstein who went into tailoring because he couldn’t keep his mind off women, but nonetheless spends his evenings studying.It is a series of battles, Jake pushing his wife to give up her shawls, her hair-covering, her Yiddish; her making adjustments at her own pace, and far too slowly for him. The marriage founders; Jake gets a divorce, financed by his girlfriend, and marries her. And Gitl in a beautiful reversal that is neither sudden nor unprepared, but flows out of her own slowly blossoming strength, comes out ahead.

The film is constructed on a series of sharp, brief incidents. There is Jake at Ellis Island meeting Gitl, who is arrayed — clothes, bundles, bags—like a whole history of the Diaspora. “For what purpose are you bringing this woman in?” an official asks Jake. “For the purpose she’s my wife,” he answers in a near-howl.There is the owner of the tailor shop gloating at Bernstein’s struggle with the unaccustomed manual work. “The peddler becomes the boss and the Yeshiva student sits by the sewing machine,” he chortles. “Some country.”And in the lodgings, when Jake has stormed out in one of his rages, Bernstein and Gitl sit in mutual misery. “When we come over here,” he tells her, “we say ‘Goodbye, Lord, I’m going to America.'”

The camerawork, in black and white, is deliberately restrained, but there is a moment of pure virtuosity. The scene is in the country, the camera points through leaves at the sun, a piano rag jangles on the soundtrack, and suddenly the whole comically tormented group bursts through the trees and the glare for a picnic. Some picnic. Jake determinedly plays American ball with his son; Gitl and Bernstein droop in Old Country poses against a tree. There is a pause in the athletics. “Jake,” she asks—never having been past Delancey Street—”are there any gentiles in America?”

Beyond all the details there is the magnificent performance of Carol Kane as Gitl. Big-eyed, scared and inaudible at first, a spark of allure pops out here, a spark of anger there, until by the end of the picture she is a triumphant bonfire. Miss Kane manages the high acting feat of seeming to change size physically, expanding and shrinking as she is happy or miserable.There is a defect in the picture, although it is not a major one. The street scenes are too fully packed with color: too many peddlers, too many mischievous children, too many barrows. It’s like a stage set. Even the dresses hanging on racks seem instructed in their parts.But it is the only point at which Mrs. Silver’s fine balance between realism and fable slips a bit into storyteller artifice. For the rest, “Hester Street” is an unconditionally happy achievement.

HESTER STREET, directed by Joan Micklin Silver; screenplay by Miss Silver, adapted from “Yekl” by Abraham Cahan; director of photography, Kenneth Van Sickle music, William Bolcom; editor, Katherine Wenning; produced by Raphael D. Silver; distributed by Midwest Film Productions, Inc.

Jake . . . . . Steven Keats
Gitl . . . . . Carol Kane
Bornstein . . . . . Mel Howard
Mamie . . . . . Dorrie Kavanaugh
Mrs. Kavarsky . . . . . Doris Roberts
Joe Peltner . . . . . Stephen Strimpell
Fanny . . . . . Lauren Frost
Joey . . . . . Paul Freedman
Rabbi . . . . . Zvee Scooler
Rabbi’s Wife . . . . . Eda Reiss Merin

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BarleyEducated

5 years ago

I’m glad that despite the turmoil you endure that you prioritize the things that bring you joy. Stay strong, and may God continue to bless you. 🙂

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whoselineisitanyway

5 years ago

Saw this film several years ago.
Wouldn’t/couldn’t be made today.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS NO PLACE IN A FREE SOCIETY

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