For the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Joan Micklin Silver’s groundbreaking film Hester Street (1975), Julia Wagner offers a fresh analysis of the film, connecting the characters’ journeys to broader narratives of Jewish and immigrant resilience.
Wagner begins by contextualizing the film in 1970s Hollywood, helping readers to understand the boldness of director Micklin Silver’s choices for her directorial debut. Micklin Silver was already at a disadvantage as a female director. Though feminist activism in the 1970s led to more opportunities for women in Hollywood, directorial positions were often still reserved for men. Further, although the 1960s and 1970s were somewhat of a heyday for portraying Jewish identity in film, Micklin Silver was warned that the specific Orthodox Jewish experience she hoped to portray, which was based on Abraham Cahan’s novella Yekl (1896) and inspired by the experiences of her own immigrant parents, was too niche for American audiences. Still, Micklin Silver remained true to her vision rather than opting for more commercially appealing content. In the end, this low-budget, esoteric film was a box-office success both nationally and internationally, perhaps because, as Wagner notes, the film is simultaneously a Jewish story and one that “expresses universal feelings about immigration.”
Wagner’s remaining analysis masterfully weaves together her own interpretations of dialogue, camera work, costume, and setting with historical background and critical theory. She explores how the multiplicity of languages and accents in the film, along with the characters’ ambivalent attitudes toward Yiddish, connect the figures onscreen to the 1890s-era immigrants they represent and to multigenerational, multicultural audiences. She also examines the various settings showcased in the film: the Hester Street outdoor market, Ellis Island, Central Park, and domestic spaces. These different environments and the characters’ movements and interactions within them foreground broad issues connected to immigration, such as social and economic mobility, gendered expectations, and the negotiation of power. Wagner then explores the role of religious garb and ritual in the film, focusing on how the characters’ changes in outward appearance — such as Gitl’s makeover and change in head covering and Jake’s donning a tallit (prayer shawl) when he mourns his father — reflect their inward emotional battles and transformations. Wagner’s analysis of the camerawork in the scene where Gitl exchanges her sheitel (wig) for a tichel (headscarf) is particularly compelling; she frames the scene as an intimate moment in which the camera invites viewers into Gitl’s sense of feeling caught between pleasing her husband and remaining faithful to her religious values without resorting to the overt sexualization that was somewhat typical in 1970s cinema.
Toward the end of the book, Wagner synthesizes the different journeys of the film’s characters, arguing that each character forms a distinctive American Jewish identity that is informed by a unique combination of motivations relating to money, freedom, knowledge, and desire. The final chapter revisits the film’s reception across diverse contexts, celebrating its widespread acclaim and its role in establishing a lasting legacy of Jewish feminism in film.
This small book is jam-packed with background on the 1970s film industry, Jewish and immigrant histories, and complex yet accessible film analysis. It will be of interest to readers with a wide variety of interests, but particularly to those fascinated by how cinema can articulate feminist perspectives within historically marginalized communities.
