Hester Street
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Hester Street |
| Original title | Hester Street |
.jpg) | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | Yiddish , English |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Joan Micklin Silver |
| script | Joan Micklin Silver |
| production | Raphael D. Silver |
| music |
Herbert L. Clarke William Bolcom |
| camera | Kenneth Van Sickle |
| cut | Katherine Wenning |
| occupation | |
| |
Hester Street is an American feature film from 1974 by Joan Micklin Silver , whose feature film debut this was, about Yiddish life in New York shortly before the turn of the century and at the same time a film about the gradual emancipation of women. Carol Kane plays the leading female role of an Orthodox new immigrant, with Steven Keats playing a secular Jew at her side . The film is based on the novel Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896) by Abraham Cahan .
action
The story takes place in the Yiddish ghetto of New York at the end of the 19th century. In 1896, Hester Street is the centerpiece of the Lower East Side's Jewish community . Where every newcomer from the Old World, especially from Eastern Europe, struggles to start a new and above all better life. Yankel Podkovnik, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who wants to fully assimilate into an American, has removed all external insignia of his old “Yiddish” life. The beard was shaved off and Yankel became, very American, Jake. His home, like that of many other East New York Jews, is on Hester Street.
For three years, Yankel / Jake has found accommodation with an older woman and spends the nights on the couch in their small apartment. After toiling in a sewing shop for clothes for a few measly dollars all day, Jake goes to a dance school where he wants to learn all about American culture. He and his friends make fun of mocking newcomers from overseas. Like various other men, Jake is drawn to the fiery Mamie Fein, a classy Polish woman who came to New York at the age of 16, has successfully assimilated in seven years and on top of that has saved a small fortune with her modest income. After Jake's father dies, his son finally wants to move into his own apartment and asks Mamie for $ 25 to buy furniture. Mamie, who naively believes that Jake will finally settle down and start a family, is willing to lend him the money. She sincerely hopes that a marriage proposal will follow soon after. Although Jake realizes that she is misinterpreting his wish for money, he leaves Mamie in her belief. Nobody knows that Jake's wife and children are on their way from Eastern Europe to America.
As soon as he arrives on Ellis Island , Jake's little son Yossele becomes the New American Joey. Jake cuts off his telltale long curls so that nothing on him looks like an Eastern European Jew. Jakes proudly presents the "Yankee" Joey to his neighbors. But Gitl is a much more difficult case. She is trapped in Russian Jewry through and through, pious, modest and very shy. And she doesn't want to say goodbye to the old traditions, she wants to live in America but without becoming an American. Jakes is ashamed of her excessive piety, which you can see at first glance. Like other Orthodox Jewish women, she keeps her head covered in public with a special wig or a headscarf. Jake himself isn't making an effort to introduce Gitl to the Hester Street community either. Despite being confused by Jake's behavior and her new life, Gitl desperately wants to please her husband. But he showed a certain indifference, and in order not to have to be ashamed of his wife, Jake Gitl tells her to ask her neighbor, Mrs. Kavarsky, to help her buy new, typically American clothes.
Annoyed by what she sees as poor treatment by Jake, Mamie visits Jake to reclaim her loaned money. Jake tells Gitl, who only speaks Yiddish and doesn't understand English, that Mamie is a former employee looking for a job. Jake makes it clear to Mamie that he would like to see her again later. Gitl becomes suspicious and asks the scholar Mr. Bernstein, another tenant, if he knows Mamie. Bernstein reassures Gitl that Jake would only love her. When Mrs. Kavarsky sees that Gitl is trying to buy a love potion from a peddler to bind her husband more tightly, she scolds Gitl. She shouldn't be surprised if she dresses like an old grandma. America is an educated country, said Mrs. Kavarsky, and one has to take care of good clothing. Gitl is waiting for Jake to return home from work in hopes that he will be satisfied with her new look, but only Mr. Bernstein returns. To relieve Gitl of worrying about Mamie, Bernstein tells her that the boss asked Jake to work longer. Bernstein knows this is a merciful lie, as Jake has just met with Mamie. Mamie rejects Jake's attempt to smooth things over between the two over the demanded $ 25 return. He then goes to a prostitute in frustration.
Since Jake spends little time in his own apartment, Mr. Bernstein is ready to comply with Gitl's will and teach Yossele alias Joey Hebrew. One day Jake invites his wife and Mr. Bernstein to a picnic in the park. Here he says bluntly that he is very proud to have shaken off his past and that he is now one hundred percent American. Jake claims that Jews are not as subservient to people of different faith here in the USA as they were in their old homeland. Gitl, who knows hardly anything, let alone anyone outside of her Hester Street ghetto, asks in her naivety where the “pagans” he speaks of are. Back home, Mrs. Kavarsky helps Gitl to transform herself into an American woman in terms of clothing and hairstyle. When Jake sees the result, he only thinks of the stupid saying that Gitl looks like a “wet cat”. Then he pulls on the supposed wig, which is Gitl's real hair. She screams in pain. Mrs. Kavarsky is very angry with Gitl's loveless husband and speaks to him about his unresolved relationship with Mamie. When Gitl speaks of Mamie only as Jake's "Polish whore", the situation threatens to escalate. To prevent Jake from beating his wife, she sends him out of the room. Mrs. Kavarsky thinks she is comforting Gitl by saying that Jake just needs to calm down a little, he would come back to her.
