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Critics reviews

HESTER STREET

Joan Micklin Silver United States, 1975
[W]hile Hester Street retains the visual style of images past, its social orientation is decidedly present-tense and feminist.
April 19, 2022
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With its purposefully old-fashioned aesthetic and predominantly Yiddish dialogue, it would be easy to assume that an indie like Hester Street might have slipped by without too much notice, yet Silver’s confident direction and Kane’s brilliant work ensured the film ended up grossing far more than its budget and earned Kane that elusive Oscar nomination.
October 25, 2021
Beautifully realized in black-and-white with a blend of wry humor and real yearning, its clear-eyed portrait of Jewish immigrants in New York’s Lower East Side conveys the community disruption wrought by the conflicting pull of tradition and assimilation.
May 2, 2018
It's at once vividly a film about the immigrant experience and vividly about New York Jews, that quintessentially American tribe.
May 23, 2017
Muting the pathos of the wife's ill treatment at the hands of her ambitious husband (Steven Keats), Silver deftly conceals a modern fantasy of liberation under a welter of social detail and a touching emotional restraint.
September 28, 2016
Micklin Silver takes great pains to deliver authenticity of idiom, tone and language. Evoking the photography of the period, the images are lovely: all dusty black-and-white chiaroscuro. The film is a deliciously warm wallow in Yiddish back-talk, verbal play, and the permutations and crises of assimilation.
September 7, 2015
The tension between keeping up appearances and a furtive, hidden life builds towards an eruption of psychological violence, followed by a coda in which Silver's extraordinary cinematic acuity and sensitivity are abundantly evident.
June 5, 2015
Clarity of emotion at the expense of subtlety, larger than life performances (with the exception of Carol Kane, whose greenhorn wife ends up learning the fastest), confine the film to warmheartedness and gentle, ironic observation at the expense of any real insight.
September 10, 2012
On the one hand, I think that Silver achieved what she set out to do. On the other, I became frustrated with the slow pace and the claustrophobic feel to it. I also felt that whilst Kane’s performance was good, it was a tad over-intense for me.
August 8, 2008
The New York Times
Her movie does have its engaging moments... But even at its best, Mrs. Silver's touch is neither light nor sure... yet “Hester Street” is by no means without its rewards.
November 2, 1975
The New York Times
Performance doesn't refer simply to the acting, though the cast of "Hester Street,"... 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: the rhythms, the acute selection of incident and character.
October 20, 1975
Hester Street deftly delves into Jewish emigration to the US just before the turn-of-the-century... Joan Micklin Silver displays a sure hand for her first pic.
December 31, 1975