Film · Film · 1975
Pass it on
Hester Street
65Worth an evening.
A small, exact film about assimilation as a temptation, not a triumph.
The review
The brief put this film on a Polish list as a lesson in old-world friction. It is a Jewish film. Keep the name accurate. The lesson is still the right lesson: a man who sheds his people's manners to be accepted has not become more American. He has become more alone, and he asks his wife to pay for it.
Watch it for that. It is quiet and black-and-white and better than the speeches people make about the same idea.
Journal
Keep Hester Street in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 65. Yours can differ.
The glance
Republic is the thin one.
Does anyone owe a neighbor, a law, or a town — or is every person out for themselves?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
Chariots of Fire
76 instead of 65
Chariots of Fire is still a drama film, and it scores 76 instead of 65. What you gain is piety: Worship orders the race.
The eight
- 7Industry
Piecework and the street. The economics are visible.
- 7Household
A marriage under the pressure of a man who is ashamed of the old way.
- 6Piety
The religious practice is hers. He experiences it as an obstacle to becoming American.
- 6Courage
She learns the new world without agreeing that the old one was nothing.
- 5Republic
A neighborhood that is a people, pictured at the moment it starts to split.
- 7Temperance
No spectacle. Shame is the drama.
- 8Truth
It takes the wife's side without making her a lecture.
- 6Stewardship
What will be handed to the child is the argument of the marriage.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
Live Historic · Hester Street · 65IMDb