But Gitl has had enough of her husband, who has become very strange to her over time. Jake meets with Mamie again, who urges him to divorce and offers to pay Gitl out of her $ 340 savings. Gitl notices that Mr. Bernstein is packing his books and wants to move in with his uncle. The shy woman has long since fallen in love with the similarly reserved man. Since he is not getting going, Gitl asks Bernstein whether he would like to marry her after her divorce from Jake. Soon after, Gitl and Jake are divorced in the house of a rabbi according to a precisely defined Jewish rite. The rabbi explains that Jake can remarry immediately, but that Gitl will have to wait 91 days before remarrying. Mrs. Kavarsky blurts out that Gitl already has a good marriage candidate in prospect and a real scholar, in contrast to the simple-minded Jake. After the divorce, Jake and Mamie go to town hall to get married. Jake soon realizes that after having "paid off" Gitl with over $ 300, Mamie will now turn over every penny three times. Meanwhile, Gitl and Bernstein are planning their future together. With mom's money, Gitl has rented an apartment in the front of the store and is planning to open a grocery store. As she, Bernstein, and Joey walk down Hester Street discussing whether they will sell soda and seltzer, Gitl explains that she will run the store so Bernstein can spend his time studying the Torah. And she insists that her son Yossele become a whole American named Joey.
Production notes
Hester Street was built very cheaply in New York City in 1974 and was shown for the first time on March 19, 1975 as part of the USA Film Festival. The film also opened at the Cannes Film Festival on May 11 of the same year. In Germany, the film opened on March 19, 1976 as the (Yiddish-language) original with subtitles, and it was broadcast on TV exactly eight months later on ARD .
The film was very successful. David Appleton was production manager, Stuart Wurtzel designed the film structures. The costumes come from the hand of Robert Pusilo .
Reviews
The majority of national and international reviews were laudable. Below are several examples:
Kay Wenigers The film's large personal lexicon praised Carol Kane's performance in the “outstandingly played and staged time image”. She "drew a cautious portrait of an Orthodox Jew who had been pushed into a completely alien world at the turn of the century and who was traveling from Russia to New York, her husband's new home."
The Lexicon of International Films found: “A film that captivates through spontaneity and naturalness, knows how to avoid all clichés and tells it mischievously, cryptically and with bitter irony. The people and their milieu are drawn carefully and convincingly. "
Der Spiegel wrote “In 1896, at the time of the East Jewish immigration wave, Hester Street was a kind of wandering ghetto, transit camp and purgatory in front of the chimerical paradise of the American way of life. You arrived here as Yekl or Jossel, and left as Jake and Joey. Joan Micklin Silver describes in black and white images that are modeled on daguerreotypes , but not only this social adaptation. America's ideal of freedom also opens up completely different, unexpected problems in her film. Jake, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe who works as a seamstress in a clothes shop, has already largely acclimatized to his new home. (...) But Gitl, his wife, cannot adapt to the new world at first. She continues to wear the wig of the married Jewess and sprinkles salt in her son's jacket pockets against the evil spirits. When Jake turns back to Mamie, his old love from the dance academy, Gitl emancipates himself, divorces Jake in order to marry a poor orthodox scribe. Jake marries Mamie. Divorced and under the thumb of greedy beauty, he has now really become the epitome of the American man. "
"For old stubborn heads who still go to the cinema, looking for humanity, tenderness and knowledge."
The Movie & Video Guide wrote: "Disarmingly simple story, extraordinary touch of a time".
Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film as follows: “Modest; humorous but not always so smooth or dramatically emphatic chronicle of a familiar background. Excellent in detail. "
According to the journal Variety , Joan Micklin Silver "shows a sure hand with her first film".
Awards and nominations
- Carol Kane received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance on Hester Street
- Joan Micklin Silver received the Interfilm Award at the Mannheim-Heidelberg Film Festival
- In 2011, Hester Street was deemed worthy of entry into the US National Film Registry .
- Director Micklin Silver received a WGA Award nomination for her script .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Estimates range from $ 365,000 to $ 375,000
- ↑ Variety wrote in its February 25, 1976 edition that Hester Street had recovered production costs just five weeks after the mass start in the fall of 1975 and had made $ 1.45 million in North America by February 1976
- ^ The large personal dictionary of films, Volume 4, p. 297. Berlin 2001
- ^ Hester Street. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 26, 2020 .
- ↑ Hester Street in: Der Spiegel, June 14, 1976
- ^ Leonard Maltin : Movie & Video Guide, 1996 edition, p. 571
- ^ Leslie Halliwell : Halliwell's Film Guide, Seventh Edition, New York 1989, p. 463
- ↑ Variety, December 31, 1974
Web links
- Hester Street in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Hester Street in the American Film Institute catalog