A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Hester Street (Joan Micklin Silver, 1975)












Cast: Carol Kane, Steven Keats, Mel Howard, Dorrie Kavanaugh, Doris Roberts, Stephen Strimpel, Lauren Friedman, Paul Freedman, Martin Garner, Leib Lensky, Zane Lasky, Zvee Scooler, Eda Reiss Merin. Screenplay: Joan Micklin Silver, based on a novel by Abraham Cahan. Cinematography: Kenneth Van Sickle. Production design: Stuart Wurtzel. Film editing: Katherine Wenning. Music: William Bolcom, Herbert L. Clarke. 

Gitl (Carol Kane) joins her immigrant husband Yankel (Steven Keats) in turn-of-the-century New York City, and discovers that he is no longer the modest, religiously observant man she knew in the old country. He has picked up American slang, while she speaks only Yiddish, and calls himself Jake while insisting that their son, Yossele (Paul Freedman) be called Joey. He has also taken up with a flashy Americanized woman named Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh). With the help of their neighbor, Mrs. Kavarsky (Doris Roberts), Gitl learns how to adapt to the new world, shed herself of Jake, and find a new, more suitable husband. Kane received an Oscar nomination for best actress in writer-director Joan Micklin Silver's first feature. Low-key, warm-hearted, and amusing, Hester Street evokes silent movies in its well-crafted depiction of the era in which it's set. 

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