Joan Micklin Silver's ambitious but penny-wise independent production about the Americanization of Jewish immigrants on Manhattan's Lower East Side at the turn of the century. The substantial subject is filtered down to individual scenes that are tidy, to-the-point, and a bit thinned-out. (A big line comes across loud and clear: "You can't pee up my back and make me think it's rain.") The resultant lucid little movie, Silver's first as director, plays rather like a piano tune for one digit. But the finish, in those terms, is unexpectedly fancy, nimble fingerwork. The conscientious documentation of distant customs (in black-and-white) makes the movie a valuable museum piece, although it takes a while just to get oriented to the milieu, and it takes longer yet to get into the central storyline. Once there, Carol Kane's introverted performance as the Old Country wife of Stephen Keats's loud Americophile assumes command handily. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd
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