Inspired by our discovery of "Between the Lines," we go backward and forward in the timeline to delve into the catalog of director Joan Micklin Silver.
CROSSING DELANCEY (1988) (B+) - Sometimes all you need are the bones of a script and two endlessly charming lead actors to make a successful picture. In a quintessential New York picture, Amy Adams and Peter Riegert play two average people bungling their way toward possibly falling in love.
Adams is Isabelle, a smart, lonely woman idling away in a job at a bookstore and whose prospects are a married fuckbuddy and a pompous author who toys with her affections. Riegert is Sam, a straight arrow who runs a pickle stand on Delancey Street. The two are introduced by Isabelle's bubbe (the non-actor Reizl Bozyk) and her yenta friend Hanna Mandelbaum (Sylvia Miles), but Isabelle and Sam do not hit it off right away, and in fact, Isabelle tries to foist him off on a friend at a bar.
To say anymore about the plot would be to ruin the joy of watching this simple tale unfold so naturally. The spare but incisive script is by one-timer Susan Sandler, and Silver takes her time unpacking the narrative, all the while providing dreamy street scenes and authentic interiors in bookstores, apartments, bars and delis. Adams is lowkey and elegant as a woman flustered about what she wants. Riegert is a cool customer as the man who has crushed on her for a long time and patiently waits to see whether she will come around, unwilling to compromise his own principles.
Bozyk nearly steals the show as the Yiddish-spouting grandmother, a call-back to the vaudeville era. She and Miles camp it up as the two old busybodies. At first -- 37 years later -- the depictions feel like huge stereotypes, but as the characters all settle in, things even out, and you can get nostalgic for that bygone era. In the end, this is a sweet minor-key character study, an almost treacly romantic comedy that is so relentlessly sincere you can't help falling for it.
HESTER STREET (1975) (B+) - In her debut as writer-director, Micklin Silver adapts a novella from Abraham Cahan about Jewish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century jockeying for an inside track to the American dream. She has a luminous, wide-eyed Carol Kane to represent the immigrant arriving fresh off the boat.
Here, the director dives even deeper into Jewish culture, from the first big wave of immigration, when people like Jake (Steven Keats) strive to shed the old world and scan as American in every way. Jake is in New York, making time with a dancer, Mamie (Dorrie Kavanaugh) while his wife and son await back in Eastern Europe. Jake works a blue-collar job with the studious Bernstein (Mel Howard), both of them, like many immigrants, slumming way below their skill and education levels.
When his wife's father dies, Gitl (Kane) and their son Yossele (Paul Freedman) arrive at Ellis Island, and Jake immediately chafes at Gitl's arcane ways and inability to speak English. She calls him by his Yiddish name and he sharply corrects her. He insists that the boy be called Joey. He often accuses her and others of being greenhorns, or "greenies." I can recall back in the 1970s the vestiges of the sons and daughters of immigrants shunning the backward ways of Old Europe and seeking the modern American amenities like microwave ovens and Velveeta cheese. Back around 1900, the United States was the New World, rife with possibilities for an ambitious man who knew how to assimilate. Jake is the epitome of the striving immigrant. But when he tries to have his cake and eat it, too -- juggling two women, with a foot in each world -- he is reminded, "With one tuchus you can't dance at two weddings."
Micklin Silver re-creates documentary-like footage of the bustling Hester Street, and she doesn't sugarcoat the friction between the callous Jake and his traditional wife. Keats ("Death Wish"), who would go on to a prolific career in TV (before dying at 49) is a dynamo. Kane, in her breakthrough role, is a wonder, who conveys volumes with few words. The love triangle plays out with harsh consequences, and a traditional Jewish ceremony during the film's climax is a clinic in subtle storytelling.
