Hester Street (1975)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

Well, in 1972 "The Godfather" was a sensation, so why not other stories about immigrants adapting to life in the New World? This one is about Jews on Hester Street which was, at the turn of the century, the heart of the community on the Lower East Side. The adaptation of immigrants is never smooth, and it's a bit bumpy in this story.Steven Keats is Jake, who shares quarters with Bernstein. It's 1898 and Jake is a rake, going to dancing classes, flirting with the looser local girls, wearing a fashionable mustache, speaking English quickly and cockily. He's not making much money -- twelve dollars a week behind a sewing machine -- but he's happy.But then his comfortable routine is busted up by the arrival from Russia of his wife, Carol Kane, and their young son. Kane speaks no English, wears traditional clothes, and an outlandish wig considered suitable for observant women in the old country.I mentioned speaking English and I must admit I love the locutions that immigrants bring to American English. They can be utterly charming, whether or not they're amusing.Scene: Keats has met his wife and child and is trying to maneuver them through the immigration obstacle at the station. The uniformed official behind the desk is skeptical when Keats claims they are his family. "For what purpose are you bringing this woman into the country?", asks the bureaucrat with a squint. (Dumb stare from Keats.) "For what purpose are you bringing this woman into the country?" Keats, angrily: "For the poipous dat she is my WIFE!" The marriage doesn't work out in the new environment. Keats loves the gay life and Kane is quiet and seems antiquated. So Keats sends a lawyer to her to discuss divorce. How much does she want to grant him a divorce? "Fifty dollars," says the lawyer in a theatrical manner. "You'll be a rich woman. You can get another husband just like that." No? The lawyer shakes his head sadly. Okay. "You got a little one you need to take care of. I can go seventy-five dollars. No? What kind of business are we doing here, Lady? What do you want, a HUNDRED DOLLARS? Oy -- what am I saying! Okay, it's out. I said it. A hundred dollars." I'm still laughing as I write this, but the whole movie isn't made up of such comic gems. I've seen it twice, the first time on its release, and was completely involved. The second time there were fewer surprises, although some scenes -- the ritual of the divorce, for instance -- were just as touching as the first time around. I believe, too, that the low budget may have drained the film of some energy.The movie ends with Keats walking down the street with his new hotsy-totsy wife and wondering if they should peddle vegetables for a living. They have no money and their choices are not exactly limitless. A thought drifted into my mind. Sigmund Freud as Jewish immigrant living on Hester Street. Freud would have been 32 years old in 1898. I can almost hear the exchange between him and his wife. "Siggie, should we leave the soda water out on the sidewalk or keep it in the shop?" And Freud stops and rubs his chin before replying, "YES and NO."

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.

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!