Hester Street

This review of Hester Street appeared in the New York Times in 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, and 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, 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 Theatre, 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: Hester Street tells the story of the comic and painful Americanization of Jake and Gitl, an immigrant couple from Russia.

SPONSORED BY:
The Dayhu Family Foundation
Wendy Fouks and John Anthony
Debby Freiman and David Schwartz
Gilda Rayburn and David Batist
Barbara Small and Leonard Schein

Festivals and Awards

• Nominee: Best Actress in a Leading Role, Carol Kane, Academy Awards, 1976
• Winner: Interfilm Award, Mannheim-Heidelberg International Filmfestival, 1975
• Winner: National Film Registry, National Film Preservation Board, USA, 2011
• Nominee: Best Film, Valladolid International Film Festival, 1977
• Nominee: Best Comedy adapted from another Medium, Writers Guild of America, USA, 1976"