Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786301682992
Format: Color
ISBN: 6301682998
Label: Media Home Video
Manufacturer: Media Home Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publication Date: 1990-07
Publisher: Media Home Video
Release Date: 1990-07-31
Running Time: 119
Studio: Media Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1989-12-13

Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote often about despair and redemption, the subjects of his novel on which this Paul Mazursky film is based. Ron Silver plays a Holocaust survivor who has moved to America and married the Polish gentile who hid him from the Nazis. An intellectual, he is not satisfied with this simple peasant woman and so he has an affair with a sultry émigré (Lena Olin). His life is then made more complicated by the reappearance of his wife from the old country (Anjelica Huston), who he thought had died in the Nazi death camps. Mazursky and his terrific cast find the pain, irony, and sad humor in this material, capturing Singer's tone and bringing it to life. --Marshall Fine

Customer Rating:
Summary: Enemies -Review
Comment: Great Movie - Set in post WW2 New York but highly relevant to todays age of complex relationships - deals with the classic problem of multiple relationships and provides deep psychological insights we can all relate to.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Big Love Oy Vey!
Comment: I'm a regular reader of Roger Simon's Blog, a fellow political conservative. He has written fine screenplays and this adaptation was honored by the Academy. As many adaptations of complicated books, and in this case a book by a very complex writer, there's questions after the viewing. A story of Holocaust immigrants, simple enough: this writer-intellectual-Jew-survivor has too many wives. Then it might be a farce of embarrassing discovery and sneaking about. Since the wives and Ron Silver's character have endured unspeakable horror, there's plenty of post-trauma syndrome. The lovers joke about sleeping with death camp guards. There's that understated gallows humor. The women claim to have kept their modesty under the circumstances, but I doubt it. It is difficult to tell if Simon softened the blow. I'll have to read Singer's book to see how he handled it. (They say Singer wrote in Yiddish about a Polish Jewry that no longer existed during his lifetime, a lost world.)

The steamy stuff, most of the bedroom scenes occurs with the attractive, Lena Olin. Huston gets a modest boudoir scene and the peasant Polish wife, Stein has no bedtime at all. Jews doing it. Oy Vey!

Be on the lookout for incredibly good acting among minor characters. Allan King is perfect.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Making the Best of an Awful Situation
Comment: Life is not always fair. One must often play the cards they are dealt. The Nazis severely damaged the stable relationships of many European Jews. Herman Broder (Ron Silver) has emigrated to New York. His wife (Anjelica Huston) is presumed dead and he feels an obligation to serve as a husband to the woman (Margaret Sophie Stein) who previously was the family housekeeper. She is attractive enough and well meaning, but dumber than the proverbial door nail. Herman is also having a passionate affair with a woman who hasn't quite divorced her own husband. Can things get any more complicated? The answer to this question is a resounding yes. It turns out the original wife is still among the living. What can be done? Somebody is obviously going to get hurt. Who will it be? A saintly man would be desperate to find a morally and pragmatic solution---and Herman is not even close to being a saint. Might he wish to get advice from his rabbi (Alan King)? This particular religious leader, sadly, is not exactly a paragon of virtue. He is only a step away from being a total rogue. Alas, Herman inevitably seems doomed to make matters even worse. Isaac Bashevis Singer's story is filled with much humor and pathos. The well known post 9/11 blogger Roger L. Simon wrote the Academy Award nominated screen play. This movie should be on your must see list.

David Thomson
Flares into Darkness

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Customer Rating:
Summary: 4-Star Film, 2-Star Sound Transfer
Comment: As previous reviewers have stated, someone screwed up big-time with the sound mix on this DVD. If you're lucky, you can catch about every third line of dialogue - a real shame in the case of this darkly witty, Oscar-nominated film. Picture quality is absolutely gorgeous, which makes the sound muddle even more frustrating. (Unbelievable that no one involved has demanded a reissue in all the years since this DVD release.) Still, this wonderful film is worth the struggle - even if you have to resort to turning on the subtitles.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Long and Drawn Out
Comment: It's a hellish tale about a modern jobe from Bashevis Zinger's Novel. Herman Broder (Ron Silver) is a Polish Jew living in Coney Island after the Holocaust. It is 4 years after the end of WWII and he works as a writer and has a wife whom he wed because she protected him from the Nazis. Meanwhile, he's enjoying the company of another woman during 'business trips' when he finds out personally that his original wife thought to have been killed by Nazis is alive and in New York!! It sounds so absurd that you might think this movie is a comedy, but it's not. There are funny moments, but throughout this movie you will become wrapped up in the very serious moral dilemma of a man married to two women while he's in love with another and the conflicting emotions that all of the characters feel and experience. All of this is brought in a suffocated, sarcastic, sweaty manner, that you feel his suffering. It's really not a movie that I'd recommend.

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