Ted Allan's autobiographical screenplay about boyhood in a Russian-Jewish tenement in 1920s Montreal (with Allan himself appearing as the Leninist proselytizer, Mr. Baumgarten) inclines a little toward the schmaltzy. And no matter how true to the remembered facts, the story spends considerable time among things predictable and inevitable. The little hero's preference for his grandfather over his father is presented as nothing less healthy than good taste; and while the innocent, incurious acceptance of the characters at face value might be acceptable as a child's-eye view, director Jan Kadar does not really pursue that possibility. The movie takes good advantage of its unfamiliar faces, however, partiucarly that of Len Birmin as the industrious but unproductive father who squanders his energies on revolutionary inventions like the creaseless trouser and the elastic cuff link. With Yossi Yadin, Marilyn Lightstone, and Jeffrey Lynas. (1975) — Duncan Shepherd
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