RyothChatty ridiculous rating

Hulkeasexo it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . observes recent Russian immigrant Gitl Podkovnik (Carol Kane) in 1896, when there was no need for 12-ounce bottled water here because the U.S. had not yet been "fracked," and all our earthquakes were "natural." I've watched hundreds of films released by the Edison Manufacturing Company in the 1890s and 1900s, which feature a wide cross-section of the same sort of Jewish characters that HESTER STREET tries to recreate from a distance of seven decades. While HESTER STREET writer\director Joan Micklin Silver produces a somewhat-romanticized feature aimed at the tiny "Jewish ROOTS" niche market, Thomas Alva Edison's very hands-on productions brought depictions of this era of the American Jewish Experience home to the U.S. gentile masses AS IT WAS HAPPENING IN REAL TIME! It's one of History's great tragedies that Mr. Edison passed away just as his anti-Semite Michigan camping buddies Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were chumming around with and influencing Germany's increasingly prominent Adolf Hitler. Had Tom been there to balance out Hank and Chuck's rabidly misanthropic viewpoints, it would have been less likely if not impossible to have The Holocaust.

atlasmb I think the best adjective for Hester Street is beautiful. The way immigrant life, with all of its complexities and nuances, is depicted is very poignant. It is not so long ago that many of our ancestors displayed bravery by leaving for a faraway land that they knew little of. Their struggle to escape persecution or poverty and to assimilate into a foreign culture is part of the American experience. I love the way this film captures the duality of life in the Jewish section of New York. Despite the fact that only Jews live in this area, we see both the Americanized lifestyle and the orthodox lifestyle, existing side by side and evolving daily.Carol Kane is wonderful in the part of Gitl, the wife who must adapt to a new world and put up with a husband who has abandoned all principles in his adoption of American ways.Hester Street feels like a "small" film. Much of the action takes place in the cramped apartment of Gitl and her family (and the boarder). This is Gitl's new world, a reality that she might be content with, if her husband were loving. The street scenes remind us that Gitl's apartment is just a small part of a bustling neighborhood situated in a huge city in a corner of the new world.

Galina Joan Micklin Silver's directorial debut is a lovely, funny, warm, and observant historical drama-comedy about Jewish immigrants who left the little shtetl in Russia in the end of the 19th century for the hopes of better life and success in America. The film tells the story of a young couple, Jake (Steven Keats) and Gitl (Carol Kane). The husband came to Lower East End of Manhattan five years before his family and has gladly accepted American way of life making transition from Yankel to a Yankee, losing his beard and side curls on a way to become a real American and falling in love with Mamie Fine, attractive and independent young woman, an immigrant herself. When his wife Gitl and their son Yossi (Joey) arrive from Russia and join him in the flat at Hester Street, Jake is torn between his desire "to live like educated people in an educated country" and his wife's quiet but firm holding on to the traditions of Old Country. More likely, their marriage was arranged by their families in Russia and they don't have much in common when they meet after having lived separately in two different worlds for five years. The film concentrates on Gitl, quiet, gentle, pious seemingly fragile and naive young woman with huge dark eyes who has to make very serious decisions about her new life and how to make sense of it. Everything about this small independent movie is fine - its authentic look that was achieved by beautiful B/W cinematography, its soundtrack that uses the music by Herbert L. Clarke, a composer and famous cornet player; the dialogs in two languages, English and Yiddish, full of very unique humor that still shines. There are no villains in the story and no stereotypes. All characters have one thing in common - one day, they took a chance to start over, to leave their past behind, to movie to the absolutely new unknown world with the different language, customs, traditions, rhythm of life and to try to survive and succeed and not to lose their unique identity. Comic, moving, warm, lyrical, with the loving attention to the smallest details, with the love and understanding for its characters, "Hester street" is a perfect example of an independent art movie that was made on the shoe string budget, had difficulties to find distributors, but luckily did not get lost, found its way to the viewers, and brought Jewish ethnicity to the screen. One does not have to be an Art movie buff or an immigrant to enjoy "Hester Street". The simple story of a young traditional woman's transformation and coming to terms with her new life can be enjoyed by any viewer regardless their age, gender, or ethnic background.Carol Cane is fantastic as Gitl and more than deserves her Academy Award nomination for the Best Leading Actress. Doris Roberts (Marie of "Everybody Loves Raymond") is equally good as Gitl's and Jake's neighbor, Mrs. Kavisnky who becomes Gitl's friend and adviser.

psteier Americanized Jake and the more Old World Bernstein are recent immigrants eking out a meager living. Then Jake's wife arrives unexpectedly from Europe with Jake's young son, and ends up in the middle of her husband's love affair and ends up falling in love with Bernstein.A loving reconstruction of life at the time, though seemingly cleaned up and also somewhat restricted by a low budget. The acting is fine and the story is moving.