Part history of the Yiddish theater, part sitcom and part family drama, Arnon Goldfinger's documentary chronicling the saga of the Burstein Family, a popular Yiddish vaudeville act, is a bittersweet remembrance of a long gone era in showbiz. Most suitable for appropriately themed festivals and public television exposure, "The Komediant" (the word is Yiddish for actor) is currently receiving a theatrical release at New York's Lincoln Plaza and Quad Cinemas.
The family was headed by the late Pesach'ke Burstein, born at the end of the last century to an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland. Like the protagonist of "The Jazz Singer", Pesach'ke was shunned by his family for his theatrical ambitions, and he immigrated to America in 1924. Achieving success on the Yiddish theater circuit -- he became famous for his "bird whistling"-- he met and married Lillian Lux, two decades his junior, and the couple had a pair of twins, Mike and Susan, who were incorporated into the act while they were still children. Traveling the world and performing as the Burstein Family, they were highly successful. Eventually, Mike, who really longed for crossover success, overshadowed his parents and became the star of the act.
What might have been a predictably heartwarming tale is suffused with complexity, as the film chronicles the family strife that inevitably occurred with the pressures of their rarefied profession. Susan, who became a notable ventriloquist, rebelled at the lifestyle and opted out at age 18, marrying a man many years her senior. And Mike, chafing at the act's limitations, changed his name to Burstyn and became a Broadway star with the musical "Barnum". Interviewed separately, the surviving family members provide vividly contrasting and poignant remembrances of their careers and strained emotional dynamics.
Archival clips and home movies are used to terrific effect, and interviews with such other figures of the Yiddish theater as Fyvush Finkel (his account of the authoritarian Hebrew Actors Union, which once rejected Stella Adler for membership, is priceless) add the necessary context.
THE KOMEDIANT
New Yorker Films
Credits:
Director: Arnon Goldfinger
Producers: Amir Harel with Arnon Goldfinger, Oshra Schwartz and Zebra Productions Ltd.
Screenwriter: Oshra Schwartz
Director of photography: Yoram Millo
Editor: Einat Glaser-Zarbin
No MPAA rating
Running time 82 minutes...
The family was headed by the late Pesach'ke Burstein, born at the end of the last century to an Orthodox Jewish family in Poland. Like the protagonist of "The Jazz Singer", Pesach'ke was shunned by his family for his theatrical ambitions, and he immigrated to America in 1924. Achieving success on the Yiddish theater circuit -- he became famous for his "bird whistling"-- he met and married Lillian Lux, two decades his junior, and the couple had a pair of twins, Mike and Susan, who were incorporated into the act while they were still children. Traveling the world and performing as the Burstein Family, they were highly successful. Eventually, Mike, who really longed for crossover success, overshadowed his parents and became the star of the act.
What might have been a predictably heartwarming tale is suffused with complexity, as the film chronicles the family strife that inevitably occurred with the pressures of their rarefied profession. Susan, who became a notable ventriloquist, rebelled at the lifestyle and opted out at age 18, marrying a man many years her senior. And Mike, chafing at the act's limitations, changed his name to Burstyn and became a Broadway star with the musical "Barnum". Interviewed separately, the surviving family members provide vividly contrasting and poignant remembrances of their careers and strained emotional dynamics.
Archival clips and home movies are used to terrific effect, and interviews with such other figures of the Yiddish theater as Fyvush Finkel (his account of the authoritarian Hebrew Actors Union, which once rejected Stella Adler for membership, is priceless) add the necessary context.
THE KOMEDIANT
New Yorker Films
Credits:
Director: Arnon Goldfinger
Producers: Amir Harel with Arnon Goldfinger, Oshra Schwartz and Zebra Productions Ltd.
Screenwriter: Oshra Schwartz
Director of photography: Yoram Millo
Editor: Einat Glaser-Zarbin
No MPAA rating
Running time 82 minutes...
- 4/10/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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