Carol Kane was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. Louise Fletcher won that year for "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Can't argue with that one.
Not strange or necessarily forgotten, Joan Micklin Silver‘s sweet 1975 melodrama, Hester Street, is a decidedly small film, but one that is pretty much perfect. A black-and-white melodrama set in the Jewish immigrant quarters of Manhattan in the 1890s, the film tells the tale of immigrant Jake (Steven Keats), who has been in America for five years and is not looking forward to the arrival of his wife, Gitl (Carol Kane), who is finally joining him. Jake has worked hard to rapidly assimilate himself, eschewing Old World behavior and becoming a “Yankee” with a taste for American woman. Wide-eyed Gitl brings with her the conservative, ethnic ways that her husband now disdains.
The unhappy domestic situation unfolds like a Shakespearean comedy, with everyone heading for the ending they deserve. The fable-like film sparkles as it journeys to its conclusion, and 35 years later the film is still the career high point for all involved. (Available for rent via Netflix and other outlets.)
More Film Posts:
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- New DVD: We Live in Public
- Excerpted: Alfred Hitchcock goes Hollywood (1939)
- New DVD: The Damned United
- New DVD: Examined Life