New book about Hester Street marks movie’s 50th anniversary
The original 'New York Ghetto' movie looks at the Jewish immigrant experience from a female perspective
The first time Dr Julia Wagner became aware of Hester Street was more than 20 twenty years ago when her mother took a course with a module in Yiddish film at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. She remembers seeing a stunning black-and-white film still that was hard to place given it seemed as likely to have come from a 1920s film as a 1970s one.
Wagner did not actually end up seeing the rarely-screened film until 2022 and now her book on Hester Street as part of Bloomsbury’s BFI Film Classics series has been published in honour of the movie’s 50th anniversary.
The book arose from Wagner’s work as a writer and lecturer specialising in Jewish film. She was asked to take part in a Q&A that followed that 2022 screening in Mayfair. While preparing for the event and researching the film, she discovered very little had actually been written about Joan Micklin Silver’s debut or her ensuing career. It seemed “such an obvious omission” that the team at BFI Film Classics were immediately enthusiastic about her pitch.
It is not hard to see why. Hester Street was adapted from Abraham Cahan’s 1896 novella, Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto, and the film explores the Jewish immigrant experience in turn-of-the-century New York from a female perspective. The writer-director struggled initially to find funding but Hester Street ultimately proved a hit with Jewish and non-Jewish audiences alike and Carol Kane, in the lead, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. Not bad for a film largely in Yiddish whose director was told by a studio executive prior to raising the money: “Women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”
In writing the book, Wagner discovered it had mostly been considered within “Jewish studies and discussions of immigrant life”. In an attempt to redress the balance, she “wanted to bring it out of that social history area and into film studies, not just as a Jewish film.” She is especially pleased about the BFI involvement, explaining: “It doesn’t have to be a niche film, it can be a mainstream film.” It feels important to the author that Micklin Silver is appreciated as an independent filmmaker and a female filmmaker rather than just a Jewish one.
Wagner had six months to write the book and was disciplined about her work, spending two weeks researching and two weeks writing each of the monograph’s six chapters. As the author of the first substantial analysis of a Micklin Silver film, she felt a genuine sense of responsibility:
“Things like the rules pertaining to female head covering… I went to the LSJS Library and found the one book that’s been written by women about women’s head covering… It’s something that’s decided by communities and it’s rarely been encoded.”
“In the 70s, there was a lot of interest in period pieces that were talking about ethnic heritage. Post 1968 people were American plus. Something like The Godfather was made at a similar time and is about ethnic origins in America but it’s completely different. There is nothing quite like Hester Street… It doesn’t easily fit into a genre.”
Wagner found herself inspired by Micklin Silver and her determination to make the film, explaining that it kept her “committed and confident” in her ability to write the book. Micklin Silver, for her part, was inspired by Kane’s character, Gitl, and thus the author felt there was a “chain of inspiration”.
The other chain that links the author, filmmaker and character is one of responsibility. “Women’s stories were not often documented in official social histories… Joan Micklin Silver’s family was very big on telling stories and telling their family history. If she felt a responsibility to tell stories of the past and voice unvoiced experiences then I see my role as continuing that and not just telling Gitl’s story or the immigrant stories but also Joan Micklin Silver’s.”
Hester Street by Julia Wagner is published by Bloomsbury
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